Chapter 6 #4
I pick up a crystal showing my father at his anvil, hammer raised, sweat gleaming on his brow. My mother is in the background, laughing at something he’s said. I’m there too—small, maybe eight or nine—watching them with adoration in my eyes.
I don’t remember this moment. Don’t remember a time when I looked at anything with adoration. Don’t remember what it felt like to be a child who believed the world was safe.
He stole that from me. Stole the girl I would have been.
I set the crystal down carefully, resisting the urge to shatter it. I need the evidence intact.
The crystals from my twelfth year show the first chaos-beast attack.
It came out of nowhere—that’s what everyone said at the time. The beasts had never ventured this close to the village before. We lost three people that day, including Old Marcus who had been training me to fight.
I remember that day with perfect clarity. Remember the screaming, the blood, the way the beast’s claws tore through Old Marcus’s chest when he pushed me behind him. Remember his blood on my hands as he died, his last words telling me to run.
I was twelve years old. I didn’t run. I picked up his sword and I fought, and somehow I survived.
That was the day I decided to become a warrior.
I find a crystal that shows the beast’s approach. Find another that shows the path it took—directly through territory that should have been warded by Stone Court magic. Territory that Karax, as Guardian, was responsible for protecting.
The wards failed that day. Just for a few hours. Just long enough for the beast to reach us.
I check the dates. Check them again.
The ward failure happened three days after Karax started watching me. Three days after he decided an eight-year-old girl “had potential.”
My hands are shaking as I set the crystal down.
Not coincidence. Never coincidence.
He didn’t just watch my mentor die. He arranged it.
I move through the crystals methodically now, my mind cold and clear even as something inside me is screaming. The pattern emerges with horrible clarity.
Age thirteen: The village healer, old Greta, dies of a sudden illness. No one else catches it. Just her—the woman who might have noticed if something was wrong with me, who might have recognized the signs of omega biology emerging.
Age fourteen: Jorin arrives in Ironhold. He’s a wandering fighter, skilled and patient, and he takes over my training where Old Marcus left off. For two years, he’s the closest thing I have to family. He teaches me everything he knows.
Age sixteen: Jorin leaves. Suddenly. Says he got word of a job opportunity in the southern territories.
I find the crystal showing his departure. But I also find what the confrontation with Karax didn’t tell me—what happened the day before Jorin decided to leave.
A Stone Court messenger arriving at his home. A conversation I wasn’t there to witness. A bag of gold changing hands.
Karax didn’t just “nudge” Jorin away. He bought him.
I dig through more crystals. Find more patterns. Each one drives another nail into the coffin of the life I thought I understood.
Age fifteen: Mira, the healer’s apprentice who might have shared my burden of protecting the village—she receives a mysterious letter offering her an apprenticeship in the capital. She leaves within the week, apologizing but saying it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.
I remember how betrayed I felt. How alone. She was my age, my friend, and she left for a better opportunity.
In the crystal, I can see the seal on the letter. Stone Court silver.
Age seventeen: Thomas, the blacksmith’s son who used to help me patrol the walls—he’s conscripted into the Stone Court army. “Random selection,” they called it.
He was the closest thing I had to a friend after Mira left. After he was taken, I stopped trying to make friends at all. What was the point? Everyone left eventually.
The conscription order bears Karax’s signature.
Age eighteen: Elena, the merchant’s daughter who kept trying to talk to me—her family relocates after their farm is destroyed by a chaos-beast attack that targeted their land specifically.
I find the crystal showing the attack. The beast walked past three other farms to reach theirs. At the time, I thought it was strange. Thought maybe their livestock attracted it.
Now I see the truth. The beast was directed. Sent specifically to destroy the family of the only girl in Ironhold who still tried to befriend me.
One by one, everyone who might have stood beside me was removed. Bought off. Driven away. Conscripted. Every potential mentor, every possible friend, every person who might have made my burden lighter—systematically eliminated from my life.
And after each departure, there’s a crystal showing Karax watching.
Observing.
Taking notes.
Like a scientist tracking an experiment. Like a farmer culling a herd. Like a predator slowly, methodically, isolating the weakest member from the pack.
I was never the weakest. He made me the most alone.
I find a crystal from five years ago—a council meeting. Karax is there, speaking to Lord Greymun and the other council members. I can’t hear what they’re saying—the crystals only capture images, not sound—but I can read lips well enough.
“Increase pressure on Ironhold.”
“The tribute demands need to escalate.”
“She’s almost ready.”
She’s almost ready.
I was nineteen years old. I’d been defending the village alone for three years. I was exhausted, isolated, running on nothing but stubbornness and the desperate need to protect the people who depended on me.
And somewhere in this fortress, a council of ancient Fae was discussing when I would finally break.
The tribute demands weren’t about resources. They were never about resources. They were about forcing me into an impossible position, grinding me down year after year until I had nothing left, until invoking the blood debt law seemed like my only choice.
The blood debt law that would bind me to him forever.
I already knew he let me draw blood in the arena. He told me that himself, back when I thought it was almost romantic—the ancient Fae lord who wanted me so badly he broke his own rules to have me.
But this is different.
This is sixteen years of watching a child grow up.
Sixteen years of killing her mentors, buying off her friends, driving away anyone who might have loved her.
Sixteen years of engineering tragedy after tragedy, breaking her down piece by piece, until she was desperate enough to walk into a monster’s arena and call it choice.
He didn’t just let me wound him in that arena.
He spent sixteen years making sure I would have no other option.
I sit in the scrying room for a long time, surrounded by the evidence of my entire manufactured life.
The crystals glow softly around me, each one a window into a moment of suffering he orchestrated. My parents’ death—he didn’t cause it, he admitted that, but he made sure I survived it alone. Made sure the fever kept me home. Made sure I had no one to lean on when the grief threatened to drown me.
Everything after that was just… maintenance. Keeping me isolated. Keeping me desperate. Keeping me his, even before he claimed me.
The bond pulses in my chest, warm and steady, and I want to tear it out with my bare hands.
Because even now—even knowing all of this, even seeing the full scope of what he did—some part of me wants to go back to him. Wants to feel his arms around me. Wants to hear him call me good girl and let the warmth of his approval wash away the horror of what I’ve learned.
That’s what he designed me to want. That’s what sixteen years of isolation was for—to make me so starved for connection, so desperate for someone to carry the weight, that I would cling to my abuser like he was salvation.
And it worked.
God help me, it worked.
I still crave him. Still feel the pull of the bond urging me toward him. Still catch myself thinking about the peace I felt in his arms, the relief of surrender, the pleasure of submission.
He trained me to need those things. Spent sixteen years making sure I had nothing else, and then offered himself as the only solution to a problem he created.
I should hate him. I do hate him.
But the hate and the need exist in the same space, tangled together so tightly I can’t separate them. I want to destroy him. I want to crawl into his lap and let him hold me while I cry. I want to drive a blade through his heart. I want to feel his knot inside me again.
The contradiction is going to tear me apart.
I don’t know how long I sit there, letting the truth settle into my bones.
Long enough for the crystals’ light to dim and brighten again with the passing of the day. Long enough for my legs to go numb and my back to ache from hunching over. Long enough for the initial devastation to crystallize into something colder.
Not acceptance. Never acceptance.
But clarity.
I know what he did now. Know the full scope of it, the meticulous patience, the calculated cruelty. I know that nothing about my life was an accident—not the deaths, not the departures, not the exhaustion that drove me to his arena.
I know that the woman he claimed was a woman he built from scratch, breaking a child down and rebuilding her into exactly what he wanted.
And I know that despite all of that, the bond still ties me to him. The need still burns in my blood. The omega instincts he awakened still reach for him through the connection between us.
I can’t undo what he did.
But I can decide what happens next.
I stand up slowly, my joints protesting after hours of stillness. The crystals surround me, sixteen years of evidence, sixteen years of proof.
He’s waiting somewhere in this fortress. I can feel him through the bond—patient, worried, wanting. He knows I’m processing something. He doesn’t know how completely I’ve mapped his crimes.
Good.
Let him wonder. Let him wait.