Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“Azhara.”
My name drifts down the corridor like a warning cry long buried and remembered like a prayer to a cursed god.
The dream of this afternoon shatters, and I freeze.
My father isn’t furious that often—at least not loudly.
But when he is, it’s the kind of anger that calcifies in the air, invisible and choking.
I turn toward him, each step sinking heavier, as though I’m walking toward my own execution.
“A word, Daughter.”
He disappears into his study, and I follow, swallowing the taste of iron. The room is lined with bookcases, cluttered with papers, harmless by design. But when my father stands at its center, the space becomes a cell dressed in civility. A cage with gold trim.
I remember the first time he bruised my wrist—how he kissed my forehead afterward and said it was my fault for flinching.
I remember the lashes painted like medals across my ribs.
The days I spent locked in this very room with no food, no light, only silence sharp enough to cut.
He called it discipline. It was really a lesson in how to disappear.
“How was this afternoon?” he asks, voice smooth and glinting.
“Fine.”
“Do you like him?”
I stare at the rug, tracing its patterns like a prayer.
I don’t need to look up to know what his face will be—serrated and shadowed, the weight of fury carved into every angle.
Age has not softened him. The years only scorched him hollow.
His hair, once reddish like mine, is veined now with gray, as though the fire in it is slowly burning itself out.
He taps his foot once. It’s not loud, but the room still flinches.
“Enough. We will not waste time. Does he intend to marry you?”
“Darian didn’t ask.”
His fist hits the desk. The sound is not loud, but I jolt anyway. It never is loud—not with him. He never needed volume to terrify. Just certainty. Just the cold inevitability that pain will follow. Once, he didn’t raise his voice for three months straight. I still bled.
The chair groans beneath him as he sits, eyes dark and narrowing. He jabs a finger toward the opposite chair.
“Of course not. He’s a prince. Will he or won’t he?”
I sink into the chair, nodding numbly.
“You seem uncertain.”
I clasp my hands together, pressing my thumbs into each other until the pain helps me breathe. I imagine what it would be like to speak with him without fear. Without raised voices. Without broken things or bruises. Without blood.
He snaps my name like a whip, and my eyes lift, even though I don’t want them to.
“I thought you despised Larksbind,” I mumble.
He leans forward and lifts the letter opener from the desk. It’s shaped like a ceremonial dagger, its hilt adorned with dull rubies. My father loves that blade. Not for its elegance, but for the blood it’s tasted.
I’ve seen it at too many throats.
And known it at mine.
“Azhara,” he says, almost gently, “Larksbind is weakness dressed in silk. And you—” his mouth curls, “—you were the gods’ cruelest jest.”
He turns the dagger in his hand like he’s rolling a coin, slow and deliberate.
“I need an end to the disgrace you brought on this house the moment you breathed. If he marries you, the curse breaks. And I can finally be done with you.”
This is not the moment to speak. This is the time to disappear into myself and hope he loses interest.
He returns to the treaty—his favorite complaint.
The one that chained his hands and barred him from the conquest he believes is his divine right.
The Reaping, with its annual parade of suffering, is less about alliance and more about punishment.
He doesn’t care about peace. He cares about being seen as a man who is not wrong.
“Even I couldn’t stop you from killing your mother.”
The words crack through me. My breath goes thin, sharp-edged. I stare at the floor until it steadies.
He wears martyrdom like armor, as if surrendering his magic to cage the power that lives in me was noble. That magic became daemons—half-beast, half-curse. He calls the creatures necessary. Most call them barbaric.
He always circles back here—to the death he couldn’t prevent, the strength he sacrificed, the kingdom that would be complete if it wasn’t for me.
I curl behind the walls I’ve learned to raise when his voice turns to venom. I push my feelings into the deep, dark places where even he can’t reach.
“I am sorry, Father.”
“That doesn’t change what you are. Or raise the dead.”
I nod again. Not in agreement. In survival.
He paces. His breath turns harsh. I feel him thinking, scheming. Trying to fit Darian into his vision of control.
“Heirs with Larksbind blood,” I murmur, thinking aloud.
“That’s the point,” he says, and the derision in his tone makes me feel like a child again.
“There’s a distinct possibility he’ll survive the Reaping.
He is trained, after all, and I’ve wondered when Larksbind would stop sending boys to die.
I prepared for it. If he wins, the Reaping returns our sorcery—mine—to the gods and Larksbind becomes our equal.
I won’t allow it. Now, if he marries you, I own his appetite.
If he wants you, he kneels. Through you, I hold him.
Through him, I get Larksbind. No blood required. ”
He pauses.
“But only if you play your part.”
There it is. The truth in all its simplicity.
Not peace. Not redemption. Just control.
Just power. My father always has a plan.
One that closes every door before I even dream of opening it.
That’s how he nearly won the war—through anticipation, through cruelty, through fire.
The stories he tells of that time are his lullabies. Bloodshed as legacy.
I’ve heard them all before. Today, they slide off me like oil, and my thoughts drift to the afternoon. To Darian. To the danger. The way it made me feel alive again.
Then back to Mallen. To the steady darkness of him, the way his eyes linger like he sees through every lie I wear.
I want him. Gods, I want him. I shouldn’t.
Not if choosing him wakes Starsfall and lets my power bleed through.
I have always believed it is not a gift but a hunger.
If I loose it, it will take. That is where I hesitate, and it’s the same place that left a door ajar for Darian.
The dagger taps against his nails. A rhythm like a countdown. He watches my hands, the lift of my breath, and reads what I do not say.
“You thought this would end with marriage to a man from Larksbind?”
I don’t flinch. Not this time.
“I thought the curse would break,” I say. “That you’d finally be done with me.”
His eyes widen. For a moment, silence stretches between us like a blade. I’ve spoken out of turn—and he’s shocked I dared.
There’s a reason I rarely do. I’ve learned caution the hard way. Learned that silence survives longer than defiance. And I’ve been reckless.
His teeth stop grinding. A slow smile curves his mouth—not amused, but cruel. Something in me goes still.
“You know,” he murmurs, voice like ice over stone, “I might have loved you, had your curse not killed my wife.”
I refused to flinch for a second time. “What if I choose Starsfall?”
He gives a soft, delighted hum, as if I’ve handed him a favorite weapon.
“Then Larksbind loses,” he says. “Their kingdom drowns under the dark magic you unleash. I win without lifting a finger. Their sun fades, their crops wither, their children are born cursed—and I reclaim what was stolen from me. Breaking the curse doesn’t mean freedom—for me or you.
It means power shifting hands, the leash never truly loosening. ”
He lies so clean I almost believe him. The rites I was taught say the gods bound the curse to keep our countries from men like him.
He folds truth around a blade and offers it as mercy.
Maybe he knows something I do not. Maybe he only wants me to think he does. With him, the ground is always moving.
His fingers toy with the blade beside him. Tap. Tap. A sound too measured to be idle. “And don’t think of turning your gifts on me. You know better.”
I nod once. Eyes to the floor. The choice he lays out is a noose, no matter which way I turn.
Marry Darian, and the curse breaks—only for my father to tether me to a throne and wield me like a weapon pressed to a king’s throat.
Or choose Mallen, and the curse returns magic to Starsfall, letting Larksbind fall to ruin while my power feeds his conquest like carrion feeds the crows.
“You know I’ll lose my powers if I marry Darian.”
I blink. Too rapidly. Because my father will lose his powers too, and he’s sworn he’d never let that happen.
“You think I’d give up power so easily?” he says, almost laughing. “I’ve taken precautions. Old rites. Dark ones. The curse is only the first leash. I have others. You will still serve, even if the prince thinks he’s won you.”
My stomach knots. He’s bound me deeper than I knew. And now, even escape tastes like chains.
He’s changed the story again. Rewritten the rules. That’s how he works—truth laced with lies until even your memories rot beneath them. The story twists and folds like the shifting labyrinth beneath Threnos, walls sliding, paths vanishing, leaving you trapped in a maze that never stays the same.
You’re left doubting the sky, the stars, and even the blood in your own veins.
“You understand what breaks the curse?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Then make it right.” He leans back in his chair, drawing the dagger with him as if it belongs in his hand. “Seduce the prince. You can manage that, can’t you?”
This isn’t how the Reaping is meant to work. Marriage has always been the lever. He’s pressing for a bed now, shifting the ground so I cannot find my footing.
“I don’t think—”
He slams his fist into the table. The sound is thunderous. I startle as the papers on his desk scatter like frightened birds. My pulse stumbles.
“Don’t try my patience!” he bellows. “Just do.”
Careful now. Measured steps across a tightrope that stretches over knives.
“What I meant,” I say softly, “is I don’t think Darian wants a meek bride.”
His eyes narrow. A twitch of his jaw. The weight of violence barely held back.
“He wants the girl who bloodied him in a duel,” I go on. “That’s why he noticed me. He wants a conquest.”
A slow, contemptuous laugh curls from my father’s throat.
“He’ll be disappointed,” he says. “When he sees what you are.”
I say nothing. I don’t look at him. If I let myself cry, he wins.
“Do whatever it takes to make him fall,” he says. “But don’t bed him before he’s bound to you. No man marries what he’s already taken. No king crowns what’s already claimed.”
This is a rule I have never heard from my father.
The Reaping has always meant marriage, seal the bargain, let the rite decide.
Now he wants a pursuit that stops at the cliff.
Make him fall, stay untouched. It is contradiction dressed as strategy.
A test and a leash at once. Keep me valuable.
Keep him hungry. Keep every door half open.
Either he knows more than he has taught me, or he is bending the truth to fit a snare.
He rewrites the rite in whispers, and I cannot yet see the pattern.
This Reaping is different. The rules are changing. I just don’t understand how. Or why.
My father’s gaze flicks to the door. A dismissal. I rise, bow low, and begin to back away.
Then—tap. Tap. Tap.
The dagger again. My blood chills.
“You are still untouched, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good,” he says, and smiles like a knife. “Mallen will ensure it stays that way.”
Shame burns under my skin. He’s too good at making me doubt my own pulse. He stacks truth beside threat until I cannot tell them apart. Control becomes protection, and refusal ingratitude. If I stay, I drown. If I argue, he’ll drag me under. I get out before I mistake his plan for mine.
I make it only halfway down the corridor before the tears come hot and fast. I don’t want to cry—not here—but the ache is too sharp, too deep.
I throw open my door and—
Arms catch me before I fall.
“What did Darian do?”
Mallen’s voice is quiet. Too quiet.
I don’t answer right away. I only fold into him, my arms around his neck, seeking refuge in the heat and the shape of him. He holds me tightly. No questions. Just presence. He lowers me onto his lap like I deserve all this and more.
“Did he hurt you?” he asks, and this time his voice could flay flesh from bone.
He’s wrong. He thinks Darian hurt me.
And part of me wants to let him believe it—because the fury in his voice feels like protection, and I’ve never needed it more.
He’s already made up his mind about who to blame. He hasn’t realized that it wasn’t Darian who caused this—and though some part of me is soothed by the fury in his voice, I can’t let him wage war on the wrong enemy.
“It wasn’t him,” I whisper. “He took my hand. Once. For show.”
Mallen doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t growl. Doesn’t rage.
He just exhales slowly, the tension in his shoulders easing.
“Good,” he says simply. “Because if he had touched you, I would’ve buried him before the Reaping and let the gods howl about it after.”
There’s no boast in it. No fire. Just steel.
I sink against him, and through the haze of tears, start to explain. The encounter with my father. His voice. The way it hollowed me out. Mallen doesn’t interrupt. He listens. Every muscle in his body stays coiled, but his hand doesn’t stop moving—stroking my hair, steady and warm.
His touch isn’t soft. It isn’t like Darian’s. It’s harder. More certain. Like armor with breath behind it. Like safety with edges.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” he says, voice low. “You are mine, Azhara. As I am yours. And I’ll deal with your father.”
“Mallen…”
“I’ll deal with him.” His tone sharpens. “He’s only kept his grip because I wasn’t strong enough to stop him. But I can now. I will.”
Sound catches in my throat as air leaves my lungs.
Mallen doesn’t make promises he can’t keep. And this one sounds like a vow.
I rest my forehead against his and whisper, “What now?”
“You fight,” he says, softer now. “Because you can. You just haven’t seen it yet.”
My head finds his shoulder, and I close my eyes. I don’t know if he means my father, or the fear, or the legacy carved into my bones. Maybe all of it. Maybe none.
But I believe him.
And for the first time in years, I let myself wonder what life might look like if I fought to keep it.
The tears fall like torrents carving rivers through stone, finally etching themselves into something that’s been buried for too long.
I am not safe. Not alone.
Now I have a choice. One that will cost me.
Darian or Mallen. Light or shadow.
Neither path is without pain.
Both roads end in fire.
I just have to decide which one I’m willing to burn for.