Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I wake to warmth. A weight across my waist, a steady rhythm of breath at my back. Not a trap—an anchor.
“Morning, Princess,” Mallen murmurs against my neck, his voice rough with sleep.
“Did you sleep in my bed?”
He goes still. A breath, tight and slow. “You asked me to stay. I did.”
He draws away before I see his face. By the time I roll to look at him, he’s sitting upright at the edge of the bed, muscles tense, spine drawn like a bow.
“I just meant—” I reach out, my fingers brushing the ridges of his back. “I was worried we’d be seen.”
He glances over his shoulder, wary, reading me. Then he sinks back down beside me, careful. We lie facing each other, breathing the same hush.
He’s unconcerned.
Of course he is.
My father made him Commander of the Royal Guard for a reason. Those guards answer to Mallen now. There was never any risk. I trace a line down his chest, watching him watch me. His jaw ticks, but he doesn’t stop me.
“You’re warm,” I whisper.
He catches my hand, pressing it flat over his heart. It beats hard beneath my palm. “This will be over soon. I promise.”
“How will you deal with my father?” I ask.
His gaze sharpens, forest green and flint-edge. “I taught you better than this.”
He’s not angry. He’s reminding me—who he is, what he’s capable of. His restraint is terrifying. Cunning threaded through every breath. There’s little cruelty in him, but there’s little mercy, either. None for a man like my father.
“Does it upset you?” he asks.
“Would it change anything if it did?”
“Maybe.” His eyes hold mine, unreadable. Then he brushes his knuckles down my cheek. “Your father deserves to be erased.”
The words aren’t snarled. They’re cool, quiet, steady. That makes them worse.
But he isn’t looking at my father. He’s looking at me like I’m his whole world, or the war worth waging and the ruin he welcomes. Maybe I’m the reckoning he’s waited for, and the altar he’d burn the world to reach.
It feels like gravity. Like drowning.
I bury my face against his chest and let him hold me.
“I don’t care how many men fall,” he says softly. “You’ve been trapped long enough. Let me break the walls.”
“And my magic?” My teeth grate over my bottom lip. “What if it’s too much? What if he’s right?”
Mallen huffs a bitter breath. “You’re stronger than that. Than him. Stop giving him power he doesn’t deserve.”
I want to believe him. I want to be that girl.
I don’t remember blood on the marble. I don’t remember my mother’s scream as it tore from her throat.
Or the way the light went out in Starsfall, as if the land itself recoiled from what I’d done.
My magic’s been waiting. Hungering. Sealed in shadow for twenty years.
One wrong move and the darkness inside me will rise and devour everything.
It stirred yesterday—called to the Obcasus like a temptress beckoning ruin.
If it hadn’t been for the binding woven by the gods themselves, I’d have killed everyone in Starsfall. My father, as he basked in his glory. The nobles, busy indulging him and vying for his attention. The children, playing games while blood drips onto the arena floor beneath them.
I turn my face away.
Mallen shifts closer. His hand smooths down my spine with aching care.
“Wherever you just went—don’t. Not now.” He tilts my face to his. “You’re not weak, Azhara.”
His thumb grazes my lip. To remind himself I’m real. Then he kisses me—not to claim, but to quiet the storm. My pulse jumps, but he doesn’t press. Just lets his mouth linger like a promise I haven’t decided to keep.
We lie tangled together, sharing breaths and quiet laughter. For a while, we forget. It’s easy with him—too easy. Like nothing outside this room exists. And I let myself believe that nothing can touch us. Not now, not ever.
But the summons comes anyway.
He’s silent while I dress, pacing behind me, a tension radiating off him like storm heat. When he catches my wrist to steady me, his hand shakes. Just once. He hides it fast.
He walks beside me to the doors of my father’s chambers. A sentinel. A sword held back by sheer will.
“You don’t have to meet with your father.”
I stop.
“This is reckless,” he says, low. “Let me find a way to hold him back. To delay.”
I shake my head. “Maybe. But I’ll never be free if I keep hiding behind someone else’s strength.”
His mouth opens. Closes. Then he nods, barely. “Then don’t flinch, Azhara. Not once. He’ll see blood in the water.” His eyes close for a moment too long. “You don’t have to beat him. Just don’t let him make you small.”
I pause. His words settle in my chest like flint. This time, I don’t curl in on myself.
This time, I knock.
The door opens. My father doesn’t rise. He just stares. The chill in his eyes is absolute.
“Darian passed the second trial,” he says flatly.
I close the door behind me.
The click of the latch is too loud. The silence after, worse.
Alone, the courage I carried starts to fracture. The air feels stripped of warmth—emptied of the quiet I didn’t realize I leaned on. Mallen was the stillness I trusted to catch me.
Without him, the cold bleeds in, an old fear that creeps like frostbite.
I breathe deep. Straighten my spine.
I’ve seen monsters. Seen men bleed for this kingdom.
I will not be a child cowering in her father’s shadow. Not anymore.
I lift my chin and I look him in the eye.
“He did.” I fold my hands in front of me. “They say Obcasus is difficult. Even for seasoned mages.”
It’s not just difficult. It’s notorious.
My father raised me on tales of how dangerous the magic of death could be.
He did it to terrify me. To put me in my place.
But he taught me another lesson too—that he feared what he could not control.
And even he couldn’t silence the stories that told how he struggled to master Obcasus.
The corner of his mouth twitches, not a smile. An edge. He rises slowly, fingers dragging over the polished hilt of the ruby dagger on the desk.
“He’s more dangerous than you think,” he says. “The Obcasus didn’t touch him.”
He lifts the dagger, turning it in his hands.
A flicker lights his eyes—something memory-shaped. Shame, maybe. Or fear.
“He will break you,” he says. A deliberate beat of silence passes. “Piece by piece.”
I don’t move.
He starts toward me, each step deliberate. Measured. The light glints off the blade. “You think you’re ready for him, but you’ve never had to submit. Not truly.”
“I haven’t chosen him,” I say quietly.
He stops in front of me. His breath touches my skin. “That doesn’t matter. He has the crowd. The favor of the gods. The scent of victory all over him. All he has to do is pass the final trial.”
My father lifts a petal from the desk—a single, dried remnant from the first trial. “He gave this to you. Declared it to the crowd.” He drops it at my feet. “He’s in love.”
I step forward and crush the petal beneath my boot.
“Then let him prove it.”
His fingers tap the dagger against his palm. I meet his eyes and say nothing.
“You’re bold today,” he murmurs.
“I don’t want to waste your time with small talk.”
His smile sharpens, edges drawn in hunger, and turns the dagger in his fingers, lowering it to the map spread across his desk.
Slowly, almost gently, he drags the point through the inked borders of the Northern Reach.
The blade cuts a jagged line through the territory like he’s already carving out blood.
His gaze never leaves mine.
But I feel it—his power, his fury—coiled like a whip waiting to strike.
And I don’t flinch.
My father grabs my throat before I can react. His fingers press in—not wild, not frenzied, but deliberate, methodical. I claw at his skin, eyes wide, lungs burning, but there’s no fury in his face. Just the same patient, practiced calm of a man who’s done this before.
“Stop,” I rasp.
I lash out blindly, land a punch—but pain explodes in my cheek.
His strike is fast, sharp, a flash of heat that blinds me with tears.
He lets go just long enough for me to gasp air before wrenching my arm behind my back.
His grip coils in my hair, steering me like a puppet as he marches me toward the balcony.
My chest hits stone. The cold marble bites through silk and skin alike as he forces me forward. His weight settles behind me—not lecherous, just heavy, immovable. I twist, but there’s no leverage. No escape. My scalp burns as he yanks my head back.
“You forget yourself,” he says softly. “You breathe because I let you.”
Below us, a prisoner is dragged into position.
Her hands are bound tight. Her back is bared, hair wrenched up and out of the way.
Relief flickers because it is not Evie, and shame follows in the same breath.
It gutters at once. It is still a woman with her hands bound.
Dread fills the space relief left, and my stomach knots.
The guard approaches with a coiled whip.
“This is because of you.” My father’s voice stays low, even. “Your defiance costs blood. That blood stains you.”
He doesn’t need to shout. The silence is heavier. Crueler. My limbs go still. He wants me to see. Wants me to understand.
He wants me to watch.
The whip cracks.
The sound alone sends a jolt through me—before the scream even starts. The second lash cuts deeper. The girl jerks against her bonds, and the smell of copper rises into my throat.
I can’t look away. I try. My eyes don’t obey.
Don’t flinch.
Crack.
Another scream. The whip slices across her back, ribboning skin into ruin. My nails dig into the stone wall. A scream builds in my throat but doesn’t escape. Not yet.
“If Darian survives the labyrinth, he’ll have to marry you,” my father murmurs. “I can’t allow that—not while you think your spine’s intact. Not when you believe you’re stronger than you are.”
The whip cracks.
“I wonder if she was a mother,” he says.
I recoil. My body lurches with the force of my horror, and still his hands hold me fast.
A sound rises from my throat—a cry I didn’t intend. I don’t know whether it’s grief or rage. But he hears it. And he smiles.
“I thought a child would tame you,” he continues. “But if Darian gives you one, you’ll fight harder. You’ll have something to protect.”
The lash lands again. The slave doesn’t scream this time. Her body twitches, but her voice is gone. I shut my eyes, but it’s worse in the dark. The sounds keep coming. The smell of blood won’t let me forget.
I open my eyes to the world below. Her blood pools in the sand, soaking the earth that bore it. I cannot breathe. I cannot move.
He wanted to make me small. Instead, he made me sharper. And something inside me begins to shift. My fingers curl into fists. The stone cuts into my skin, but I don’t release it. I want to bleed. I want the sting to tether me to now—because what’s moving inside me isn’t slow. It’s rising.
Not horror. Not helplessness. Fury.
A rage older than me, older than him, born from every time I was silenced, every time I was told to smile while part of me died inside. He wants me passive. He wants me docile. But he wouldn’t go this far if he thought I was already broken.
This is a show of control, a cruel display of power.
And it’s all an act.
Don’t flinch.
“By the way,” he says, too casually. “You won’t be leaving Starsfall if Darian survives the Reaping. You only have to marry him. What happens beyond that is out of the gods’ control.”
My spine locks. Heat surges through me, wild and wrong and electric—my magic, lashing out, trying to protect me.
It isn’t obedient anymore. It writhes beneath my skin like a living thing, striking against my ribs, clawing at my throat.
My breath catches. The stone beneath me vibrates faintly, as though the whole balcony is waiting to split.
My father doesn’t move. But he notices. His gaze sharpens.
“It was Mallen’s idea.”
I don’t believe him. I do. I don’t want to.
But it fits.
Mallen, who watched, who smiled, and said nothing. Mallen, who would not stand in the open and say my name, though his gaze devoured me.
If Darian survives, he’ll stay. And Mallen will end him.
“I’ll get my magic back,” my father says. “And you’ll lose yours. No more games. Or fighting. Only obedience.”
I’m not sure when I collapsed, only that I’m no longer upright. My body has gone slack against the floor of the balcony. I shake with a cold that’s deeper than fear. It’s luminous and final. It’s ending.
This isn’t a fairy tale. There is no hero. No rescue.
There’s only me.
And the choice I make: to face what I fear or run from it.
The yard below is silent as a crypt. No cheering crowds. No laughter. No music drifting from the feasting halls. Even the single golden leaf that had been spinning in the air, caught in a lazy current, falls straight down, with no grace left in it. No resistance.
Like a body that’s finally stopped fighting.
My father inhales, as if enjoying the scent.
“This is what you bring, Azhara.”
His grip shifts. Not brutal, just necessary. He drags me from the balcony with the efficiency of a man discarding a piece of himself he no longer intends to acknowledge.
He hurls me into the corridor.
My knees buckle. I slide against the wall, cheek pressed to cool stone. The door slams shut behind me.
I don’t cry. I can’t.
But I breathe.
Light glints on the door handle. I stare at it. My heart’s still racing, my body wrecked, but a single thought roots itself in the center of my mind, cold, absolute, and inescapable.
He’s afraid of me.
He wouldn’t do this if he weren’t. Wouldn’t bind me tighter unless I’d started to slip the leash. Wouldn’t strike unless he feared I could strike back. He thinks he’s won—but he just showed me where to aim.