Chapter 24
DAISY
Holy shit I’m freezing.
It’s cold. So, so cold. Not the kind that just prickles at the skin, but the kind that sinks into the bone and settles there and is all consuming. My body feels wrong too, like it’s too heavy. My arms ache, my head throbs, and every breath has a disgusting metallic taste to it.
I try to open my eyes, but they feel glued shut, as if the frost that’s formed along my lashes has turned into solid ice. When I finally manage to force them apart, the world swims in and out of focus. Blurred shapes, shifting shadows, and the quiet plink of dripping water somewhere in the dark.
I try to move my hand to rub the grit from my eyes, to rub at my head to try and clear the pounding fog, but something pulls me short.
A metallic clang echoes around me, loud enough to make me flinch, the sound ringing inside my skull.
That’s when I realise. My arms are stretched above my head, wrists bound in iron shackles bolted into the stone ceiling.
The metal bites deep into skin that feels raw and frozen at the same time, the edges grinding against bone every time I move.
“What the—” The words spill out as thick and slurred, my tongue heavy and uncooperative. I pull again, but the chains don’t give. They just mockingly rattle into the space around me. My stomach drops.
Slowly, my vision sharpens. The room around me stretches into a yawning cavern.
Rough stone walls carved straight out of the mountain itself, slick with moisture, barely touched by the faint, distant glow of torches set at the far side of the room.
Their light flickers weakly, swallowed by shadow before it can even reach the floor.
The air is damp and brutally cold, the kind that makes lungs burn.
I turn my head, wincing as the movement sends knives of pain through my temples. I’m in a dungeon. But this isn’t Hell’s dungeon. It’s colder, there’s no cells, and I swear I can smell bonfire smoke on the wind.
Aurora’s Veil. Kaelith. Maelkar.
The memories resurface all at once. The wine, walking through the passageways, that creeping dizziness. Kaelith’s voice curling around me, smooth and mocking, twisting uglier as everything began to spin. The Dream-root.
Panic courses through me, flooding my senses.
I twist violently, pulling against the shackles that are holding my arms up until the metal bites deep enough, that I feel warm blood trickling down my wrists.
I barely react to the sensation, because this isn’t just pain.
This is helplessness. And my body remembers.
Ethan’s face flashes behind my eyes once again.
My pulse skyrockets. Not again. Not again. Not again.
Except this time, it’s worse. Because I’m not supposed to be vulnerable anymore.
I’m immortal now. A queen. Something ancient and powerful reborn in flesh.
I’ve burned enemies, shattered monsters, survived things that should have destroyed me.
I should be untouchable. Invincible. So why does my body still betray me so easily?
Why am I still just a girl hanging helpless from chains?
Anger flares hot beneath the panic. At Kaelith.
At Ethan. At my own useless, shaking limbs that refuse to summon even a spark of flame.
“Maelkar?” My voice comes out barely above a whisper, thin and broken. “Maelkar, are you here?”
Nothing. Just a small dripping echoing around the room, and the frantic sound of my rapid breathing.
Oh gods, where is he? I hope he’s okay. My mind scrambles for explanations, any explanation that doesn’t end with me alone in Kaelith’s hands.
Maybe he managed to escape into his shadows and he’s going to get help.
Maybe he’s already halfway back to Hell, furious and planning something terrible.
Or maybe… Maybe he left. The thought lands like a blade straight to the heart.
No. No, he wouldn’t do that. He’s my friend, not just an ally.
He stayed when he didn’t have to before.
He’s helped me. Joked around with me in the snow just before everything came crashing down. He wouldn’t abandon me here. Would he?
The creak of a door breaks through my panicked thoughts. My head snaps towards the sound—pain lancing through my skull hard enough to make my vision spark—just as a thin blade of light slices into the darkness from a narrow doorway to my left. A figure steps through, a flickering torch held high.
Firelight spills across the cavern in restless waves, licking along the walls and chasing shadows back into the corners.
Rough stone gleams damply, veins of frost catching the glow and throwing it back in cold, fractured reflections.
Stalactites crowd the ceiling above, their jagged tips glittering with ice, slow droplets falling to the floor where half-frozen puddles spread in uneven patches.
“Maelkar?” My voice trembles, laced with desperate hope.
“Is that you?” I lean forwards, trying to see past the blur of firelight, but the chains snap taught.
The iron bites into my already torn skin, sharp and merciless.
I hiss, gritting my teeth as the movement causes a sting of pain to shoot through my shoulders.
The figure doesn’t answer. They just keep approaching.
Slow and unhurried. It’s not the cautious steps of someone searching.
Nope. This is the deliberate pace of someone who already knows exactly where I am.
Each footfall echoes softly. There’s something too deliberate about their steps.
They’re too controlled, as if every movement is choreographed at an attempt to build dread. A predator, closing the distance.
When the light bends over a smile I know far too well, that very dread settles in deep. “Hello, little flower.” His voice skitters down my spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Not from the cold, but from the sickening familiarity of it.
“Don’t call me that,” I spit, my voice shaking despite the venom behind it.
“Well, that’s no way to speak to your saviour now, is it, Daisy?
” Kaelith purrs, stepping in front of me.
His lips curve into something that might have once been charming, before it rotted.
He steps closer until the flame reveals the faint shimmer of constellations in his eyes.
Like stars trapped in soulless, black glass.
Saviour. The word almost makes me laugh. This crazy asshole has me chained up in a dungeon, and he’s calling himself my saviour? I thought he was unhinged before, when he tried to convince me to leave Korithax for him, but this is an entirely new level of delusion.
I frown at him but stay quiet. Silence feels safer.
I learned a long time ago that men like Kaelith thrive on reactions, on weaknesses they can twist into obedience.
I might have had a smart mouth with Korithax, but he never truly wanted to hurt me.
Kaelith is different. I don’t know what he wants, which makes him far more dangerous.
So I keep still, keep my head down, and play it safe. Even if it means making myself look small, timid and helpless.
“Why?” I whisper, pitching my tone soft, adding a tremor that isn’t entirely faked. “Why am I here, Kaelith?”
“I told you,” he says, with a bright, unsettling smile. “I’m saving you, silly.” He places the torch into a holder on the wall beside me, illuminating us both. His gaze lingers on me with unnerving intensity. “I have a proposal for you.”
I swallow hard against the dryness in my throat. “What kind of proposal?”
“Marry me.” He says it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His tone is casual, light, amused even. As if he’s making casual conversation instead of demanding my hand while I hang from his chains.
For a heartbeat, I simply stare at him, certain I’ve misheard. Then a laugh bursts out, harsh and incredulous. “Marry you? Are you insane?”
He doesn’t even flinch, just shrugs as if he’s speaking perfect sense. “You are an unmarried queen, alone in a war you’ll never win. But together, we can win it all.”
I frown at him as his voice lowers to something I know he believes to be persuasive. I’ll admit, it is coaxing, slightly hypnotic, even. “You have enemies you can’t defeat. And allies who whisper their loyalty to you, yet already kneel before other thrones.”
“Who?” I bite.
“Me.” The word settles heavily between us. His smile is so malicious that I instinctively recoil from him. My breath catches as I stare into his soulless eyes, looking for any trace of humour. But there’s none. Nothing there but the smile of a madman who believes he’s the hero of his own story.
“But… you said they attacked you,” I whisper. “You stood by us in the throne room at the coronation.”
He chuckles darkly, stepping close enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath against my cheek. His fingers rise, brushing a strand of my hair behind my ear. The gesture feels wrong, intimate in all the ways that make my stomach feel weird. Not again. Not again. Not again.
“Oh, you silly, naive little thing,” he murmurs, his tone almost gentle, as if he’s indulging a child rather than mocking me. “This is why little girls shouldn’t try to play queen. I stood beside you because I had no choice. If I hadn’t, Korithax would’ve gutted me where I stood.”
He paces in front of me, and the sight of it makes me uneasy. Right now, he’s the lion, and I’m the mouse. And I freaking hate it.
“But after that oh-so-horrible incident,” he continues lightly, “you know, the one where your beloved was killed.” A faint smile tugs at his mouth, and it takes every ounce of me not to scream. “Once you were left broken and alone, I saw an opportunity.”
He lifts one shoulder in a casual shrug, as though betrayal is nothing major at all. As though he hasn’t condemned not just us, but his own people. “I chose the winning side.”