CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE #2
Golden light spilled across the stage, soft at first, then growing, warm and liquid against the polished floor.
For a moment, there was nothing, just the glow.
Then music, loud and grand to which a dozen women stepped into view, their dresses glimmering in blues and greens and molten gold.
They moved in perfect unison, every step slow, fluid, deliberate.
I wouldn't call it dancing, it was too graceful, too flawless.
It looked more like they floated, like leaves caught in the wind.
Kalani sat rigid beside me, her spine locked in place. She wasn’t watching like the others. Her gaze held something deeper, something she couldn’t look away from.
“I’ve never seen it from this side before,” she whispered.
Her voice barely reached me beneath the swell of the music.
The dancers stopped mid-motion, aligned in a flawless line.
Together, they raised their arms, fingers poised.
Then bowed. The applause came right on cue.
It didn't feel spontaneous. Not joyful. Just…
expected. Like a script everyone had memorized. Everyone except us.
Kalani swallowed hard. When she spoke again, her voice sounded like it might snap in half.
“This is where they choose.” She said.
The words didn’t make sense at first. Choose? Then I remembered we weren’t there to watch a beautiful show. It was the facade of a brothel, and we were to infiltrate it. Choose. Of course. That’s what the stage was for.
“Choose?” Will turned asked.
Kalani didn’t respond right away, her eyes remained locked on the stage, where the women still stood, silent, waiting. Like dolls lined up for inspection. She scanned them with her eyes.
“The girls,” she said finally. “They choose which one to…”
“Got it.” Will cut in.
He quickly came to the same conclusion I had. Those girls weren’t performers anymore. They were livestock. Dressed for display.
“She’s not here,” Kalani said.
Aran’s head snapped toward her. “What do you mean? You said she’d be here.”
“I thought she would be.” Kalani rubbed the hem of her dress between two fingers. "I don’t know why she’s not.”
Then the spirit to fight back came to her.
“Did you bring weapons?” she asked, looking at us.
Aran leaned back in his seat, a slow grin spreading across his face. “I like where this is going.”
“Well?” Kalani didn’t flinch. “Did you?”
Aran slipped his hand into his trouser pocket, and pulled out a knife. The polished blade caught the candlelight as he spun it between his fingers, smooth and practiced. "Always," he said.
Kalani exhaled, then turned sharply and led us through a door tucked behind the stage.
I barely noticed it until it closed behind us.
The noise faded. The lights dimmed. And suddenly, we were in another world.
She moved quickly. Not running, but with the kind of speed that came from knowing exactly where to place her feet.
I realized she must have walked these hidden corridors a thousand times, if not more.
She skittered like a mouse across the wooden floor, fast and silent, her hand brushing along the wall to keep herself steady.
When we heard footsteps further ahead, she spun and threw a hand toward us. A sharp gesture.
Stop.
We froze. She pointed to the shadows, and we slipped into them like smoke.
Then the hallway narrowed, dipping into a downward slope, and we followed her down a staircase, barely wide enough for two people to pass side by side.
The air changed as we descended, and it was cooler down there.
Darker. Murkier. The kind of dark that made you forget what time it was, what day it was.
The kind that stayed in your lungs even after you’d left.
It reminded me of the ship hold, except if didn’t smell of piss and rot.
If it had all been a trap, some carefully laid plan to lead us straight into the depths and lock the door behind us, it would’ve worked.
We followed Kalani blindly. And even though the boys were armed to the teeth, and I was…
for better or worse, an indestructable weapon myself, I still got the chills just thinking about it.
Being trapped in a place like that. Forced to dance.
Forced to keep performing after the curtain fell.
Kalani stopped by a thick wooden door. A bar of solid wood rested in a slot across the frame, built to lock it from the outside.
She lifted it quietly, careful not to let it clatter, then pulled the door open.
Inside, the girls from the stage, and others we hadn’t seen, were mid-change.
Dresses slid off bare shoulders. Fingers wiped color from lips and eyes.
The moment we stepped in, the room shifted.
One girl gasped and grabbed a blanket. Another crossed her arms over her chest, shrinking into herself. Right. I had brought men with me.
Kalani was already moving, scanning the room like she could tear it apart with her eyes alone. Will turned on his heel, muttering an apology as he grabbed Aran’s shoulder and urged him to turn around too. Whispers started almost instantly, rippling through the room in tight, hushed waves.
“Why is she back?”
“I thought they sent her away.”
“I heard she was dead.”
No one moved toward her. No one reached out. They just stared, some wide-eyed, some shaking, some frozen mid-dress like mannequins. Kalani grabbed a faded nightgown from a hook on the wall and held it to her chest.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” one girl said, her voice raw.
There was something unspoken between the girls.
A closeness forged not by affection, but by shared pain.
I could feel it in the air, the bond between them.
The bond between survivors. But beneath it all, something darker sat.
Like they already knew how it would end.
Like they’d seen it before. And hated that they’d have to see it again.
Kalani didn’t respond. Her mouth opened like she meant to speak, but no sound came.
Then her gaze caught on a girl near the back, curled on a stool, too small for that place, too young.
Couldn’t have been older than twelve. Kalani moved toward her slowly, lowering herself to her knees like approaching a spooked animal, hand outstretched but not touching.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Come with us, Isabella”
The girl looked at her, eyes wide and unblinking.
For a heartbeat, I truly believed she might say yes.
Her fingers twitched in her lap, like her body was seconds from remembering how to reach for freedom.
But she didn’t. She pulled away and shook her head, lips pressed together in a silent no, tears welling without spilling.
“There’s a life out there,” Kalani urged, her voice crumbling. “There’s sun. And grass. And freedom. You don’t have to stay here, Bella. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
Some of the girls shifted, like the word freedom had cracked something open within them, even if just for a moment. But none of them moved. Whatever hope Kalani had tried to light in them, fear smothered before it could spread.
Then a door creaked open, and everything stilled.
The sound of heels behind me echoed across the floor.
No one dared to look up. I felt Will shift beside me, and Aran stood taller.
But none of that mattered. The woman who entered didn’t say a word.
She didn’t have to. The room obeyed her the moment she crossed the threshold.
The girls bowed their heads in perfect unison, eyes to the floor, backs rigid.
“Mother,” they all murmured.
She smiled then, a soft, curated thing, so sugar-sweet it made my stomach turn.
The kind of smile that knew it didn’t need to bare teeth to threaten.
The kind that cut without ever raising its voice.
Her gaze slid over Aran and Will like they weren’t even worth noticing, then landed on Kalani and stayed there.
“I see my sweet Kalani has returned,” she said, her voice syrupy.
Kalani didn’t move. Her fingers tightened on the nightgown until the knuckles whitened. Mother’s smile widened as she turned toward me and the boys again.
“And you’ve brought friends. How lovely to make your—”
“I’m not coming back,” Kalani interjected.
Mother’s smile flickered, then it slid back into place. “You’ll see,” she purred. “You were always meant to come back. To come home.” She turned to the other girls. “Girls, you see? Kalani has realized where she belongs.”
No one looked up. They stayed in the posture they’d been taught, heads bowed, shoulders small, eyes on the floor.
It wasn’t reverence. It was survival. And I think the reason they didn’t even try to leave, was that they feared leaving more than staying.
And not all of them would be as lucky as Kalani, to run into someone who would protect them.
Their response to the situation made sense, and somehow that made it worse.
“You’ve broken them,” Kalani said, and this time her voice didn’t crack. It cut. “They don’t even see a life outside this place anymore.”
Mother’s face didn’t change. “If you wish to leave, Kalani, then go,” she said. “But the others do not wish to leave. My girls are safe here. With me.”
“I only came back for Licia,” Kalani said. “And I’m not leaving without her. So, where is she?”
Mother turned her head slowly. “Who, my dear?”
“Licia.” The name left Kalani like a hiss. “Where is she?”
For a second something flared through her expression. Not fear. Not guilt. A colder shade, irritation, like the question was an annoyance. She blinked slowly, the practiced beat of someone buying time.
“I don’t know who you mean,” she said finally.
“Liar!” Kalani snapped, the word tearing out of her.
Aran stepped forward. His hand went to his knife, and he started spinning it between his fingers, slowly. No grin, just a quiet, coiled warning.
“Answer her question,” he said.
Mother’s lips did not twitch.
“Hurt me,” she said, “and the guards will come.”
Aran’s shrug was casual, almost bored. “Then I’ll just kill them too.”
“No.” The word left my mouth before I could stop it.
Even if could take a punch. Being burned alive.
Have my throat slit open to the bone—they were still just human.
They could be wounded, even killed, and I would forever blame myself.
“No more bloodshed.” I said. Just tell us where Licia is, and we’ll leave. ”
“Kera—” Will’s voice behind me sounded like it had a knife twisted in it.
I turned. A guard stood almost on top of him, blade pressed to the soft skin beneath his jaw.
The metal was cold and ugly. Will’s eyes flashed to the man’s face for a split second, then came back to mine.
Exactly what I didn’t want. I shouldn’t have brought them. I should have gone alone.
Mother’s smile widened. Somewhere behind the silk and poise there was pleasure in the power she held.
The fire inside stirred under my skin. It flared, a hot ribbon of light, and I felt her.
Her pulse thudding too fast, breath hitching, the tiny animal panic behind her calm.
It was close enough that I could have reached across the space between us and snuffed it like a candle.
I could make her talk. I could make her choke on the truth.
I could peel her layer by layer until she spilled her guts.
It felt like her body was an extension of mine.
Her blood coursing through my veins, my hands wrapped around her heart.
I didn’t even know what I was doing. I had never reached into someone like that before.
Never felt another body as if it were my own.
I hadn’t known I could.
“Tell your guards to stand down.” I commanded as I gently squeezed her heart.
Mother’s eyes widened. For a breath she looked as if she might answer.
Then her hand flew to her chest. A wet sound escaped her throat as panic broke across her face.
She clutched at her sternum as if something inside had broken.
I could squeeze. Stop it all. End her. All the rage, all the grief, all the pain I had nowhere to put.
It had found a way out.
”Stand down,” Mother rasped.
The guard moved instantly, lowering his blade. Will was across the room in a heartbeat, his hand brushing my arm. His touch told me I wasn’t alone, but it didn’t stop the trembling that had started beneath my skin. I couldn’t tell if it was the power or something else.
“Where. Is. Licia?” I snarled.
Mother collapsed, hands gripping her chest as her mouth opened in a silent scream. Her heartbeat pounded against my senses. Her skin went pale, sweat beading at her hairline as her fingers dug at her blouse.
“Hel,” she gasped.
I blinked. “Hel?”
“Like… the underworld?” Aran asked.
A broken laugh slipped from her lips. “It’s a brothel,” she choked. “The worst of them. We send the disobedient ones there. To break them.”
Kalani’s face drained of color. “They used to threaten us with it,” she said softly. “Warned us what would happen if we talked back. If we tried to run.”
My power was still awake, still hungry. It whispered beneath my skin, a steady thrum of heat and anger and want.
“How do we find it?” Will asked, his voice tight beside me.
Mother didn’t want to say. I could feel her fighting it, digging in her heels with every breath, choking back the truth with a hatred so deep it burned. But I didn’t back off.
I pressed.
Her body jerked once, muscles locking. Then the words came, torn from her throat.
“Norhavn,” she spat. “Gentleman’s club.”
I released my grip on her, and she took a deep breath. Kalani turned back to the girls, her voice breaking under the weight of it all.
“Come with us,” she begged. “You don’t have to stay.”
I expected the girls to run, to rush for the door.
Take the chance. But they didn’t. Instead they ran to her. They chose her. They chose to stay. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t.
I hated how someone could be broken into choosing to stay in a cage.