Chap 32
The fall ended in freezing water instead of stone.
Penny crashed into darkness.
The cold stole the breath from her lungs before she could scream.
She sank.
Heavy velvet wrapped around her legs like drowning hands, dragging her deeper.
For one terrifying moment she thought she would never find the surface.
Then her head broke through.
She gasped.
Coughed.
Fought for air.
The well was narrow.
Ancient stone walls rose around her slick with moss and centuries of damp.
She reached for them immediately.
Scrabbling for a hold.
Anything.
Her fingers slipped.
Her feet found nothing.
She splashed back into the water.
The sound echoed upward through the darkness.
Penny tried again.
And again.
And again.
Each attempt ended the same.
The realization settled slowly.
The well was too deep to climb.
Too narrow to swim.
And nobody knew she was here.
Far above her a circle of pale blue sky stared down.
Beautiful.
Distant.
Unreachable.
Penny pressed her back against the stone and forced herself to stand on her toes.
The water reached nearly to her chest.
Cold seeped through her soaked gown.
Through her skin.
Into her bones.
She would have to stay upright.
For hours.
Maybe until nightfall.
Maybe longer.
The thought should have terrified her.
Instead she felt tired.
Just tired.
She hugged herself tightly trying to hold the ruined gown to her.
The velvet gown hung heavy against her body.
Stealing what little warmth remained.
For a while she listened.
To dripping water.
To her own breathing.
Waiting.
Hoping.
And then
Something else.
Not a sound.
Not a voice.
A feeling.
It brushed against her mind like a hand searching through darkness.
Tentative.
Desperate.
Grieving.
Penny knew immediately.
The bond.
The old magic.
The threads woven between them.
The king.
She could feel him moving.
Pacing.
Searching.
Endless corridors she could almost see through his eyes.
He wasn't sleeping like a vampire through the day.
He was looking for her.
The desperation pouring through the bond was so fierce it made her chest ache.
Penny pressed trembling fingers against her lips.
She had thought she understood him.
The king.
The monster.
The man who drank her blood and called her his love in the same breath.
The man who somehow made her feel treasured even when she knew she should fear him.
She had spent weeks building walls around him.
Around what he was.
Around what he made her feel.
She had tried to break the bond.
Tried to escape it.
Tried to convince herself she wanted freedom more than she wanted him.
Now she stood freezing in a forgotten well.
And all she could feel was a king tearing apart a palace looking for her.
The grief coming through the bond didn't care about her walls.
It flowed around them.
Through them.
Until guilt settled heavily in her chest.
Because if their places were reversed
If he were the one trapped in darkness
She would be tearing apart the kingdom too.
Penny squeezed her eyes shut.
And immediately another thread found her.
Wade.
She found him instantly.
The sea prince was awake.
Searching.
The garden flashed through the bond in scattered fragments.
Sunlight.
Stone paths.
Alyrina.
The lake.
Questions.
Always questions.
But beneath everything else was fear.
Sharp.
Raw.
Relentless.
Not the king's desperate grief.
Guilt.
Wade blamed himself.
Penny could feel it in every frantic thought.
He should have stayed awake.
He should had hidden her himself.
He should have known something was wrong.
The guilt cut through him like a knife.
She could almost hear him arguing with Alyrina.
Almost hear her trying to calm him.
Trying and failing.
Because Wade had made her a promise beneath the sea.
He had wrapped his arms around her and sworn he would keep her safe before they slept.
Now she was trapped in darkness.
And somewhere above, a merman was tearing through a kingdom looking for the woman he had married only hours ago.
Penny swallowed hard.
The ache in her chest deepened.
Because she knew Wade.
Knew the jokes.
The flirting.
The easy smiles.
The way he hid pain behind laughter.
But the bond gave him nowhere to hide.
She felt every ounce of self-blame.
Every terrible certainty that he had failed her.
And before she could recover from that realization
Another thread pulled tight.
The crown prince.
Penny expected thoughts.
Questions.
Worry.
Instead she found dreams.
Restless.
Uneasy.
The crown prince was still asleep.
Yet even sleeping he knew something was wrong.
The bond carried no words.
Only feelings.
An empty place beside him in the bed.
A hand reaching through blankets and finding nothing.
The lingering warmth of someone who should still be there.
Gone.
The feeling repeated.
Again.
And again.
Not thoughts.
Instinct.
The deep certainty that something precious had vanished.
The nightmares twisted around it.
Dark hallways.
Running footsteps.
Blood.
Loss.
Yet through all of it one thing echoed over and over.
She's hurt.
The feeling struck her so hard she sucked in a sharp breath.
She's hurt.
He's hurt.
She's hurt.
Sleeping or awake, some part of him knew.
Then came another thread entirely.
Steadier than the others.
Quieter.
It did not crash against her like grief.
Did not cycle endlessly like fear.
It moved with a cold, deliberate patience that felt almost alien beside the raw emotions of the others.
The general.
He was still a mystery to her.
A man she barely knew.
Someone who had lingered at the edges of her captivity like a shadow that occasionally remembered how to become human.
His sleeping mind moved through the bond like a hunter following tracks through fresh snow.
Not what happened.
Who.
The question came again.
Who.
Not panic.
Penny felt him turning over every detail.
Every conversation.
Every glance.
Every person who had been near her.
Searching for the hand behind it.
Then
The answer arrived.
Not all at once.
Piece by piece.
Like a lock clicking open.
Sebastian.
The queen.
Penny felt the precise moment the pieces connected.
The cold certainty of a man reaching a conclusion.
And somehow she knew he was right.
She pushed the answer back through the bond.
Not words.
Just knowing.
Sebastian knew something.
The queen was behind it.
For one brief instant everything went still.
Then the thread changed.
Sleeping.
Awake.
Gone.
The bond flared.
Then vanished.
The general was already moving.
Already running toward whatever answer he had found.
Penny closed her eyes.
And hoped he had heard her.
Because out of all of them
He was the only one asking the right question.
Penny stood in the dark.
In the cold.
In the silence.
And tried to understand what she was feeling.
They were looking for her.
All of them.
Even sleeping they reached for her.
Searching.
Worrying.
Hurting.
And some part of her
The exhausted part.
The frightened part.
The part that had walked toward home that morning and ended up trapped in a forgotten well
That part wanted desperately to reach back.
To open the bond completely.
To stop being careful.
To stop being afraid.
To let them find her.
She pulled away from the thought like touching a flame.
She already knew what happened when she stopped guarding herself.
When she stopped thinking.
Stopped questioning.
Stopped choosing.
The king loved her.
Wade loved her.
Evander cared enough to search for her in his sleep.
The general had woken the moment he found a clue.
And what had she done?
Flirted.
Teased.
Collected pieces of them without truly understanding any of them.
She had treated their hearts like a puzzle she could solve later.
Now she stood alone in freezing water.
Bruised.
Bleeding.
Abandoned.
Because she had believed she understood everything.
The cold stone pressed against her back.
The water lapped softly around her waist.
And then
The last thread found her.
The one she had been avoiding.
The one she had been pushing away since she hit the water.
Hot.
Immediate.
Unmistakable.
Prince Sebastian.
Penny went very still.
This was the one she had been avoiding.
She felt him immediately.
The guilt.
The shame.
The sick twisting confusion of someone who knew they had done something terrible.
But there was something else.
Someone else.
A second presence brushing against his thoughts.
Warm.
Certain.
Comforting.
Penny frowned.
The feeling didn't belong to Sebastian.
It belonged to the person with him.
The one speaking.
The one soothing.
The one taking all that guilt and carefully reshaping it into something easier to live with.
She felt Sebastian reaching for the comfort.
Hungry for it.
Desperate for it.
And the other person giving it freely.
Not forgiveness.
Permission.
The difference made her stomach turn.
Somewhere above, in some warm room she would never see, Sebastian was being told a story.
A story where he had no choice.
A story where he had been forced into it.
A story where he was the victim.
Not her.
The realization settled heavily inside her.
Because Sebastian wanted to believe it.
Wanted it badly enough that he was letting the story become truth.
Penny felt no anger toward him.
Not in that moment.
Only sadness.
Because for the first time she understood something about him.
The prince had spent his entire life being taught how to think.
Taught who to trust.
Taught who to blame.
And right now someone was doing it again.
The affection flowing toward him felt wrong.
Not because it was false.
Because it was conditional.
Approval.
Reward.
Pride.
Given only after he had done exactly what was wanted of him.
The cold reached Penny's heart then.
And it had nothing to do with the water.
She thought of monsters.
The king.
Evander.
Wade.
Even the general.
None of them deserved the title as much as Kaida.
Because monsters devoured people.
Kaida remade them.