Chapter 38
CAGES AND WHISPERS
The interior of the pavilion smelled of beeswax, expensive wine, and the cloying scent of dried lavender. It was the smell of the Manor. It was the smell of home.
Gessa gagged, the sensory memory hitting her harder than the physical exhaustion. The guards lowered her onto a camp stool, and she slumped forward, her head swimming.
Polan stood over her. He didn’t offer her water. He didn’t ask if she was hurt. He simply stripped off his riding gloves with jerky movements that betrayed a tightly coiled irritation. He tossed the gloves onto a table and turned to her.
In his hands, he held the collar. Dull, dark iron. Heavy.
Gessa flinched, her breath hitching. She expected a speech—one of his long, winding monologues about loyalty and destiny. She expected him to savor the moment.
He didn’t. It was terrifying.
Polan moved with a cold efficiency. He signaled the guards with a flick of his fingers. “Hold her head. Keep her still.”
He stepped in close, but Gessa noticed the difference immediately.
He didn’t touch her skin. He kept his elbows tucked, his body angled slightly away, minimizing the contact surface.
He treated her not like a lover, or even a prisoner, but like a spill that had to be contained before it ruined the carpet.
There was no hesitation, only the brutal speed of a man who wanted the danger neutralized now.
The cold metal snapped shut around her throat with a final click.
The effect was amputation. The hum of the world, the buzz of the Ley Lines that she had learned to navigate, was severed. It felt like being buried alive in a lead coffin. She gasped, clawing feebly at the metal, the silence making the room spin.
Only then did Polan relax. The stiffness left his shoulders. He exhaled, looking down at her. Relief mixed with disappointment.
“There,” he said, finally reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder. Now that the iron was between them, he was safe. He could touch her again. “The noise is gone. I can feel the chaos receding already.”
He shook his head, his thumb tracing the line of the collar. “I tried to be patient, Gessa. I gave you the run of the house. I gave you silks, jewels, freedom. And look what you did with it. You ran wild. You broke yourself.”
His voice dropped, losing its warmth, becoming flat and clinical.
“We are done with the old ways. They clearly didn’t work.
We are going to have to start over, you and I.
From the very beginning.” He smoothed her hair, a gesture that felt less like affection and more like an owner straightening a crooked picture frame.
“It will be harder this time. Less... comfortable. But you left me no choice. I have to fix what you broke.”
He turned away, dismissing her. “Keep them here,” he ordered the guards. “I have business to conclude.”
He disappeared through the flap, leaving them in the dim light with two silent guards.
Gessa looked up at Ky. He stood a few feet away, chest heaving. He took a step toward her, testing the guards, but a spear point immediately leveled at his chest.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word rasping in her throat. She shook her head. Wait.
Ky froze, his eyes locking onto hers. He gave a nod and stood down.
Voices drifted through the canvas. Not shouted, but spoken with the casual volume of untouchable men.
“The courier escaped, my Lord,” a voice said—Koer, the scar-faced lieutenant. “The warning is on its way to the Academy. We have the container, but without the key, it’s useless.”
“You see a locked box, Koer,” Polan’s voice replied, sounding bored. “I see a negotiation tactic. You think like a soldier. You worry about the one who got away.”
“He will bring the Order down on us,” Koer pressed. “And we are wasting resources keeping the beast alive. Malak wanted the courier. We don’t need the cat.”
There was the sound of glass clinking—wine being poured.
“Come. Sit,” Polan’s voice was warm, inviting.
“You have a soldier’s eye, Koer. It is sharp.
Brutal. I admire that about you. But if you are to lead my armies one day, you must learn to see beyond the blade.
The bond between a Spur and his beast is not a partnership.
It is a nervous system. They are one entity. ”
Gessa recognized the tone. The “Lesson.” The soft, intoxicating promise that he saw potential in you that no one else did. Her stomach lurched. He was making Koer fall in love with him, just as he had done to her father. Beside her, Ky stiffened.
“Think of it like a siege,” Polan continued, the sound of him pacing the rug muffled but audible.
“If you torture a man, he can steel himself. He can play the martyr. He can be a hero. But if you hold his heart in your hand? If you squeeze the thing he loves?” A pause.
“The hero vanishes. The man remains. And that man will not just surrender, Koer. He will be grateful to us for stopping the pain. He will open the container. He will tell us the patrol routes. He will beg for the privilege of serving us.”
“It’s a risk,” Koer said, but the grunt was gone from his voice. Gessa could hear the hesitation, the sound of a man mesmerized by the sheer, brutal elegance of the plan.
“Greatness is always a risk, my friend,” Polan murmured. There was the sound of a hand clasping a shoulder—warm, reassuring. “That is why I chose you for this command, Koer. Other men want safety. They want simple orders. But you and I? We see the larger picture. We want the world.”
Polan’s voice dropped, becoming an intimate confidence. “Do you trust me to give it to you?”
There was a heavy silence, charged with the charisma Gessa knew too well. When Koer spoke again, the skepticism had vanished, replaced by the hushed reverence of a convert.
“Completely, my Lord.”
“Good,” Polan said, brisk and cheerful again. “Then go. Double the guard on the beast. I have to attend to my guests. The girl needs her rest before we begin her rehabilitation.”
The flap swept open. Polan stood there, wiping his hands on a cloth. He looked from Ky, vibrating with tension, to Gessa, who sat slumped under the weight of the iron.
Polan sighed, looking at Gessa with tragic disappointment.
“Look at you. Filthy. Shaking. It breaks my heart to see you reduced to this.” He stepped closer, tilting her chin up with a finger.
“I had hoped we could have a civilized dinner tonight. To celebrate your return. But you are in no condition for company.”
He turned to the guards. “Take them to the lower cells. Not the pit—the stone rooms. I want her to sleep. I want her fed.” He looked back. His smile was benevolent. Chilling. “Recover your strength, Gessa. We have a lot of work to do to fix what he broke in you. And I want you awake for it.”
Rough hands hauled her up. The walk was a blur. They were led to a series of cells carved directly into the cliff face, sealed by oak doors reinforced with iron bands.
They shoved Ky into one and Gessa into the next. The door slammed shut, the bolt sliding home, sealing her in darkness.
She collapsed against the cold stone wall, sliding down until she hit the dirt floor. The iron collar felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Gessa?”
Ky’s voice came from the wall to her right. It was low, urgent, pressed tight against the stone.
She dragged herself over. “I’m here,” she whispered, forehead against the damp rock
“Are you hurt? Did he touch you?”
“No,” she breathed. “I’m just... the iron. It’s so quiet, Ky. It feels dead.”
“I know. Listen to me. Breathe.” There was a suffocating pause. “You heard him? About Night?”
“He’s going to use him,” she said, tears spilling over. “He kept him alive to break you.”
“I know,” Ky said. His voice wasn’t fearful; it was cold. Flat. “But he made a mistake, Gessa. A fatal one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Polan is a politician. He thinks in terms of assets and debts. He thinks Night is just a lever to control me.” Ky’s voice dropped, vibrating through the stone. “He doesn’t understand what a Soul-Beast is. He thinks he locked up a hostage.”
“Isn’t he?”
“No,” Ky whispered. “He’s an apex predator who can walk through walls. Polan thinks he’s secured a weakness. He doesn’t realize he just invited a monster into the center of his camp... and gave him a reason to hunt.”
“Ky...”
“Night is alive. That’s all that matters. As long as he’s breathing, we are still in this fight. Do not give up. Do you hear me? Rest. Eat whatever they give you. We need strength.”
His voice was a lifeline in the dark. He wasn’t the broken man she had met in the woods; he was the strategist, already looking for the angle.
“I hear you,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes, leaning against the cold stone that separated them. She was a prisoner, collared and drained, but she wasn’t alone.
An hour later, the heavy bolt scraped back. Gessa flinched, scrambling away from the door, but it didn’t open. Instead, a slat at the bottom slid aside, and a wooden tray was shoved through, skidding across the dirt floor.
Gessa stared at it. It wasn’t prison gruel. It was a bowl of rich, dark stew, a thick heel of crusty bread still warm from the oven, and a small skin of watered wine.
It was a meal for a guest, served on the floor of a cage.
Her stomach churned, revolting at the luxury of it.
It was rich, soft food—the kind she had eaten at Polan’s table—and the mere thought of that pampered texture sliding down her throat made her gag.
The iron collar made swallowing feel impossible, like trying to eat with a hand tight around her throat.
She wanted to kick the tray away. She wanted to starve rather than accept his “charity.”
Eat whatever they give you.
Ky’s voice echoed in her memory. We need strength.
With shaking hands, she dragged the tray closer. She dipped the bread into the stew and forced herself to eat, choking down the food not for sustenance, but as a tactical maneuver. She drank the wine and felt a ghost of warmth return to her shivering limbs.
She pushed the empty tray away and curled up on the single, thick woolen blanket they had provided. It was high-quality wool, soft and clean—another jarring reminder that she wasn’t being punished; she was being kept. The silence in her head was deafening, but the exhaustion was a heavier weight.
It felt like she had only dozed for a moment when the screech of the bolt woke her. The door swung open, grey morning light flooding the cell. Two large guards filled the doorway.
“Up,” one of them grunted. “Lord Polan is ready for you.”