Chapter 4 Chapter 4: A Prison Beneath My Skin

The first thing I felt when I awakened was not pain. It was them.

Asterion existed like winter inside my chest. It was cold and frighteningly close. Faolan burned beyond the door, pacing back and forth like a flame searching for something to consume.

I kept my eyes closed.

The room smelled of cedar smoke, clean linen, and the bitter medicines healers used to disguise wolfsbane. Beneath those scents lingered two I knew better than my own: frost and pine from Asterion, smoke and wild citrus from Faolan.

My wolf lifted her head. I forced her down before she could reach for them.

Pain followed awareness. It pulsed beneath the bandages wrapped around my wrists and burned on both sides of my neck. The marks felt swollen, feverish, and horribly alive. Every beat of my heart seemed to push Asterion and Faolan deeper into me.

I had once enjoyed knowing they carried my mark beneath their collars. I had liked the certainty that no matter where Father sent them, part of them remained mine.

Now, I understood the cruelty of it.

The realization did not soften me. It only sharpened my fury.

I opened my eyes. A carved wooden ceiling replaced the arena's stone corridors. Heavy blue curtains covered the windows, and a fire crackled inside a marble hearth. The bed beneath me was large enough for three people, its sheets finer than anything I had touched in five years.

Someone had washed the blood and dirt from my body. My ruined arena clothing was gone, replaced by a loose linen nightdress buttoned to my throat. A folded robe rested across the foot of the bed.

No chains bound me. No wolfsbane coated the skin above my pulse.

They no longer needed either.

Asterion sat in a chair beside the bed. He had fallen asleep with his arms folded across his chest and his head tilted against the high back. Without his gloves, the scars across his hands were visible. His dark hair had escaped its usual order, and a bruise shadowed the split in his lower lip—the one my fist had left there.

He looked exhausted.

I had never seen Asterion sleep carelessly. Even as a boy, he had awakened at the smallest change in my breathing. Father had praised that vigilance and called it proof that hunger made better servants than loyalty.

Five years of freedom should have taught Asterion how to rest. Instead, the lines beside his eyes had deepened.

I pushed the blanket aside. The bond stirred before my feet touched the rug.

Asterion spoke without opening his eyes. "If you intend to kill me, my moon, wait until you can stand without trembling."

I froze.

His blue eyes opened. For one terrible instant, relief stripped the coldness from them. The emotion struck through the mark as powerfully as if he had seized my face between his hands. Then, his expression closed.

"How long?" My voice scraped against my throat. He reached for the water on the bedside table. "Answer me."

"Fourteen hours."

"Where are we?"

"The upper floor of a private inn north of the arena." He poured water into a glass. "Drink."

"I would rather swallow poison."

"You already did."

I glared at him.

Asterion held the glass toward me without flinching. "A female healer treated you. She removed most of the poison from your blood, cleaned the wolfsbane burns, and changed your clothes. Neither Faolan nor I touched you while you were unconscious beyond carrying you here."

"How honorable." His jaw tightened from my words.

Beyond the door, Faolan stopped pacing. The silence lasted one moment. Then, the door opened.

Faolan entered wearing a dark shirt with the sleeves shoved to his elbows. His hair was damp, but the blood I had drawn still darkened the cut on his lower lip. Amber eyes swept over me, counting every breath, every bandage, every sign that I remained alive. "Little tyrant." His smile appeared, but it carried no amusement. "You look disappointingly difficult to bury."

"Come closer, and I will improve my chances."

"There she is." Warmth flooded the second bond. 

Relief so fierce it made my wolf press against my skin. I hated that they could force me to feel what they refused to say.

My fingers rose to the marks. Both men watched the movement. "Remove them," I said.

Faolan's smile vanished.

Asterion set the untouched water down. "No."

"That was not a request."

"And we are no longer your servants," Faolan said.

I pushed myself upright. The room tilted, but I locked my knees. "You held me down while I told you to stop."

Neither man looked away.

"We did," Asterion said.

The simple admission struck harder than an excuse would have.

"You poisoned me, purchased me, hunted me through that arena, and marked me against my will. Shall I applaud the powerful Alphas you have become?"

Faolan's gaze dropped to the bandages around my wrists. Pain moved through his bond. "I regret hurting you," he said. "I regret every burn on your skin and every moment you were afraid of us. But I do not regret making certain we can never lose you again."

"That is not remorse."

"No. It is the truth."

I turned to Asterion. "And you?"

He rose from the chair. At twenty-nine, he stood broader than the soldier who had followed me into war. Authority had settled into his bones. Yet when I stepped close and lifted my chin, that old instinct flickered between us—the servant waiting for his princess to decide whether he deserved kindness or punishment.

He crushed it before I could use it. "What we did was unforgivable," he said quietly. "If given the same choice, I would still mark you."

My palm struck his face. The sound cracked through the room. But Faolan did not interfere. 

Asterion's head turned with the blow, but he made no move to catch my wrist. "I learned that from you," he said.

Shame tried to find a place inside my anger. I denied it entry. "Where are my clothes?" I demanded.

"Burned," Faolan answered. "They were soaked in poison and wolfsbane."

"My weapons?"

"Ours."

"My money?"

"Beside your mask in the locked room across the hall."

At least he had not lied and claimed the arena kept it.

I crossed to the nearest window and tore the curtain aside. Morning light stabbed my eyes. We were three floors above a narrow courtyard enclosed by stone walls. Crescent Ice wolves stood at both gates, silver crescent pins fastened to their black coats.

The window latch refused to move.

"The entire upper floor is reserved," Asterion said behind me. "Our guards control both staircases. No one enters without our permission."

"Afraid your stolen prize will embarrass you?"

"Afraid Scarlet Raven will hear that Pandora Seitz survived the war before you are strong enough to defend yourself," Faolan corrected.

I looked over my shoulder. "I have defended myself for five years."

"You were unconscious in a cage when we found you."

"Because you arranged it."

His mouth hardened. "Because it was the only way to stop you from vanishing the moment you smelled us."

"You could have spoken to me."

"Would you have stayed?"

I faced the window again and didn't answer his question.

Faolan gave a humorless laugh. "Exactly."

Moonlight answered me even beneath the morning sun. I reached inward for the silver-blue flame that had once split battlefields.

A spark crawled across my palm. Agony lanced through my veins. Then, the light died.

Asterion's fear struck the bond before his hand closed around my elbow. "Do not try that again."

I jerked away. "Do not command me."

"Then, consider it a report from the healer. The poison is still attacking whatever divine power remains in your blood. Force it now, and you may stop your own heart."

"Concern from the man who ordered the dose?"

"The dose was calculated to weaken you, not kill you."

"How comforting."

"It is not meant to be."

I studied the courtyard. A sloped roof extended beneath the window. On an ordinary day, I could have broken the glass, landed on the tiles, shifted before reaching the wall, and disappeared into the forest.

Today, I doubted my legs would carry me to the gate. Even if they did, the marks would carry Asterion and Faolan after me.

Asterion released the window lock with a key from his pocket and pushed the glass open. Cold air rushed into the room. "You may break it," he said. "You may jump. If you survive the fall, you may run as far as your body allows."

I stared at him.

"We will know where you land," Faolan finished. "We will know which direction you take. And this time, runaway, we will follow."

The prison was not the guarded inn. It was beneath my skin. Asterion closed the window but did not lock it again.

"When do we leave?" I asked.

"When the healer says you can travel," he replied.

"For where?"

"Crescent Ice."

The name pulled at a grave I had spent five years burying.

"That is no longer my pack."

"Tell them that," Faolan said. "They still light candles for you every winter."

I folded my arms over the ache in my ribs. "Will you parade your resurrected owner through the gates?"

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. "You have not been our owner for five years."

"Yet you purchased me."

"We purchased your contract," Asterion said. "You were never something that arena had the right to own."

"But you believe you do?"

The question settled between us. Asterion answered first. "No."

Faolan looked at him, then back at me. "We believe you owe us the truth before you disappear again."

"I owed you nothing after you signed an order for my death."

Both bonds changed. Faolan's anger flared. Asterion's became so cold that frost seemed to spread beneath my ribs.

"The blood seals were forged," Asterion said.

"I felt your blood answer through our bonds."

"Because Scarlet Raven kept samples from every commander who swore a military oath," Faolan replied. His voice had lost its usual warmth. "Including ours. A fact you knew because you watched the oaths being taken."

I remembered silver bowls arranged beneath the Raven banners. Knives passed from hand to hand. Blood offered as proof of loyalty.

"A sample cannot recreate a living seal."

"Not without divine blood," Asterion said.

The room seemed to narrow.

"You believed one piece of parchment over the men who had spent their lives at your feet," Faolan said.

"Father taught me that slaves only kneel until they find the right moment to rise."

Asterion regarded me for a long, silent moment. "And you never questioned why your father needed you to believe that."

My wolf went still.

Asterion crossed to the travel chest near his abandoned chair. He unlocked it and withdrew a book wrapped in black cloth.

I recognized the cracked leather before he uncovered the silver crest stamped into its cover: a crescent moon pierced by a sword.

Father's private diary.

I had seen him writing in it only twice. He kept it in the hidden room behind his study—a chamber whose entrance required his blood or mine.

"Where did you get that?"

"The room opened for the blood of someone carrying your mark," Asterion said. "We found it three months after your funeral." He laid the diary on the table between us.

I did not touch it.

Faolan came to stand beside him. "Before you decide which of us betrayed you, little tyrant, you should learn what your father did."

"My father is dead."

"That has never stopped him from controlling you," Faolan said.

Asterion opened the diary to a page marked by a dark brown stain. One word had been written across the top in Father's severe hand.

Polycaste.

Below it, the first line waited.

'If my daughter must believe her mates betrayed her to become the spirit goddess the prophecy demands, then I will teach her hatred.'

For the second time in my life, my father killed something inside me.