Elara’s POV

The click of the lock was the loudest sound in the world.

I lay there. Motionless. His coat draped over me like a shroud, heavy with his scent—pine and smoke and something darker. Something that made my chest ache in ways I refused to name.

My ribs screamed with every breath. The left side was the worst. I’d taken a knee there during my last fight—a few nights ago? Time had become slippery since he’d found me.

I pressed my face into the mattress. The sheets smelled expensive. Clean linen and lavender. Nothing like the straw pallets and blood-soaked rags I’d grown accustomed to.

Slowly, I pushed myself upright. The coat slid off one shoulder, and cold air hit the bandages on my forearm. I pulled it back up with trembling fingers.

The room was enormous. A suite meant for visiting dignitaries or wealthy merchants—high ceilings painted with frescoes of hunting wolves, velvet curtains drawn tight over floor-to-ceiling windows, a fireplace crackling low in the corner. A writing desk. A wardrobe. A door that I already knew led to a marble bathroom because the faint smell of soap drifted from its direction.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My bare feet hit cold stone. I was wearing a nightgown—white, soft cotton, not mine. He’d changed my clothes while I was unconscious.

The thought made my skin crawl.

He’d cleaned my wounds too. I could feel the fresh bandages wrapped tight around my knuckles, the sting of salve beneath the gauze. Careful work. Precise. The hands of someone who knew how to tend injuries.

The same hands that had pinned me down. That had ripped my shirt open. That had nearly—

I stood. Too fast. The room tilted sideways, and I grabbed the bedpost until the dizziness passed.

Move, I told myself. Think later. Move now.

The door first. I crossed the room on unsteady legs, my bare feet silent on the stone. The handle was iron, ornate, cold under my palm.

It didn’t budge.

I tried again. Pulled. Twisted. Threw my weight against it until my damaged ribs sent white-hot agony through my torso and I doubled over, gasping.

Locked. From the outside.

The windows next. I stumbled to the curtains and wrenched them apart. Moonlight flooded in—silver and merciless. Beyond the glass, a sheer drop. Far too high to jump. The cobblestone courtyard below looked like a mouthful of broken teeth.

No ledge. No balcony. No adjacent rooftop close enough to reach.

I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. My breath fogged the surface in ragged bursts.

Think. Think.

My communication stone. I always kept it in my breast pocket—the small enchanted crystal that connected to Finnian’s matching one. If I could reach him, he could—

I spun around. Searched the room with frantic eyes.

My clothes were gone. The bloodstained fighting leathers, the worn boots, the belt with its hidden pockets—all of it. I tore open the wardrobe. Empty except for pristine nightgowns and a robe that clearly belonged to this establishment.

The writing desk. I yanked every drawer open. Parchment. Ink. A seal stamp. Nothing useful.

The bathroom. I crashed through the door, my damaged hand leaving a smear of blood on the white frame. Marble floors. A copper tub. Towels folded with military precision. Soaps arranged in a neat row.

No communication stone. No coin purse. No keys. No weapons.

Nothing.

He’d taken everything.

My legs gave out. I slid down the bathroom wall until the cold marble tiles pressed against my thighs through the thin cotton. The chill seeped into my bones, but I barely felt it beneath the weight of everything else.

Prisoner.

The word settled over me like a second skin. Familiar. Almost comfortable in its horror.

I drew my knees to my chest. The movement made my ribs grind together, and I bit down on my already-split lip to keep from crying out. Fresh blood bloomed against my tongue—warm, copper, bitter.

Three years. Three years I had spent running to protect my family. I had left to keep my children safe, convinced that my shattered pride made me entirely unworthy to return to them or the empire. Three years of fighting in the pit, of earning my own coin, of answering to no one, just to ensure they wouldn’t bear the burden of my brokenness.

All of it erased in a single night.

"You are mine. You have always been mine."

His words echoed through my skull. The possessive fury in them. The absolute certainty.

Mine. Like an object. Like property. Like something to be locked away and taken out whenever it suited him.

I thought of the woman I’d seen. Once, at a restaurant near the market square where I sometimes ate after my shifts at the underground arena. I’d been counting my coins, deciding between bread and broth, when a carriage had pulled up outside.

Kaelen had stepped out.

My heart had stopped. I’d pressed myself into the darkest corner of the room, barely breathing, watching through the smudged window.

And then she’d appeared beside him. Tall. Elegant. Chestnut hair swept up in an elaborate style. A deep green gown that probably cost more than I’d earned in a year of fighting. She’d smiled at him—easy, confident—and he’d held the door for her.

They’d looked right together. Natural. The way a king and queen should look.

I’d fled through the kitchen entrance, leaving my half-eaten soup behind.

Now the image returned with nauseating clarity. That woman—poised, beautiful, whole. Everything I was not. Everything I could never be again.

Of course he’d found someone new. Of course the empire needed a flawless Luna, and my children deserved a perfect mother. Someone without scars mapping her body. Someone who hadn’t spent years rolling in dirt and blood for meager coin. I was deeply broken, completely unworthy of returning to the family I had left behind, someone who would only make the nobility whisper about damaged goods.

And yet he’d brought me here.

Why?

The answer coiled in my stomach like poison.

Because he still wanted to own me. Not publicly—never publicly. I was too broken for that now. Too ruined. But privately? In a locked room where no one could see?

His dirty little secret.

A sound escaped my throat. Half laugh, half sob. The irony was exquisite. I’d survived the arena. I’d survived opponents larger than me who fought with blades and fire and teeth. I’d survived broken bones and torn muscles and nights when I’d been so hungry my vision blurred.

But this—being his hidden thing, his caged possession—this was worse than any blow I’d ever taken.

At least in the pit, I’d had my dignity. At least there, when someone hurt me, I was allowed to fight back.

I dragged myself up from the bathroom floor. Each movement was an exercise in agony. My ribs protested. My swollen face throbbed with every heartbeat. The cuts on my hands reopened beneath their bandages, and thin lines of red seeped through the white gauze.

Back to the bed. There was nowhere else to go.

I crawled onto the mattress and curled into myself, pulling his coat around my body because the alternative was freezing. The fabric engulfed me. Too large. Too warm. Too much like being held.

A drop of blood fell from my split lip onto the pristine white sheets. Then another. Small red blooms spreading through expensive cotton. Staining something beautiful with the evidence of what I’d become.

I stared at the drops. Watched them expand.

Three years of running, I thought. And it wasn’t enough.

The darkness crept in from the edges of my vision. Under the crushing weight of exhaustion, physical agony, and the trauma of the past three years, my body finally shut down entirely. It chose to surrender to the unconsciousness, refusing to face a single second more of this nightmarish reality.