I picture this wild, feral creature pacing the length of her enclosure. Craving freedom. Hungry to feel something—anything—besides the slow suffocation of a life unlived. I know what it’s like to desire that so viscerally you feel it like an ache. Like a scream building in the back of your throat that you can never release.

The notion of Bryony Devaliant being caged is obscene. She wasn’t meant for staying still.

“Is it what you imagined?” I ask. “Worth all that wanting?”

She lifts her hand, letting the snowflakes fall onto her palm. “It’s different than I thought it would be. Sharper, somehow.” She pauses, searching for words. “But softer, too. Like the realm’s gone quiet. Like it’s… holding its breath.”

Like you, I think. The contradictions of you. Sharp enough to cut, soft enough to break.

“It’ll melt by morning,” I tell her.

She hums and drops her hand. “If it lasted forever, we wouldn’t stop to admire it.”

When she finally turns to face me, I freeze at the sight of her. Her face is shattered. One eye is blackened and swollen shut, her bottom lip is split down the center, and the arch of her cheekbone is fractured.

“I see Amara didn’t pull her punches during training today,” I say flatly.

The Devaliant goes still, as if she’s only now registering the pain. As if the hurt is some distant thing. And isn’t that just like her, to be so divorced from her own relative fragility that she doesn’t even notice when she’s broken.

“What’s wrong, Wolf?” Her voice is mocking. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted? For Amara to beat the weakness out of me? Or are you pissed she marked up your toy before you got the chance?”

“Oh, I’ve no compunctions about blood in the pursuit of excellence. But this?” I gesture to her injuries. “This is inelegant. There are better ways to shatter a thing and make it stronger with a far defter hand.” I lower myself onto the crumbling stone bench flanking the garden path, spreading my legs wide. “Come here. Tell me what lesson was worth Amara destroying that pretty face.”

She doesn’t move. Just watches me with that one good eye as if she’s trying to figure out my angle.

“Come here, Devaliant. Unless you want to explain to Amara tomorrow why you can’t train because you’re still fucked up.”

That gets her moving. She walks over slowly, each step careful, like she’s approaching a wild animal. I wrap an arm around her waist and tug her into my lap, ignoring her sharp intake of breath.

“The lesson,” I prompt, settling her more firmly against me. “What was it?”

Her jaw clenches. “That no matter how strong I get, someone will always be there to remind me exactly what I am and where I belong. In the dirt, under someone’s boot.”

Ah, so that’s what Amara was doing. Reminding the Devaliant of her position in the grand hierarchy—a mouse can draw all the blood it likes, but it’s never going to be a hawk. It’s a brutally effective tactic. I’d bet Amara picked it up during her time in the fighting pits.

“Can’t even savor your first snowfall without someone grinding your face in, huh?” I splay my hands over her hips. “Close your eyes. I’ll keep you warm.”

She hesitates, but then her eyelids flutter shut.

My fingers dip under the hem of her shirt to brush her bare skin. “I could make this feel good,” I tell her, letting my magic flare against her just enough to make her gasp. “Make you feel it right between your thighs until you beg for things you don’t even know you want yet.”

“No.” The answer is almost sharp. “Just… fix it.”

The Devaliant is not a creature built for begging, but one day, I’ll make an art of it.

Mend her first. Conquer her later. Stars grant me patience, because if you grant me strength, I will absolutely do something regrettable with it.

I slide my power across her body to take stock of her injuries: shattered cheekbone, burst vessels, broken nose, two fractured ribs. Amara was clearly making sure the lesson stuck without doing enough harm to kill her.

“This will hurt,” I warn her. “Especially the ribs. They need to be forced back into alignment. Try to keep still for me.”

At her nod, I reach for the deep well of magic inside me and let it spark along my veins. I temper the blaze into a controlled burn, sinking it into the damage, knitting bone and smoothing flesh. Her body is a grimoire, a history of violence and brutality inscribed in a lovely, fuckable package.

There’s something intimate about sliding under her skin like this. About giving her the closest thing to worship these killer’s hands know. I watch her closely, seeing how she responds when I drag my magic over her. Which parts make her clutch my shoulders. Which ones make her thighs squeeze mine.

Then the Devaliant’s breath hitches. Slowly, so slowly, she leans into my palm and turns into the heat. And it’s all I can do not to—

Consume.

But I’ve learned patience. She’s going to yield to me, but it won’t be tonight.

When I finally get to her ribs, she tenses. A soft gasp of pain leaves her. I coast a soothing hand across her shoulder blades and begin to hum. It’s an old song from a home that no longer exists, from a life purged and hollowed out. My mother used to sing it to me when I was a demi—still a child learning to control my power. The lullaby helped me concentrate, gave me something to focus on as I struggled not to incinerate everything within reach. A song meant to soothe. To steady.

The Devaliant inches closer as I sink into her on a cellular level, finding all the pockets of pooling blood and splintered bone, refusing to miss a single scrape or bruise. The shattered architecture of her reassembles until only perfection remains. A blank canvas scraped clean and re-primed.

“There,” I say, unable to stop myself from ghosting my lips over her jaw, her cheek, her temple. “Good as new.”

I ease back and let the healing glow flicker and fade until we’re just two bodies embracing beneath the falling snow. Snowflakes catch on her lashes and melt against her lips, and I’m tempted to kiss each one.

“What were you humming?”

“It’s an old song,” I say, reaching up to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “From a city that’s nothing but rubble now.”

“Will you teach it to me?”

She asks it so simply, so without guile. As if she isn’t requesting I crack open my ribs and offer her my heart on a platter.

“Maybe.” I tap her on the nose, smirking when she wrinkles it at me. “If you’re very, very good for me.”

The Devaliant opens her eyes to glare at me. “Did you go to my sister today?”

“Yeah.” I dip my head to scent her. She smells of frost and evergreen and my magic. “She told me to tell you she loves you.”

She relaxes on a shuddery exhale. As if she’s been braced for a blow, and now that she knows it’s not coming, she can finally let herself crumple a little. She tucks her face into the hollow of my throat and breathes. I jolt with surprise when hot tears splash against my skin.

The long-neglected voice of my conscience—one that sounds too much like my mother’s—says, Stop behaving as if you were raised by wolves and comfort her.

Slowly, tentatively, I stroke a palm down her spine. She doesn’t flinch away. It feels like a victory.

“Will you…” She swallows. “Will you deliver letters to Theo for me? If I write them?”

My hand stills on her back. The request hangs in the air between us.

Say no. Tell her she gets nothing. Tell her she’s lucky you’re letting her breathe.

But her tears are still wet on my skin, and she’s soft and trusting in my arms, and I’m apparently weak when it comes to her.

“I’ll think about it,” I mutter, hating myself.

Silence stretches. The crackle of branches echoes through the garden as a breeze rustles the trees. The snow falls harder.