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48

EVANDER

THE SHACKLES SEAR my wrists, but I barely register the pain. Bryony’s collapsed just inside my cell—close enough for me to count each shallow rise of her chest.

I catalog her injuries. The damage reads like a battle map: skin shredded, bones crushed, bruises everywhere.

I’ve seen worse on countless battlefields. The Devouring was a brutal education, and I got real familiar with all the ways to pick a person apart. But to see such wounds on her—

“Devaliant. Wake up, sweetheart. Open those pretty eyes for me.”

I track every breath and flutter of her lashes, relieved when she begins to stir. Then her eyes open. For a moment, she stares right through me. Empty.

Recognition flares, and the bond thrums.

“There you are.” I croon the words, low and coaxing. “Come here.”

She crawls toward me, nails scrabbling against the stone floor. A cry wrenches from her as something inside her gives with an audible snap—a rib, maybe more than one. The barest echo of agony ripples through the bond, quickly choked by the power in the shackles. It twists like a knife in my gut.

She collapses into my lap. Her skin is cold. Clammy. The scent of copper is overwhelming, and beneath it—

Demis. I smell other demis all over her, dozens of unique scents. Saliva? What the fuck. I don’t know what test she went through, but I’ll rip Alexios apart with my bare hands for this.

But I shove down the violence because my anger won’t help her right now. My girl needs her Chosen, not her monster.

“Good girl,” I murmur. “Don’t move, okay? Stay still while I fix you up.”

I brace for the backlash as I force power through the siphoning shackles. Searing feedback scorches my veins as the cuffs throttle my magic to a trickle.

Bryony shivers as the feeble pulse flows through her. “Something’s different with your power,” she mumbles. “It’s not as hot.”

“The shackles are strangling it.”

It’s not enough. If I can’t get her stabilized, she’s going to die tonight.

I cast out with my mind, seeking Alexios through the chain that binds us, but the shackles devour the connection.

So I try my brother. His natural sensitivity should compensate for the suppression.

Bastien’s consciousness surges to meet me. What is it?

The words are curt. No curiosity, no urgency.

Take my cuffs off. I have to heal my Chosen before she bleeds out in my lap.

The link freezes over. Hardens.

No. You know the bargain’s terms. The cuffs stay until she completes the trials.

Bryony shudders against me, each shallow inhale rattling. I’m ready to tear this palace apart.

Listen to me very carefully, you heartless asshole. My rage bleeds into the connection. She’s barely breathing. So either Alexios lets me put her insides back where they belong, or I’ll tear out his intestines and make him fucking gargle them.

A beat.

Graphic, Bastien says mildly. The shackles stay, but I’ll uncuff you from the wall. You can play nurse in your room where it’s warm. Take it or leave it.

I exhale harshly through my nose. Every instinct is screaming to keep pushing, to shove at Bastien’s frozen apathy until it cracks. But I don’t have time to wrangle him when Bryony’s lips are turning blue.

Fine, I snarl down the link. Get down here.

“Just keep breathing for me a little longer.” I kiss Bryony’s temple. “Can you do that for me?”

A thin thread of assent drifts through the bond, more sensation than articulation, but I’ll take it.

I count the seconds. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty—

Bastien’s steps ring out, and then he fills the cell doorway, obsidian eyes flicking dispassionately over Bryony. I can practically hear the clicking of that razor-edged mind as he turns her chances over like an abacus.

“Her surviving the night is slim,” he says. Cold, unaffected. “Ten percent at best.”

I love my brother. Really, I do. But sometimes I fucking hate him.

“Then move your ass,” I say sharply.

He enters the cell, and his hands close over the chains tethering me to the wall. Turquoise sparks dance over the metal, the ancient wards straining against his command. With a grating shriek, they finally snap, and the restraints fall away.

I push to my feet, gathering Bryony to my chest. Her ragged gasp frays another few threads of my unraveling control. Has she always been this small? This breakable?

Bastien leads us out of the dungeons. I shut out everything—the opulence of the palace, the courtiers glancing curiously at us, the reminder of their scents all over my Chosen. I shield Bryony from prying eyes with my wings as we ascend to the upper levels.

By the time we reach my rooms, my grip on our bond is the only thing standing between her and the Void. I’m pouring magic into the link and fighting the shackles with every damned step.

Bastien wrenches open the chamber doors, moving aside for me to stride through. I head straight for the massive bed and settle against the headboard, careful not to jostle Bryony too much as I cradle her against my chest.

An agonized keen escapes her.

“Shhh. I know. I know it hurts.” I rock us both, sending pulse after pulse of power into her, knitting up the worst of the internal bleeding. “I’ve got you. Just breathe through it for me.”

I glance at Bastien. He’s leaning against the threshold, bored and blank as a marble statue.

With a pulse of power, he produces a new length of chain. “Don’t fight me.” His shadows twine through the links, forging the magic that will contain me. “I’d hate to have to gag you, but I will.”

I meet that void-dark stare and nod.

He winds the chains around my upper arms and secures them to the headboard. The metal bites into my skin, thrumming with his magic, but I just shove down the pained hiss. Bryony makes a quiet, wounded sound, and it’s suddenly the easiest thing in the realms to sublimate my discomfort. To relegate it to some distant corner of my mind.

“You gave her my daggers,” Bastien says. I hear the accusation—a ripple in that frozen sea of apathy. “She had the audacity to ask me to retrieve them.”

I push another healing pulse into my Chosen’s body before responding. “She won them fair and square. Well, most of them. One was a gift.”

The air thickens, shadows swelling at the room’s edges like gathering smoke. The pressure of my brother’s power crawls across my skin and burrows—deep and dark and devouring.

I ride out the wave. Centuries of exposure build up a tolerance to Bastien’s unique brand of brutality.

“Next time you’re inclined to barter away our history for a piece of ass,” he says, so soft it would be easy to mistake for gentleness if I couldn’t see the rage simmering in his black stare, “leave my weapons out of it.”

Then he yanks on the chains in a sharp jerk, and the links snap taut. My arms are wrenched above my head, my back slamming into the headboard. I give a pained hiss.

On anyone else, it might be a tantrum. On my brother, it’s as close to a sulk as he ever comes.

My Chosen stirs. I soothe her with another careful stream of power, grinding my teeth against the siphoning cuffs cinching tight around my reserves.

It leaves me light-headed. A gray haze settles at the edges of my vision.

“She nearly died for me today,” I point out once the static clears. “I’d say that earns her a few blades.”

I stare down at Bryony, counting her labored breaths. Allowing myself three heartbeats of incandescent fury, three heartbeats to imagine crushing Alexios’ skull between my hands.