Chapter 6

On the way back to the dungeon, the guards dragged me past the kitchens.

A new maid was coming the other way carrying an iron pail. Inside it was the runoff from the slaughter shed in the back yard — blackened organ meat, clotted blood, a few flies turning lazy circles on the surface. She set the pail down in front of me.

"The Luna says we can't let you starve to death." She smiled. "This is your meal today. Eat. Lick the bottom clean. We'll be checking."

I looked at the pail. My stomach climbed up my throat.

The maid crouched, tilted her head at me, fished out a blackened lump with her fingers. "Not eating? Then I'll go tell the Alpha. I'll say the elf doesn't appreciate his hospitality." She made as if to stand up.

I reached out and caught the hem of her skirt.

I opened my mouth. She pushed the lump in — wet, rancid, cold, with the faint sweet-iron note that only Elf blood has.

She added, "The Luna killed three elves this morning. She had the kitchen prepare your 'meal' herself. They were old ones — already drained. No point in feeding them. This was the youngest of your race. I think the Luna said her name was… Nyssa?"

Nyssa.

My cousin. Fifteen this year. Last month she'd written to me from the forest — she'd just learned her first complete Elf Long-Song.

My stomach turned itself inside out. The acid came up first, scalding. Then the meat I hadn't digested. I vomited on the stone.

In what came out of me, there was a piece I hadn't yet broken down — and clinging to it was a thin strand of pale-silver hair. Fine, soft, the kind of hair only an elf-child has. Nyssa's color.

My hands were shaking. I picked the strand of hair out of the vomit. I cleaned it with my own bile and put it in my mouth and held it under my tongue.

It was the only piece of her left to bring home.

Past midnight, the dungeon door opened. It was him.

Damien stood in the doorway with a lantern. The light fell on the pail. He looked at it for a full minute.

Then he came over, crouched in front of me, and said, "Open your mouth."

I shook my head. He took my jaw in his hand — lighter than the night he'd slapped me. I had to open it. The strand of pale-silver hair was still under my tongue. He saw it. His pupils contracted.

With two fingers, very carefully, he lifted the strand of hair out of my mouth — his hand was trembling — wrapped it in a white handkerchief, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt, on the side over his heart.

He raised his hand. I thought he was going to hit me. He didn't.

His palm covered my eyes.

"Don't open them," he said.

I heard the pail kicked over. I heard him drag the maid in from the next room. I heard bone breaking — not one bone, several. I heard her scream, then beg, and then her voice cracked into something that wasn't a voice anymore. It went on, maybe ten minutes.

Damien came back in front of me, his hand still over my eyes.

"Elara." His voice came out scraped raw — I had never heard it like that. "The Mate Bond's been broken almost half a year. I shouldn't be able to feel you anymore.

But I always know when you're in pain. When you bleed, my chest rings hollow. When you nearly die, I jolt awake in the middle of the night. The second you bit through your tongue tonight — the root of mine was burning."

"Why."

I didn't answer. Because I couldn't tell him — that part of his blood was mine.

He took his hand away from my eyes. "Nyssa's hair, I'll keep it for you. The day I let you out of here, I'll give it back."

The door closed. I sank against the wall. For the first time in the four hundred-odd days they'd kept me here — I cried.