THE AWAKENING IN KILSYTH

​POV: Malia

​The air in the subterranean dungeon beneath the Kilsyth estate didn't just smell like cold stone; it smelled like copper, old dampness, and decaying lineage.

​When consciousness clawed its way back into my skull, it brought a blinding wave of nausea and the relentless, rhythmic clinking of heavy iron. I tried to pull my wrists forward to wipe the sticky residue of dried sweat from my eyes, but my arms didn't move. Iron cuffs, thick and pitted with rust, bit savagely into the skin of my forearms, pinning me to the frame of a brutal, cold iron chair anchored directly into the concrete floor.

​My head throbbed in time with my racing heart. Focus, I told myself, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to force the lingering residue of sedative from my brain. Look around. Count the shadows.

​The room was low-ceilinged, lit only by a single bare bulb encrusted with grime hanging from a fraying wire overhead. Moisture seeped through the cracks in the limestone walls, dropping onto the floor with a maddening drip… drip… drip… that sounded like a ticking clock marking down my remaining minutes.

​Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed outside the reinforced oak door. Heavy iron bolts slid back with a sickening screech of metal on metal.

​The door swung inward, and the silhouette standing in the doorway made the cold in my veins turn to pure ice.

​Alastair walked in.

​He didn't look like a man visiting his daughter. He was clad in an immaculate, dark gray three-piece suit, his silvering hair slicked back without a single strand out of place. He carried a silver-headed cane in one hand, though he walked without a limp. His face was a mask of utter, terrifying detachment. There was no rage in his gray eyes, no sorrow, no spark of paternal recognition. He looked at me the way an inspector looks at a cracked pipe in a basement, a minor inconvenience that needed to be permanently cleared away.

​"You always did have your mother’s stubborn constitution, Malia," he said, his voice smooth, cultured, and devoid of warmth. He stopped two paces from my chair, leaning lightly on his cane as he looked down at me. "The dose of paralytic we gave you at the harbor was calibrated for a grown man. Yet here you are, fully awake in under four hours."

​"Alastair," I rasped, my throat raw and parched. The word felt like shattered glass in my mouth. "Where… where am I?"

​"Where your grandfathers locked away their political embarrassments," he replied smoothly, checking a sleek gold pocket watch. "Underneath the south wing. No sound travels up. No light comes down. It is a quiet place to settle outstanding liabilities."

​A ragged laugh escaped my chest, a sound born of pure defiance. "Liability? Is that what I am to you now? Not your blood? Not your daughter?"

​Alastair raised an eyebrow, tilting his head with a chilling semblance of curiosity. "Blood is a biological accident, my dear. Loyalty is a choice. You chose to align yourself with a street animal from Calaby. You dragged the disgrace of that low-born bastard into the halls of this family. In doing so, you ceased to be my blood. You became a loose end."

​The sheer brutality of his words hit me, but instead of breaking me, it ignited a violent, roaring fire behind my ribs. The sheer absurdity of his cold arrogance stripped away every shred of fear I had left. I looked at the man who had sired me, who had raised me under the pretense of aristocratic honor, and saw only a hollow monster draped in expensive tailoring.

​He stepped closer, reaching out with a gloved finger as if to lift my chin and inspect the bruises blossoming along my jawline. "We are going to tidy up this mess quietly. The Kilsyth name will survive. You, unfortunately, will be remembered as a tragic casualty of the underworld violence you so recklessly courted."

​As his hand brushed against my face, every instinct I possessed screamed.

​I didn't flinch. I leaned forward as much as the iron chains permitted, gathered every drop of moisture left in my parched throat, and spat straight into his face.

​The mixture of blood and saliva struck him cleanly across his left cheekbone and down the lapel of his immaculate suit.

​Alastair didn't shout. He didn't flinch back in anger. He simply stood motionless for three agonizing seconds, his gray eyes narrowing into slits. He drew a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and slowly, deliberately wiped his cheek, tossing the stained cloth onto the damp concrete floor near my boots.

​"You think you're brave," he murmured.

​"I think you're already dead," I growled, my voice shaking with a fierce, trembling conviction that vibrated in my teeth. I slammed my boots against the floor, iron chains rattling violently against the chair legs. "You don't understand what you've done, Alastair. You took me, but you left him alive. You left Jarrah."

​A small, dismissive smile tugged at the corner of my father's lips. "The boy is a gutter rat ruling over a kingdom of garbage. He has no reach here. The gates of Kilsyth have stood for a century."

​"He will rip those gates off their hinges!" I screamed, leaning against the chains until the iron dug deep into my wrists, drawing fresh blood. "He won't just come for me, Alastair. He will bring the entire underworld of Victoria down on your head. He will tear this estate brick from brick; he will slaughter every guard you hire, and he will burn your entire fucking world to ash!"

​For the briefest second, a shadow crossed Alastair's eyes, a microscopic flicker of doubt. But then the iron curtain descended over his expression once more.

​He leaned down until his breath chilled my ear. "Then I had better make sure you aren't alive to see the fire."

​He turned on his heel and walked toward the heavy oak door, his cane clicking rhythmically against the stone floor. As the heavy iron bolts slid back into place from the outside, throwing me back into total blackness, my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

​I collapsed back against the cold iron of the chair, panting in the dark, my wrists bleeding into my sleeves. I was trapped thirty feet underground, chained like an animal, and doomed to die. But as I closed my eyes in the pitch black, I didn't see Alastair's cold face.

​I saw Jarrah's dark, stormy eyes. I felt the rough, calloused warmth of his hands against my skin. And I knew, with every fiber of my soul, that the storm was coming.