Chapter Nine: The Dinner

I found the kitchen by accident. It was tucked behind a forgotten archway, half-concealed by vines that had no business growing in stone. The door creaked when I pushed it open, and the scent of ash and old wood met me like a memory I couldn’t place.

It wasn’t lavish. No crystal or gold. Just stone counters, a rust-stained basin, shelves carved straight into the wall. But someone—something—had used this space. The hearth was swept clean. The knives were sharp. A pot still hung above the cold embers.

It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did.

If I was going to be trapped here, then I would not be trapped waiting. I would move. I would act. I would do. In the corner of the kitchen was a stone cabinet, sealed with an old rusted latch. I cracked it open and found bundles of dried herbs, a netted bag of thick-skinned roots, and a few strange, knotted vegetables nestled in woven baskets. There were even sealed jars—thick dark preserves, grains, and something that looked like salt. I didn’t question why they were there, or who had left them. I simply used them.

I cooked. Not well—but with purpose. I peeled strange roots, boiled water that tasted faintly of iron, stirred things together with trembling fingers and the stubborn certainty that this, at least, was mine.

While the pot simmered, I thought of what the fae had said.

Disgust curled hot in my stomach. He’d killed his kind because he preferred silence? And the others? What had they done to deserve a prison so vast, so layered in magic, it seemed carved into the bones of the world?

I hated him the most.

The way he stood when he spoke—perfectly still, like motion itself bent around him. Regal and cruel, with a grace that felt more like a threat than beauty. My breath caught as my thoughts wandered, unwilling, from his voice to his lips. Sharp. Composed. The kind of mouth that never smiled unless he meant to draw blood with it.

And then lower—to the bare expanse of his chest, smooth and inked with shifting runes that never stopped moving. Broad and coiled with silent power, like his whole form was waiting to strike. Something hot and wrong pulsed through me.

What would it feel like to be held down by something that never needed to move fast to be dangerous? The question slithered in, unwanted. But there all the same.

I stirred harder.

Steam rose, curling around my face. I breathed it in like penance.

Then Calyx came to mind. His fangs. The sensation of them breaking skin. The blur of pain and something else, something that had made me ache between my thighs. I hated myself for it, but the memory returned, vivid and wrong. I imagined his mouth at my throat again—but this time, with his body against mine. Driving into me as he drank.

My legs clenched. I bit my lip. Hard.

Stop it.

I didn’t know if it was the prison or something inside me breaking. But the thoughts kept coming.

Miren’s hands. The way they moved—not with hesitation, but with reverent precision, like he already knew the shape of me by memory alone. His voice, a low murmur spun from silk and shadow. That calm, patient smile he wore like armor—promising devotion just as easily as it promised ruin. I imagined his lips at the corner of my mouth, barely brushing skin, as if claiming territory before pressing further. The thought made something inside me shudder.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Shook my head hard, as if the motion could knock the thought loose and fling it away. No.

Why was I thinking this way? Why now? They were monsters. Disgusting, vile, murderous. All of them.

Miren's voice murmuring praise I hadn’t earned echoed in my head again, gentler than anything I’d been given—but edged with a hunger that whispered he would not stop with words. I pressed my palms flat against the counter until my bones ached, chasing the chill of stone to smother the heat rising under my skin.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

I dropped the spoon.

It clattered against the stone floor. I stood there, panting, ashamed.

"Enough," I muttered.

The pot was ready. The table was bare.

I set it anyway.

Four bowls. One for each. I didn’t know if they’d eat. I didn’t care. I wanted them there. I wanted to see them—all of them—together. I wanted to ask them things no one had dared ask before.

And they would answer me.

Even if I had to drag each one to the table myself.

I stood at the edge of the chamber, just beyond the threshold of my will, and called out into the dark.

"Come."

The silence stretched. For a moment, I thought no one would answer. Then—

Footsteps.

Soft, deliberate, as if the sound had been woven into velvet. Miren emerged from the corridor like he’d been waiting for the invitation all along. Candlelight clung to him, casting warm shadows against his too-perfect features.

He smiled.

“Elarys,” he said, voice smooth as tea poured into porcelain. “You called.”

He didn’t wait for my answer. He glided to the table, pulling out a chair and settling in like a man stepping into a story he already knew the ending to. He didn’t touch the food. Just folded his hands in his lap and watched me.

“Where are the others?” I asked.

“They didn’t hear you,” he said gently. “Or they chose not to listen.”

I bristled. Of course, they wouldn’t come. Of course, they’d sulk and seethe and circle like beasts.

But I was done waiting.

“If they won’t come to me,” I said, already turning on my heel, “then I’ll go to them.”

Miren didn’t move to stop me. He just smiled, that quiet, knowing smile that made my skin crawl and tingle all at once.

“I’ll keep your seat warm.”

I shuddered as I walked away. 

I went to Calyx first. He was pacing in the darkened remains of his broken throne room, eyes shining like coins in shadow. He looked up sharply when I entered.

“You drained me. Twice,” I said without flinching. “The least you can do is come sit at a table and answer a few questions.”

His jaw clenched. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. Then he moved toward me, slow and reluctant, as though every step cost him.

“I didn’t ask you to bleed,” he murmured. “You offered it.”

I scoffed. “I didn’t offer it the first time.”

He stopped. His mouth thinned. But he nodded. Once.

He followed me back in silence.

Ruarc was next. I found him near his chains, crouched low, breathing in sharp bursts like his own body was the enemy.

“I made food,” I said. “Come eat.”

He growled low—almost a warning.

“I’m not here to touch you,” I said. “I just want you to sit. Be a man for five minutes instead of a beast.”

His eyes locked on mine, wild and wounded. Then, slowly, he stood. The chains rattled as he moved, but they did not stop him.

He said nothing, just followed.

The fae was last. I didn’t speak when I reached him—I just stood in the doorway and met his gaze.

He tilted his head. “Calling me, little star?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I cooked. There’s a place for you at the table. Come if you want.”

He smiled like a blade unsheathed. “I always come when I’m called.”

When I returned to the kitchen, all four of them were there. The bowls waited, untouched. The air was thick with tension, like something sacred was about to break.

And I was the one who would shatter it.

I stepped forward. My hands didn’t shake. My voice didn’t waver. But inside, something trembled—thin and sharp as cracked porcelain, straining beneath the surface.

“How many?” I asked, though the weight of the question felt like it might crush me.

The room didn’t move. Not even to breathe. The silence had teeth, and it sank them into the skin of the moment.

I let my gaze sweep over them—one by one. Miren, patient, too still to be harmless. Calyx, tense, every muscle drawn taut like a bow ready to snap. Ruarc, hunched and trembling as if guilt itself had become a collar. And the fae… unreadable. Always unreadable.

“How many others came before me?” I asked again, slower this time. “How many didn’t make it?”

The air thickened. Calyx looked down, his eyes shadowed with something like shame. Ruarc stared straight ahead, but not at anything real. Like if he focused hard enough, he could will the past away.

Miren’s voice broke the silence. “Not many.”

“Give me a number.”

“Four,” the fae said. The word was soft, but it landed with the weight of stone. “Four before you.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Four lives. Four women. Four endings.

“What happened to them?” My throat scraped raw around the words.

The silence that followed was worse than screaming.

I leaned forward, knuckles pressing pale against the table, palms flat and cold as I tried to ground myself in something—anything—other than the storm rising in my chest.

“You owe me that much,” I said, each syllable laced with the tremor I’d tried to hide. “One of you nearly killed me. The others… You can’t lie to me. Tell me the truth. What did you do?”

Calyx’s voice was hoarse, like something rusted had broken loose in his throat. “I drained her. I thought she’d survive.”

My breath caught. Just for a second. I stared at him, heart thudding, jaw tight. “You thought?”

“You knew she wouldn’t,” the fae said, cutting through the air like a knife through gauze. “You just didn’t care.”

Calyx flinched, the movement slight but sharp, like a slap he didn't see coming. Shame flickered across his face—then vanished, swallowed by silence.

I turned to Ruarc. “You?”

His head jerked up, eyes burning wild, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscles ticking. He growled low, not from defiance but from the effort of holding something in. “Didn’t kill her.”

“But she screamed,” the fae added smoothly. “Loudly. While Ruarc was inside her.”

The words landed like ice on bare skin. I stared at him. My hands curled into fists beneath the table. Cold surged through me, cold so deep it hurt to breathe.

Ruarc's head jerked toward him, eyes wide with fury. “You smug piece of shit.”

The fae tilted his head, smile faint. “Truth is rarely elegant.”

“She chose me,” Ruarc growled, voice shaking with something deeper than rage. “She wanted me. And you—”

“She was mine to break,” the fae said, unbothered. “Her pain was loud and offensive.”

Ruarc stood so fast his chair tipped back. His hands braced against the table, claws digging into the wood. He snarled, low and guttural. “You left me knotted to a corpse. For hours.”

A silence spread—not shocked, not scandalized. Just heavy. Ancient. Like the room remembered her, too.

“And yet,” the fae murmured, “you came when she called.”

My chest constricted. “You killed her because you didn’t like the sound she made?”

“Yes.”

The word was ice. And final.

I felt my stomach twist, bile rising. No apology. No remorse. Just rot, woven into beauty.

I turned to Miren. “And you?”

He didn’t avert his gaze. Didn’t even flinch. “I loved her,” he said, soft as a lullaby spun in shadow. Too soft. Too easy.

Something inside me cracked. “And so?”

His expression didn’t change. “I made sure she never left me again.”

The chill in my bones turned to nausea. I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through it—but the air felt too thick, too wrong. I could still feel their answers clinging to my skin like rot.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. But I had to.

Because I was still at this table. And I was still alive.

For now.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick, weighted. The kind of silence that presses into the bones and hums there, like a second heartbeat.

I opened my eyes and looked around the table.

The bowls sat untouched. The steam had long since faded. The food had gone cold.

“And now I’m here,” I said, quieter this time. “Am I supposed to be next?”

The question hung in the air, trembling like a thread pulled too tight.

No one spoke.

My pulse stuttered. For a breath, I imagined what it would feel like—dying here, nameless like the others. Would the prison remember me? Would they?

The candlelight flickered.

Not from wind. There was no wind. The shadows rippled like the walls themselves had drawn breath. The stone beneath my feet pulsed once, faint and deep—an echo that didn’t belong to sound.

The prison was listening.

Watching.

Reacting.

I swallowed hard. My body felt too light and too heavy all at once. My skin tingled like static. My hands lay flat on the table, but I couldn’t feel the wood beneath them.

I was shaking. Just a little. Just enough.

Inside, the tremor had turned to a scream. One I didn’t let out. One I wouldn’t.

Maybe that was answer enough.