Chapter 7

Lucian moved with the violence of a thunderstorm, his massive frame crossing the distance between us before I could draw breath. The bolt intended for my chest struck instead with a sickening thud, embedding itself deep in the flesh of his shoulder. I felt the impact reverberate in my own teeth.

He didn’t scream. Instead, a low, savage sound emanated from his throat, part growl, part grunt, and the force of the shot drove him half a step into me, pinning me flat against the cold stone wall beneath the weight of his body.

“Move,” he snarled, though it was he who was momentarily immobilized.

The woman in the hood was already reloading, her hands deft and practiced as the gray light seeped down from the grate. I pushed against Lucian’s chest, finally freeing myself, and he yanked me sideways just as another bolt slammed into the wall behind us, splintering the air where we had just stood.

“You’re bleeding,” I blurted out, still reeling from the shock. It was the only truth my stunned mind could grasp.

“Observant,” he replied with a bite, his voice strained as he dragged me down the narrow passage, urgency pressing us both forward.

I hated how effortlessly he moved, even with a wound, and despised that I had to stumble to keep up. His injured arm hung stiffly at his side, and every time the passage narrowed and he had to turn his shoulder, his jaw tightened. He refused to acknowledge the pain, but the blood seeping through his shirt told a different story.

The oppressive darkness stretched ahead of us, broken only by the occasional shaft of gray light filtering through cracks overhead. Behind us, footsteps echoed on the stone, unhurried, almost languid, the sound of someone who knew this tunnel well and had no intention of rushing toward the inevitable.

“There’s no way out this direction,” I panted, desperation creeping into my voice.

“Forty feet ahead, there’s a cistern grate that drops into the lower bailey.” His voice crackled with a pain he refused to acknowledge. “I’m not explaining Citadel architecture to the woman who tried to kill me with an inkwell this morning.”

“I’d gladly take the inkwell back if I could aim it better,” I shot back.

A strangled, humorless huff escaped him, almost a laugh before it turned to ashes in his throat. He pressed on, his good hand catching the wall briefly as he rounded the final bend.

And there it was: the grate, a dark circle in the floor rimmed with rusted iron, a rope ladder coiled beside it like an invitation. Beyond the bars, I could make out nothing but a shaft of darkness descending into the lower bailey.

“Down,” he commanded. “Now.”

“You first. You’re injured.”

“I said down.”

He shoved me toward the opening, and for one disorienting instant, his hand clasped my arm instead of my wrist, skin against skin. The shock jolted through me like wildfire, igniting a connection so powerful it left me momentarily breathless. It wasn’t merely the sensation of being touched. Something seemed to pass between us, an unfamiliar awareness that flared beneath my skin before I could understand what I was feeling.

Lucian’s grip faltered.

For a fraction of a second, he stared at me as though he, too, had felt something impossible. His fingers loosened, and he withdrew his hand abruptly, as if my skin had burned him.

“Go!” he said, his voice hoarse.

I scrambled down the ladder, which creaked ominously beneath my weight. The rungs were slick with moisture, and I had to grip them tightly to keep my feet from slipping. When I reached the bottom, I dropped the last six feet into ankle-deep water. The stale stench of stagnant water filled my nostrils, carrying the unpleasant smell of rust, damp stone, and long-forgotten secrets.

Lucian followed too quickly for a man with a bolt buried in his shoulder. He landed in a crouch, one hand striking the stone floor for balance, and hissed through his teeth. For a moment, he remained there, his head bowed, his breathing uneven. Then he straightened as though he could force his body to obey through sheer stubbornness.

Footsteps halted just above the grate.

We both froze.

I looked up through the iron bars. A figure crossed the dim light overhead, its movements unhurried and deliberate. A second figure joined it, taller and broader. Their shadows stretched across the opening, and their low voices merged into an ominous murmur that chilled me more than any shout could.

“She’s not alone,” I whispered, dread creeping into my words.

“Neither are we,” Lucian replied.

He caught my arm and pulled me away from the opening, guiding me into the narrow recess between two sections of the damp stone wall. His good hand pressed firmly against my sternum, holding me back from the light filtering through the grate. The pressure had infuriated me just an hour ago, when every order he gave felt like another reminder that I was a prisoner in his world. Now, with armed pursuers only a few feet above us, it was the only thing keeping me from stepping into view.

I could feel the movement of his chest as he breathed beside me. His injured shoulder brushed the stone, and he immediately shifted away from it, swallowing whatever sound the movement threatened to draw from him.

The voices above grew sharper. One of the men said something I couldn’t make out, followed by a brief, impatient response. A boot scraped against the iron grate.

I stopped breathing.

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

Then the footsteps retreated.

The voices faded into the distance, leaving only the slow drip of water somewhere behind us. The cistern fell quiet again, but the silence did nothing to ease the tension in my chest.

Lucian didn’t remove his hand.

I didn’t pull away.

“You should have let that bolt hit me,” I said softly, because the dark demanded silence. “It would have solved all your problems.”

“It would have solved nothing.” His voice was rough, stripped of its usual frigid tone. “A dead hostage teaches me nothing. A dead bond teaches me even less.”

I turned my head toward him.

“Is that all I am to you? A puzzle with a pulse?”

“What else would you be?” he shot back, too quickly.

I felt him tense beside me. His expression shifted almost imperceptibly, and for a moment, I wondered whether he regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.

He said nothing more.

Turning my head fully, I realized his face was closer than I had expected. The faint light filtering through the grate caught the sharp line of his ink-stained jaw, the blood darkening his shoulder, and his eyes, which, for once, weren’t laced with hatred.

There was no tenderness in his expression, not exactly. But the usual cold certainty was missing, replaced by something I couldn’t identify.

For a moment, neither of us moved. I could hear his uneven breathing and the slow drip of his blood onto the stone.

Then he stepped back, breaking the fragile closeness between us. The cold mask returned to his voice, shutting out whatever had briefly surfaced in his expression.

“We need to extract that bolt before the wound closes around it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Lycan healing is swift. If the wound seals, I’ll have to cut it out again, and I’d rather not bleed out explaining to Cassian why I was alone in a cistern with his prime suspect.”

“Then let me help.”

He looked at me as though I had suggested something profoundly unreasonable.

“You want to put your hands on an open wound on my body,” he said, his lips twisting into a humorless grin. “Forgive me if that doesn’t inspire confidence.”

“I want to avoid drowning down here with a man too proud to accept help,” I replied. “Sit down before you fall down.”

For a moment, I thought he would refuse simply because the suggestion had come from me. His jaw tightened, and he glanced toward the grate before looking back at his shoulder.

Then his knees wavered.

He caught himself against the wall, his good hand braced against the stone. The movement sent a fresh stain of blood spreading across his shirt.

“Sit down, Lucian,” I repeated, this time without the sarcasm.

He gave me a look that promised a long and unpleasant argument later, but he finally moved toward a dry ledge along the wall. Lowering himself onto it, he kept his injured arm close to his body, his fingers flexing once as though testing whether he could still move them.

The murky water lapped below the ledge.

I knelt before him, my heart racing as I tore a strip from the hem of my ruined dress. Up close, the injury looked worse than it had from a distance. The bolt had penetrated deep into his shoulder, its shaft protruding from the blood-soaked fabric. The metal head was barbed, and the surrounding cloth clung to the wound.

Blood continued to seep around the shaft, dark against the fabric.

“This will hurt,” I warned, my voice barely above a whisper.

“I’ve survived worse,” he replied with a grimace.

“I haven’t,” I said.

His eyes lifted to mine.

For a brief moment, I wondered whether he understood what I meant. I had never done this before. I had never knelt beside an injured man in a filthy cistern, surrounded by darkness, with armed strangers searching for us above. I had never been forced to decide whether I trusted someone who had given me so many reasons not to.

But there was no time to dwell on any of it.

I gripped the shaft of the bolt as firmly as I could. The metal was slick, and my fingers trembled despite my efforts to steady them.

“Hold still.”

“Just get it out.”

I drew a breath and pulled.

The barbed head resisted, catching against the flesh as I drew it back through the wound. Lucian’s entire body stiffened. His good hand slammed against the edge of the ledge, his knuckles whitening as he fought to keep himself still.

A low, primal cry escaped him, raw enough to make my stomach twist. He bit down on whatever other sound threatened to emerge, but I could see the effort it took to keep from wrenching himself away.

Then the bolt came free.

I nearly dropped it.

For one terrible instant, pain exploded behind my ribs.

I gasped, my fingers flying open as the metal clattered against the stone. The sensation was so sudden and intense that I couldn’t tell whether I had struck myself or whether something inside me had torn.

But there was no wound on my body.

The pain wasn’t mine.

It was his.

I felt his agony bloom within me, a searing pulse that seemed to spread from my chest through my arms and down into my stomach. My breath caught, and I pressed a trembling hand against my ribs, instinctively searching for an injury that wasn’t there.

Lucian’s good hand froze against the ledge.

He stared at me.

I stared back, unable to speak.

The pain faded gradually, leaving behind a strange, lingering ache beneath my sternum. I could still see the blood on my hands, still hear the ragged breathing coming from Lucian’s throat, but the most frightening part was the certainty that, for those few seconds, I had experienced something that belonged to him.

Something that should have been impossible for me to feel.

“What was that?” he rasped.

His voice had lost every trace of sarcasm.

“I…” I swallowed, struggling to find words. My gaze dropped to the blood coating my fingers. “I don’t know.”

“Look at me.”

I lifted my head.

He was studying my face with an intensity that made me uncomfortable, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and alarm.

“What did you feel?”

I hesitated.

“The pain,” I admitted. “When you cried out, I felt it too.”

His face hardened.

“That’s impossible.”

“Then explain it.”

He said nothing.

I reached for the strip of fabric I had torn from my dress and began wrapping it around his shoulder, trying to concentrate on the practical task rather than the sensation still lingering in my chest. The fabric quickly darkened with blood. I pulled it tighter, securing it as best I could without aggravating the wound.

My hands were still shaking.

“Nothing about this is possible,” I snapped, wrestling my fear alongside my rage. “And yet here we are, Your Highness, bleeding together in a sewer, pretending we don’t share this inexplicable bond.”

Before I could pull away, he caught my wrist.

His grip was feverishly tight, and I flinched at the sudden contact. For an instant, we both went still, watching each other as though either of us might discover the answer simply by looking hard enough.

“Don’t speak of this to anyone.”

“Who would I tell? My cellmate? The rats?” I shot back.

“I mean it, Elena.”

The weight of my name landing in his voice was almost more unsettling than his warning. He rarely said it without sounding as though he were accusing me of something.

“If the Council discovers there’s anything between us beyond a prisoner and her captor, it won’t matter which side of this war we’re on. We’ll both be dead before we understand why.”

Something in his expression told me he wasn’t making an idle threat.

“Why?” I asked. “What does the Council know about this bond?”

His fingers tightened briefly around my wrist before he released me.

“Enough.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

I stared at him, searching his face for some indication of what he was hiding. He looked away first, his attention shifting toward the grate overhead.

Whatever he knew, he wasn’t prepared to share it.

I freed my wrist slowly and deliberately, refusing to show him how badly my hands were trembling.

“Then we agree on something, Prince. I refuse to die for a feeling I never wanted in the first place.”

For a moment, his eyes returned to mine.

Something flickered across his face, too brief for me to identify. Then he looked away again, his jaw tightening as though he had forced the thought back into whatever dark corner he kept his secrets.

Above us, faint yet urgent, a horn sounded through the grate.

Three notes shattered the fragile quiet.

Lucian’s gaze snapped toward the opening, and every trace of our exchange vanished behind the masks we wore.

“That’s the search call,” he said, pushing himself upright.

He rose too quickly. His injured shoulder dipped, and he caught himself against the wall before he could lose his balance. His face tightened as he forced himself to stand straight.

“Cassian found the war room empty and raised the whole garrison.”

“Good. Let them find us,” I replied defiantly.

He turned toward me sharply.

“No.”

His hand gripped my arm again. This time, neither of us flinched at the contact, but the sensation returned almost immediately: a brief, electric awareness that passed between us and left a shiver crawling down my spine.

Lucian felt it too. I saw it in the sudden stillness of his fingers.

Neither of us mentioned it.

“If they find us like this, together, alone, wounded, with only each other as a witness, they’ll assume the worst. And that worst will get us both killed.”

“Then what do you suggest?” I pressed, my heart pounding.

He glanced toward the ladder, then down at the blood staining his shirt. His gaze lingered on the bolt lying on the stone beside the ledge before returning to me.

I could almost see the calculations unfolding behind his eyes.

“We tell them you finished what you started with the inkwell,” he proposed quietly. “That I chased you down here. That the wound is your doing, not the woman with the crossbow.”

I stared at him.

“You want me to confess to stabbing you?” I challenged incredulously.

“I want us both alive by morning,” he shot back, his eyes fierce. “Choose, Elena. Your pride or your life. You can’t have both tonight.”