Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7: GILDED WALLS, HOLLOW SAFETY

|| Ashvara’s POV ||

The silver hairpin was still stuck in the wall beside where my head had been, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.

It was thin and long and ridiculously pretty, with a tiny curl of metal flowers at the end, and it trembled very slightly in the stone like it was still deciding whether it had missed me on purpose.

A few seconds ago it had been in a woman’s hair. Now it was a very expensive reminder that someone in this palace, someone I didn't know at all, wanted me dead.

Welcome to the Royal Pack, Ashvara. Third day of being a queen-to-be and already we have a body count of… zero, thanks to the man standing in front of me.

That was my very comforting thought.

Everything had happened too fast. Vespera had lunged. Mason had moved before I could even scream, his hand clamping around her wrist so hard I heard something creak, but she had twisted at the last second and the pin had torn free anyway.

It had skimmed my collarbone and buried itself in the wall with a sharp, ugly crack. After that came shouting, boots, Jax’s voice barking orders, and Vespera being dragged out of the room with her chin lifted high and her eyes still locked on me. She hadn’t even looked sorry. She had a very bitter expression on her face, one of a woman who would give heavens and earths to do what she wanted.

Now the room was eerily quiet, and uncomfortable.

The thin cut on my collarbone had already dried, a neat red line against my skin. It didn’t even hurt much, but it stung in a way that had nothing to do with the wound, a deep hollow sting that went all the way down to the part of me that had spent eighteen years expecting the next blow.

Silver. Of course it had to be silver.

Mason turned to me slowly. There was a small pale line on his cheek, the place where my knife had opened him in the carriage, already almost gone. He looked at me the way he had looked at me through that entire horrible journey, calm and gray and unreadable. Then he held out his hand, his palm opened up, waiting.

I stared at it.

It was a big hand, scarred across the knuckles, the hand of a man who had killed in wars and signed laws and caught a girl jumping out of a moving carriage like she weighed nothing. I knew what a hand like that could do. I knew it better than I knew my own name.

My arms wrapped around myself before I could stop them.

It was instinct. Pure, stupid, shameful instinct. I curled in on myself like a leaf in fire and stared at the floor, waiting for the slap, the grip on my hair, the roar that always followed when I did the wrong thing.

Nothing came.

After a long moment, I lifted my eyes. Mason’s hand was still there, hovering in the air between us. Then, very slowly, he let it drop to his side.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t sigh or frown or tell me I was being foolish. He just lowered his hand and stepped back, giving me the whole room around me like it was something I was owed.

And something in my chest cracked open, because if it was Astar? Astar would have grabbed me anyway.

Astar would have grabbed my wrist and dragged me up and told me to stop being so dramatic. Every single time I flinched, he had laughed and tightened his grip. This man, this king who could have ordered me to do anything, had taken his own hand back because I didn’t want it.

I did not know what to do with that. So I did nothing at all.

‘Ashvara…’ Seris whispered, very softly. ‘Why did he withdraw his hand?’

‘I… don't know,’ I whispered back, my lips trembling. ‘Don’t get excited, Seris.’

Alpha Mason said something to Jax in the doorway, low and clipped, and then he looked back at me one more time. For a second I thought he would say something…refreshing? Something to break the weird tension in the air?

I almost wanted him to, which scared me far more than the hairpin had.

“The attendants will settle you in,” he said instead. “Nobody will enter without you knowing.”

Then he left.

The attendants did in fact come two hours later, but I was very uncomfortable with them. They were watching me with caution, the way people watch a glass that’s too close to the edge of a table.

There were four of them, three young girls and one older woman with sharp eyes and a tight bun. They moved around me with gentle voices and carefully blank faces. They brought water, a clean nightgown, a tray of small cakes I didn’t touch. They asked if I needed anything, and I said no, and they exchanged a look that said they weren’t surprised.

I knew what they were seeing.

Their eyes kept drifting to the branding scar below my collarbone, the twisted silver-white mark Astar had burned into me on the night of the rejection. They looked at the silver burn around my ankle, still raw and weeping, with the pale skin around it puffed and angry. They looked at the bruises on my arms from the dungeon and the guards, yellow and purple like old flowers.

Then they looked at my face, and I watched them decide that I was something that would break soon.

They weren’t cruel about it, and that was almost worse. In the Silverfang Pack, people had looked at me like I was dirt. Here, they looked at me like I was a very fragile piece of porcelain that the king had brought home by mistake, and they were all quietly placing bets on how long I’d last.

“Is there anything else, my lady?” the older woman asked.

“No. Thank you.”

“We will be just outside.”

Then the door closed, and I was alone.

I didn’t sit or lie down, but instead I circled the room slowly, the way an animal circles a new cage, and I didn't touch anything.

I hated that it was a beautiful room. The bed was huge, piled with white pillows and a blue blanket that looked like it had never been washed in river water and beaten on a rock.

There were tall windows with thick curtains. A little table with a vase of pale flowers. A fireplace with the fire already lit, as if someone had known I was cold even before I did.

One door.

I checked it, and it wasn't locked, whuch was almost funny, because I had expected a lock, and the unlocked door felt like a trick. Beyond it, a long corridor, and at the far end of it, two guards in dark armor standing very still.

One window.

I pulled back the curtain to see that I was on the third floor. The ground was a long way down, a stretch of dark gardens and white gravel paths that glowed under the moon. I measured the drop in my head the way I had measured every drop my entire life. Too high for a human. Maybe survivable for a wolf, if the wolf was strong.

I wasn't strong at all.

‘We are in a palace, Ashvara,’ Seris said quietly. ‘Not the dungeon.’

‘A dungeon with better furniture,’ I muttered.

She knew me too well, so she didn't argue.

I walked back to the bed and sat on the very edge of it, fully dressed, still wearing the gown they’d given me, my spine so straight it ached. My hands rested on my knees. My feet were flat on the floor, ready to run.

Sitting back would have felt too much like trusting this place. Lying down would have felt like surrender, and I wasn’t ready to do either.

I wasn’t ready to trust anything inside these gilded walls, not the soft blankets, not the polite maids, not the flowers, and not the man who had knocked politely on my door before he had ever touched the handle.

Mason had said he wouldn’t hurt me.

Astar had said a lot of things too, once, in the beginning, when I was still stupid enough to hope.

Seris whimpered deep inside me, a thin, shaky sound.

‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. ‘Are you scared?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘Then why are we sitting so still? Why aren't we making plans to get out of here?’

‘Because we can’t afford to feel it right now,’ I told her. ‘Feelings get us hurt, but if we can think, it'll keep us alive.’

‘But…’

‘Be quiet, Seris. Please.’ My voice cracked just a little. ‘We need to think. Not feel.’

She went silent, like a candle pinched out.

Sleep came for me anyway.

I didn't notice it arriving. One moment I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my spine straight and my feet flat on the floor, counting the guards' footsteps in the corridor. The next, my head had tipped against the carved bedpost and the fire had burned down to a low orange glow.

I woke to silence.

For a few seconds, I didn't know where I was. There was no damp storeroom smell, no scratch of sacking against my cheek. Just soft sheets I didn't remember lying down on and a blanket someone had pulled up to my shoulders.

Someone.

My heart lurched. I sat up so fast that the room spun, and my eyes flew to the door, the window, the corners. Nothing had moved. The door was shut. The curtains hung still. The only sign that anyone had been there at all was a small cup of water on the nightstand, set neatly beside the lamp, with a folded cloth under it so it wouldn't leave a ring on the wood.

I stared at that cup for a very long time.

'Ashvara...' Seris murmured sleepily. 'Someone came in.'

‘Oh goddess, did they touch me?.'

‘No, but I tried, but you didn't wake up.'

‘Okay okay, Seris. It's fine.’

That was the part that frightened me. In Silverfang, I had woken at the faintest creak of a floorboard. I had slept like a rabbit in a trap for years, ready to run. And somewhere in this gilded, silent room, my body had decided that it was safe enough to let go.

It was a stupid, dangerous thing to do.

I picked up the cup, and the water was still cool. I held it in both hands, but I did not drink it.

I just sat there in the dark, listening to my own heartbeat, wondering who in this palace had been kind enough to tuck me in... and what they would want in return.