Everyone Else Can Burn

Move. Now.

That was the last thing Elara remembered, a man's voice, cold as a blade, and then a long, swaying dark.

She woke to the smell of cedar and woodsmoke.

For a moment she lay perfectly still, afraid to open her eyes. The blankets were thick. The bed was warm. There was no stone under her cheek and no lock turning in the dark.

Lyra?

Nothing. Just a faint flutter at the back of her mind, like a moth against a window. It was there, and then it wasn't.

"She's awake," someone whispered.

Elara's eyes flew open. A thin, nervous woman in a healer's gray apron hovered at the bedside. Behind her, filling the doorway like a wall, stood Kaelen Blackthorn.

The sight of him went through her like ice water.

She knew that face. She knew those storm-gray eyes. The man from the dining hall. The man who had broken the cellar door with one hand while four Silverpine guards knelt in the gravel. The man who had given Dorian one day, and then came back and taken his pack apart.

He bought me, Elara thought, and her stomach turned. *He asked for me as a price, and Dorian wouldn't sell, so he took me. I'm his now.*

"Alpha," the healer said, bowing so low her braid brushed the floor. "The fever broke an hour ago. I only need to check her ribs."

"How long was she in danger?" Kaelen asked.

"Two nights, Alpha. The cold had settled in her lungs. If you'd arrived a few hours later..."

"I didn't ask what might have happened." Kaelen's voice was perfectly even. "If she takes one painful breath because of your carelessness, you will answer for it."

"Yes, Alpha. Of course."

"Then finish. Quickly."

The healer's hands shook as she pressed Elara's ribs. Elara held very still and kept her eyes lowered. She had learned long ago that it was safer to be nothing. A table. A chair. A woman who didn't breathe loudly enough to be noticed.

When the healer fled, Kaelen came into the room and shut the door.

He took one step toward the bed.

Elara's whole body jerked. The headboard knocked the wall. Her hands flew up in front of her face before she knew they were moving, and a small, broken sound came out of her throat that she would have given anything to take back.

"Please," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Alpha. I didn't mean to..."

Silence.

She waited for the blow. She waited with her eyes squeezed shut and her heart hammering so hard it hurt.

It didn't come.

When she dared to peek between her fingers, Kaelen was no longer in front of her. He had walked all the way back to the far wall, beside the window, and stood there with his arms folded and his gaze fixed on the glass, as if it were the most interesting thing in the room. The whole width of the room lay between them.

"You are not in trouble," Kaelen said. His voice was low and very flat. "You will not apologize in this house."

"Yes, Alpha," Elara whispered. She said it the way she said everything now, into the blanket.

"You've been unconscious for two days. This is my packhouse. Blackthorn territory."

"Yes, Alpha."

"You're safe."

She didn't answer. She did not believe it. She had been safe once, in a field of white clover, with a man who said he loved her.

Kaelen's jaw tightened. For a moment he seemed to be searching for another word, and then he seemed to decide there wasn't one. He nodded once toward the bedside table. "There's broth. Eat."

Elara stared at the bowl. Her hands wouldn't move. *It's a test,* she thought. *If I take it, I'm being greedy. If I don't, I'm being defiant.*

"Eat," Kaelen said again, not unkindly, and then added, as if he'd found something he could do: "I'll leave. You can eat in peace."

He crossed to the door by the longest path, along the wall, never once closer than six feet. At the threshold he paused.

"No one will touch you here," Kaelen said, without turning. "I'll see to it."

The door closed.

Elara sat very still. She waited until the footsteps faded, waited another full minute, and only then did her hands start to shake.

---

The maid who brought the water jug an hour later was no older than seventeen. She came in on tiptoe, set it down with a trembling hand, and caught Elara's eye.

"Is he gone, miss?" the girl whispered.

"I... yes."

"Thank the Goddess." The girl pressed a hand to her chest. "He frightens us all half to death. Last month, a boy in the stables dropped a bucket and he was sent to the north mines for it. For a *bucket.*"

Elara swallowed. "He's cruel?"

"Not to us, miss. Not unless we give him a reason." The girl glanced at the door. "But if he looks at you, you want to be anywhere else."

*So it's not just me,* Elara thought. It should have comforted her. It didn't.

"Why did he bring me here?" she asked, barely audible.

"I don't know, miss." The girl bobbed a nervous curtsy. "But he's given orders. No man's allowed in this wing unless there's a woman in the room. Anyone who breaks it, he said, loses his hands." She dropped her voice. "He's never given an order like that. Not for anyone."

Elara's grip tightened on the blanket.

*What does he want?*

When the maid left, she finally picked up the spoon. She ate slowly, watching the door the whole time, and felt almost ashamed of how good the broth tasted.

---

Evening came. Elara did not sleep.

Footsteps passed in the corridor, some heavy, some light. Once she heard Kaelen's voice, low and clipped, issuing an order, and a man's answering "Yes, Alpha" in a tone so stiff with fear that it made her skin crawl. Every time a shadow crossed the gap under her door, her breath stopped.

*Lyra,* she tried softly. *Please. I'm so scared.*

A long silence. Then, so faint she almost missed it, a ripple, like a hand brushing water.

Tired,her wolf whispered. So... tired.

*I know, Elara said. Tears slid down her temples into her hair. *Sleep.*

Some time after midnight, voices rose outside.

"...just arrived, Alpha. A rider from Silverpine. He won't give the letter to anyone but you."

"Where is he?"

"At the gate."

"Hold him there." Kaelen's voice was very low. "If he moves, break something."

Footsteps. Then the door opened a crack, and a thin blade of lamplight fell across the floor.

Elara squeezed her eyes shut and made her breathing slow.

Kaelen didn't come in. She could tell by the silence. He stood on the threshold, a dark shape against the light, and for a long moment he only watched her. She felt it like a hand on the back of her neck. Her whole body strained with the effort of lying still.

*Please don't come closer. Please.*

Paper rustled. He was reading.

Then came a small, sharp sound, a match flaring, and the smell of burning parchment.

Elara cracked one eye open.

In the corridor, the letter curled to ash in Kaelen's hand. In the last second before the flame took it, she caught a few lines of looping handwriting she would have known anywhere, and the sentence at the bottom of the page.

*You have no idea what you've taken.*

Kaelen dropped the ash, brushed his fingers clean, and looked up.

His eyes met hers through the crack.

Elara's heart stopped. She had been caught watching. She braced for the door to slam open, for the footsteps to cross the floor, for the punishment that always followed being seen.

None of it came.

Kaelen stood perfectly still. His face gave nothing away. Then, very slowly, as if she were a wild thing he was afraid to spook, he drew the door closed, an inch at a time, until the latch clicked.

His footsteps retreated down the hall.

She lay awake until dawn, shaking, listening to her own heartbeat.

What did Dorian mean?

And what does that man want with me?