Chapter Eleven

The doors closed and there was no noise. But it wasn’t a peaceful quiet. This was a solemn, suspicious silence. It waited. Elara was standing directly in the centre of the room and she was hyper-conscious of her breath and the places Silas had just touched on her arms. He was grasping her tightly and comfortingly, with a kind of uncertainty at the same, as though he were afraid to hold a fragile and dangerous thing in his hand. “You're hurt,” Silas said again. I was worse, I answered, but that was no excuse to have a shaky body. He was letting her go gradually, lest she should disappear, should he move too fast. He turned his head, and heard not what was going on around him, but what she was doing, his breathing, his heart. You smell of smoke, he said, and of metal. Elara stared at the wound on her arm as the dried blood stained her. Some one has made an effort to ensure I do not see morning. A cheek muscle twitched and a tightening of the jaw took place in Silas. He walked

Last Updated : 2026-01-12

Chapter Twelve

The laughter had gone, and the feeling remained.Elara and Silas were frozen together as the trees consumed the shape of the stranger. It was a restless night, pressured. Wolves scampered up and down the walls, toothed stones, weapons in hand and faltering.No attack came.That was worse.Silas didn’t move. His head had been hewn out of stone and his jaw was strained and his head was leant forward as though he was listening to someone whose voice had been afar. Elara knew that look now. With his ears he was not listening.He was unconsciously listening.They have gone, said Draven after a very long time. “For now.”“For now,” Silas repeated. His voice was low. Controlled. Dangerous.Elara embraced herself. Her flesh was still trembling with the presence in the woods. That voice had known her. Not guessed. Known.Silas turned toward her. “You recognized him.”It wasn’t a question.Elara hesitated. The bond aroused, cordial and uncomfortable. She was well-chosen in the words she used. “

Last Updated : 2026-01-12

Chapter Thirteen

The night was irony-rainy.Elara walked after Silas in the small walk under the keep, and she laid her hand on the cold-building wall as she tried to balance herself. Each of the steps sounded too loudly in her ears. The relationship between them was now close as a pulled thread - taut, humming, vital.Silas, without batting an eyelid, walked on.Had any other person looked at him, he would have been seen a blind Alpha walking with unbelievable assurance. But Elara knew the truth.He was strolling over her eyes.“Slow down,” she whispered.He adapted instantly, and kept in step with her. “You’re shaking.”It was something that she had never thought to herself. Her hands were trembling not through the cold, but through the thought of Kayan being in chains somewhere in the darkness.“I’m fine,” she lied.Silas didn’t call her out. He rarely did. Rather, he said, you stay behind me when we get to the tower.“And if they surround us?”“They won’t,” he replied. “They want me talking. Not

Last Updated : 2026-01-13

Chapter Fourten

Elara could not recall how she came back to the keep.She only managed to keep with her the arms of Silas embraced round her, the odour of blood and rain, how the wood was closing over them like a mouth shut.When her full consciousness came back, she was seated on the edge of a low bed in a dark room. The stone walls were bare. Only one lamp was burning low on the table, and shaking.Her side throbbed.She looked down. Her ribs were bound about with clean bandage.Someone had undressed her.Her breath caught.The door creaked.Silas stepped inside.Every step was weighty, he moved slowly. His hair was wet, his shirt was rotated, but there was dried blood on his knuckles. Not hers.He shut the door behind him and stood there looking at her.Both remained silent a long time.Elara withdrew his hands in the blanket. “You let them take him.”Silas flinched.I told you believe me, he said and got quiet.Her laugh was disjointed and cut short. “Trust you? My brother was torn off and I cal

Last Updated : 2026-01-14

Chapter Fifteen

The steps leading to the bottom rooms were small and oily. The lighting was draining along the walls, and with a weak and crippled line, the shadows lengthened and distorted like living creatures.Elara kept her steps slow.Not that she was afraid to move but that all her instincts said that this was a place that knew pain.Silas passed by her side, one hand sweeping over the stone wall, the other tightly held at his side. His head was thrown back in the effort to hear something more solemn than sound.Draven led the way.“No guards?” Elara whispered.Draven didn’t look back. “I sent them away.”That made her uneasy.They reached the final door. Thick iron. Scores made by old marks on it, desperate, desperate, claw marks.Draven stopped. It may not be clean what happens next.Silas looked over his shoulder at Elara. “You don’t have to be here.”She didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I do.”Silas said nothing more.Draven opened the door.The cell reeked of blood and damp stone.The killer was cha