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Sophia turns to me slowly,her eyes hollow. “I’m sorry, Zoey,” she says, the words sounding far from genuine. “It won’t happen again.”

I nod once, accepting her fake apology with the cool detachment I’ve learned from Aerix. “You’re forgiven.”

Aerix steps aside, and Sophia hurries past him, her shoulders hunched. The door closes behind her with a soft click that somehow sounds like a prison cell locking.

But her departure doesn’t relieve the pressure in my chest. If anything, it makes it worse. The walls haven’t stopped creeping inward. The ceiling hasn’t stopped lowering. The air still refuses to move.

Aerix turns to me, his head tilted in that predatory way that usually makes my pulse quicken with desire.

Today, it only adds to the suffocating weight.

“You lied,” Aerix says, stepping closer to me. His wings draw in tight behind him, but the edges tremble, betraying the storm beneath. “Convincingly.”

The silence between us stretches, sharp and trembling.

“What am I to you?” I ask, the question tumbling from me, raw and unguarded.

His head tilts, frost swirling around his fingertips. “What do you mean?”

“You called me your consort,” I say. “You’ve never called me that before.”

“Ah.” His wings shift, feathers rustling in that way I’ve come to recognize as amusement. “Does the title please you?”

He’s deflecting.

At least, he’stryingto deflect.

I won’t let him.

“Titles mean nothing without substance,” I say, holding strong, even though everything about his cold aura warns me that I’m close to crossing a line. “You keep me in these rooms day after day, but you won’t let me walk beside you through court. You say I’m yours, but I’m not. Not really. And if this is all I’ll ever see,” I continue, gesturing to the ornate walls of my gilded prison, “then these rooms will kill me just as surely as if you’d drained me dry that first night in the bunker.”

The air between us grows thick with frost, eachcrystal a reflection of the truth I’ve just spoken. His wings pull tight against his back, and for a moment, he looks almost human in his stillness—vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen before.

When he finally speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.

“I’ve given you everything I thought you wanted.” His eyes search mine, midnight darkening to pitch black. “Safety. Comfort. Beauty.” The words fall between us like shattered glass. “Protection from a world that would destroy you.”

As he speaks, something shifts in his expression—a crack in the perfect façade. His wings flare, stretching to their full span, the shadow they cast engulfing the room. Wind circles us, cold enough to burn my skin, a physical manifestation of the storm building inside him.

“Do you know how many humans survive their first month in the Night Court?” he asks, continuing without allowing me to answer. “Their first year? Their first decade?” The air whips around us now, knocking over a vase, scattering pages from my sketchbook. “Almost none, Zoey. Almost none.”

Suddenly, the wind stops.

“And still, it isn’t enough,” he continues, although it isn’t a question, but a realization—one that seems to wound him in some fundamental way.

But I don’t take back my words.

Instead, I look around at all the beautiful things Aerix has given me. The blood pen, the harpsichord, the painting set, the books—and feel nothing but the weight of confinement.

“I can’t live like this forever,” I repeat, quiet but unwavering. “I can’t grow old and die within four walls, no matter how many gifts you give me to keep me busy inside them.”

The frost spreading from where he stands creeps outward, delicate ice patterns climbing up the legs of the furniture and crawling across the floor toward me.

He studies my face, searching for something. Perhaps a version of me that could be content with what he’s built, a version that would choose luxurious captivity over uncertain freedom.

“Aerix—”

My whisper is a plea. Or a warning. Or both.