Page 26

Ambrose tells me it’s not my fault. He says it like it’s a balm, like the sound of his voice will soothe the filth under my skin.He’s wrong. Itismy fault, because no matter what Branwen does with the bond—no matter how deep she threads her commands into the muscle and marrow—Ifollow. I give in. I go to her when she calls.
And then I come back like this.
Fucked raw from the inside out. Every nerve burnt down to ash. Every inch of me humming with power that doesn’t belong to me anymore.
Ambrose watches me, his expression unreadable, but his gaze too sharp, too still. He's free to move around in this godforsaken gilded prison, unbound and untouched, though Branwen keeps him locked in the west wing like an artifact she doesn’t know how to use yet. She doesn’t want to break him. Not yet. She wants tounderstandhim first.
Me? She already knows what to do with me.
I’m built to kneel.
“Say something,” I rasp, slumped against the far wall, sweat still drying against my chest, my hands twisted in the ruined silk of Branwen’s sheets. “Or don’t. But don’t fucking stare at me like I can be saved.”
Ambrose doesn't blink. “I’m not trying to save you.”
“Then why are you here?”
He walks slowly toward me, his steps deliberate. Measured. That same fucking calm that drives me insane. Ambrose always makes you feel likeyou’rethe unpredictable one. Like he’s already seen how this ends, and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.
“You want me to say you’re broken?” he asks, voice low. “That Branwen’s ruined you so completely there’s nothing left worth crawling back for?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t deal in pity, Caspian. You know that.”
I close my eyes. Press my head back against the cold stone. “Then leave.”
“I would,” he says, kneeling in front of me. “But we both know that if she walked in right now and told you to slit my throat, you’d do it with a kiss.”
He says it without cruelty.
That’s what cuts deepest.
Because it’strue.
I could swear to resist her. I could look him in the eye and say I’m stronger than the bond. But the leash is inside me, buried in the part of me that doesn’t ask permission, that doesn’t need logic or loyalty. She can make me kill him. She can make me worship her while I do it.
And Iwould.
“I think I’d like it better if you hated me,” I whisper.
Ambrose’s eyes narrow, and for a heartbeat, I think hedoes. But then his gaze drops to my mouth, and something flashes there—cold and curious and unforgivable.
“I don’t hate you, Caspian,” he says. “I just haven’t decided if I’ll let you live.”
If he could kill me, I’d let him. I’d walk straight into the blade. Press my chest to the hilt and thank him for the favor. At least then, there’d be an end to it. No more bond. No more leash. No more being her favorite toy.
But Ambrose doesn’t move. He just kneels in front of me like I’m something worth retrieving. Like he hasn’t already counted the ways this ends badly.
“They’ll come for us,” he says, voice low. Certain. Like he believes in them. Like I’m supposed to believe too.
I let out a laugh so hollow it makes the walls flinch. “You say that like it means something.”
Ambrose’s head tilts, unreadable as ever, but his gaze never leaves mine. That unnerving, surgical focus. He sees too much. Always has. “It does mean something.”
“Even if they come,” I say, voice cracked but steady, “even if they tear down every wall and burn this place to the ground—what then? What am I to her, Ambrose? What will I be to Luna?”
He doesn’t answer.