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Sylvia

T here was enough iron present here to massacre all of Elysia—perhaps a dozen fae villages.

Its sharp aura clouded my senses and made thinking difficult. My wings ached from prolonged flight, but I didn’t have the luxury of landing to gather myself. Not if I wanted to survive.

Dodging around the dangling chains that wound through the peak of the dome, I searched the circumference for the seventh time. Surely there was a hole somewhere in the patchwork of materials, a sloppy gap someone neglected to reinforce with iron. None of the gaps were quite large enough to squeeze through without the risk of burning myself. Try as I might, I couldn’t summon magic this close to the fencing to do any targeted damage to the enclosure. Even the gem shard’s power was unresponsive when I plunged my hand into my pocket.

Begrudgingly, I acknowledged that the barbarians below me had done a very good job building this damn cage.

The evidence of past prisoners was written all around me—scorch residue, faint claw marks, caked blood disguised as rust. Spots in the metal had been torn away and rebuilt smarter. I couldn’t fathom how many creatures had died in here, teaching a new lesson to these brutes about monster containment each time.

And now, I was the latest lesson.

Swiping panicked tears— no , I wouldn’t cry like a damn child— I noted the fresh blood splattered on me. Bright crimson spotted my hands, my clothes. Surely not mine, and not from the near-black puddle surrounding the alp. Perhaps the blood belonged to the hunter who’d grabbed me near the entrance. If he lost function of that hand forever, I hoped he would remember me—how I was not the fragile creature I appeared.

A dozen feet below, the crowd of hunters roared with renewed fervor—twenty bloodthirsty cheers overlapping and making my ears ring.

Three figures gathered at the doorway. The heavy chains sealing the Pit clanged as they were unwound. I balled my fists at my side, bracing myself. Whoever they sent in to finish me off, I would do the same to his hand, too. I would leave him with nothing but ragged, frozen stumps.

If he doesn’t kill you first, a demented voice rang in the back of my head.

Finally, the door creaked open, and a hulking figure filled the frame. He was easily one of the tallest humans present. Dark hair was swept off a handsome face, brows furrowing over earth-colored eyes that methodically surveyed his surroundings. He appeared to carry only a slender bar of iron as a weapon, but I knew that powerful frame was capable of great damage unaided.

“ Jon ,” I breathed, unable to believe my eyes.

He was here . He’d come for me.

The door slammed shut, locking audibly with a metallic scrape. I couldn’t make sense of that part. Whatever the hell was happening, I wanted to face it from the safety of Jon’s hands.

Choking back a sob of relief, I started toward him, only to stop short.

Why is he looking at me like that?

Someone rapped a beer can against the side of the fence near Jon. “We don’t got all day here, kid. Move your ass!”

I glanced behind me to see if Jon’s glower was aimed at someone else. When I faced him again, he was removing his jacket. He tossed it aside and picked up the iron rod, weighing it. His knuckles went white with devastating clarity as he secured his grip—hands that had brushed my cheek like I was a delicate treasure. Right now, I could only remember how those same hands had beheaded a vampire leader as easily as slicing an apple.

He looked so cold, yet mournful as he looked up at me, stepping closer. He didn’t look like my Jon. I recoiled from his approach.

What’s happening? I begged silently with my eyes. Jon’s gaze was an unreadable storm of emotion. I couldn’t pluck an answer out of the dozens churning there.

I surveyed the ravenous crowd once more. The money passing hands again, the hungry eyes. I tried to spot Cliff, but I still couldn’t make him out in the chaos. I hoped he was safe.

Jon circled my position from the ground with predatory grace, careful to avoid the deformed carcass. He came to a pause just beneath me while the shouts rose to a deafening volume.

Cheering for him.

The fragile seed of hope in my chest broke. Jon wasn’t here to save me. He was here to kill me.

No . I was out of my mind. He had to be pulling some kind of ruse, but the thought of what he must have in mind was unspeakable. I would not feed these monsters’ bloodlust. I would not put on a show for them. There had to be another way. Jon couldn’t simply free me, but surely he couldn’t be blamed if I simply found a way out.

I pointedly stayed out of range, flitting higher over his head in another maddening search.

The crowd was displeased. A glint caught my eye, sailing over my head. A brown bottle shattered on the dome. Glass rained. Choking on a scream, I drove to avoid the shards. A few stray bits nicked my arms and wings.

Before I could make sense of how far down I’d flown, Jon caught me by my legs. My vision blurred as he swung me down and pinned me to a wooden crate near the door. Splinters dug into my back and wings.

I struggled, clawing at his hand. The jeering was closer, too deafening to allow me to think straight. And Jon looked just like one of them, glaring down at me with that dark gleam while his hand gripped me tighter than it should— just like in training . I wiggled uselessly, wondering if this was part of the ruse. I couldn’t tell anymore.

If I was wrong, if he wasn’t acting, my bones were going to snap in his loveless grasp.

“Jon,” I gasped, and he squeezed me tighter, silencing me.

My eyes swiveled madly. There were beers in many hands. Liquid I could use. The swamp water below was too faint, too far away through the iron. But from this close… those glass bottles could save me.

Fight back .

I snapped my attention back to Jon, unsure if he had said it aloud or if it was only in my head.

The iron bar he slowly moved toward me was certainly real. The crowd roared with every inch it drew nearer to my skin. I whipped my hands up and conjured a powerful thrust of frigid air, knocking Jon back.

His grip relinquished me as he slammed into the wall, making the Pit rattle and clang.

In my mad scramble into the air, I could only think of protecting myself. Even in my panic, the hours of training surfaced like a lifeline. I conjured a wall of ice to thwart his approach as he grunted back to his feet. I wouldn’t be able to maintain it for long—even with the humidity and terror-driven magic, there was only so much strength coursing through me.

The crowd gave another nasty cheer as Jon shattered the ice wall with his iron bar. He stalked toward me precisely the way he approached a monster—a serpent ready to strike with bite after bite until its prey was dead.

But in the heat of my retaliation, his expression wasn’t quite so composed anymore. Something broke through the unreadable stare locked on me, and it wasn’t malice or bloodlust.

Terror. Grief. Desperation.

This wasn’t a man who hated me but one who cared for me beyond words, beyond reason.

And now I couldn’t shake the awful thought that arrived with the realization—what if he accepted there was no possible way for me to leave this outpost alive? What if this was his last kindness toward me—a swift mercy kill to ensure that none of these other hunters tortured me to death?

His expression darkened once more as he recomposed himself.

Corner him in a no-win situation and see what he does.

He charged, swinging the rod in a wide arc. I zipped past it safely, but the proximity to the toxic metal made me all the more lightheaded. There was no time to recover. He swung again, this time far too close.

Upon his third swing, I focused my attention on the beer behind me. Liquid spurted from two bottles, coming together in a javelin aimed for Jon’s face. He staggered, just as startled by my aim as I was. The discolored ice barely whistled past his head, shattering into the side of the cage and making a number of hunters curse and scatter.

Jon touched his face, interrupting a smooth line of blood that trickled from where my attack grazed him.

Stars, I wanted to heal him. I wanted to beg for his forgiveness.

But his expression hadn’t changed, those empty, predator eyes fixed on me like he would not rest until I was nothing but a corpse at his feet. Everything about him drew me back to that night in Dottage, when he was but a hulking shadow hellbent on killing me for daring to exist .

Jon Nowak is dangerous .

So was I.

With a cry, I conjured another three beer javelins. Hunters shouted their ire, glass shattering as they dropped their bottles in alarm. Jon swung the iron, decimating two spears. He caught the third in his hand. Blood pooled between his fingers. He threw my weapon back at me—and missed.

I took control and redirected it before the ice could break against the cage. While he dodged, I couldn’t help but wonder how he missed me by such a wide margin—was it because he had no intention of hurting me, or because the splintered ice in his palm threw off his aim?

Fuck , there had to be a way out of this alive—if I could only untangle his intentions. I flew back up, desperate for a breather. I conjured an icy shield over my head in case another beer bottle was tossed at the dome.

Below, I finally caught sight of Cliff. I’d recognize his chiseled profile and dark gold hair anywhere. He was weaving through the churning crowd, his eyes locked on me. I tried to read his face, to find some kind of answer there, but—

Something lurched at me from the corner of my eye. Iron. Chains!

I ducked just in time and saw Jon grabbing one of the chains, pulling hard. The connected ones at the top near me swayed and jumped, shattering the veil of ice over my head. One slammed into my knees—thank the stars for my ankle-length trousers that protected me from an agonizing burn—and sent me hurtling downward.

I gathered my bearings, only to see the entire fucking crate flying at me. With a shriek, I flew out of its path, flinching my hands to my ears as it exploded into splintered wood against the fence. He isn’t holding back, I thought, tasting wood dust in my mouth.

He had herded me within three feet of him near the center of the Pit—the close quarters he needed to gain the upper hand.

Fuck him. The thought lashed through my mind, and before I knew what I was doing, my hands were poised at heart level, fingers steepled for a spell. Frost surged from my fingertips, spreading across the ground beneath Jon’s feet, turning it into a slick, icy trap. My lips moved faster than my thoughts, weaving a spell to liquify the trap. I balled my fists and swung them to my sides, jerking Jon forward with a sudden, brutal force. He went sprawling, his rod clattering beside him.

That’s for throwing a fucking crate at me .

“Get up, you pussy!” Someone in the crowd beat their fist against the fence. “Use the iron on her!”

Jon groaned as he pried himself up, sporting a busted lip and a gash cutting through the sleeve of his black tee. One of the nails in the deck had caught him badly. But he was on his feet with speed I couldn’t decide was relieving or terrifying—and lunged for me again, the slender rod grasped in his left hand. Jon’s hand closed around my legs. Fuck— I’d drawn too close.

I shouted a spell, summoning a spike of discolored ice between his boots. Jon cursed, releasing me to evade it. As he circled me, I focused on his footing. I had seen him fight dozens of times—I knew how he moved. I could match him blow for blow.

I shifted my focus down to his boots, an idea taking hold. I channeled all my magic at the deck, frost crawling up the leather, up to his ankles, crackling as I laid it thicker and thicker. Jon’s eyes widened, and for a moment, I felt a pang of remorse. I didn’t want to fight him.

Jon kicked free of the ice building on his left boot, but the right one caught. His stance wavered, cemented where he stood. I refocused on the left again, fastening that one, too. This strategy had held Gwen in the woods, and maybe it would save my life now.

Spots danced in my vision, briefly making my magic flicker and falter. I was teetering toward magic exhaustion. He knew it as well as me—I could read it in those smoldering brown eyes. I grit my teeth, conjuring a slender blade of ice from the structure at his feet, guiding it at an angle toward his throat. I let it move slowly, let panic build on his face. It was horrible that a piece of me purred at the sight of his fear. The most intimidating hunter I’d ever met, the terror of Elysian legends, dominated at my own hands.

Jon’s gaze snapped up, and he wound back, hurling the iron bar straight at me.

“Fuck!” I screamed, my heart pounding as I swooped my flight low. Air rushed against my hair as it narrowly avoided the spot I’d occupied moments ago.

CRACK.

Jon was stronger than Gwen—without more reinforcement to the spellwork, my ice couldn’t hold him nearly as long.The ice shattered with a deafening series of cracks as he broke free, like a thousand glass shards exploding. One of the thicker pieces slammed into my stomach, knocking the wind from my lungs.

As I flitted back up to gain control of my flight, cold metal grazed my shoulder—the end of a low-hanging chain.

An agony that was not of this world tore through me like wildfire and stole my senses. My vision blurred. Jon’s hand wrapped around my waist and pulled me out of the air.

I was on my back, pinned under his palm on the damp wood. The pressure was not crushing but frightening all the same. The gem shard pulsed in my pocket, but I couldn’t hope to reach it now. I struggled to pull in a full breath as Jon knelt over me, our wide eyes locking.

It was over.

The iron bar hovered excruciatingly close to my chest, prepared to deliver the same soul-sucking pain that throbbed through my shoulder. Even the crowd fell into murmurs of anticipation. Looking him straight in the face, I desperately attempted to summon ice, to rip his hands apart if I must. But I couldn’t. Not with the iron brushing against my blouse.

Jon’s heavy breaths became visible puffs. I couldn’t create searingly cold gales or icicles, but the air was freezing, clouding our world. He blinked hard as if in realization.

“ Missed ,” he whispered.

I grimaced, staring up at him without comprehension.

“Missed .” His voice was rougher, like an order.

Was he seriously mocking my missed shots right before he dealt the final blow?

Then, it hit me— mist .

I could hide us. I forced power behind what remained of my magic, teetering on the edge of consciousness as my iron wound burned in protest. The cloudiness thickened around us, obscuring our surroundings until it was just us two.

He inched the iron toward my exposed navel. My breathing turned to whimpers. In my feverish exhaustion, I was certain he wanted to kill me in private. Perhaps it served me right for not listening to him about staying away. I could only hope he would do it quickly and spare me the agony of the iron’s burn.

But there were worse fates than dying at the hands of a man I loved.

The word split my mind—beautifully, painfully bright.

Loved .

I wish I could have told him, even if it changed nothing. A breathless sob shook through me, and something in Jon’s expression broke as he read mine. He swallowed hard. The hand pinning me twitched.

He couldn’t do it, I realized. But he had to . I gave the feeblest nod of permission. If he didn’t kill me, we’d both die at the hands of those bloodthirsty onlookers .

His grip shifted, covering my arms and legs. Raising the bar high over his head, he brought it down.

I flinched.

But the pain never came. I turned my head to find the end of the iron rod grinding into the boards beside me.

I met his eyes, a conspiring sort of look filling them. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

And I did my part—I screamed. It was the easiest thing I’d ever done. I shrieked my lungs raw, releasing every drop of fear and fury that had found a home in my bones since being captured.

My voice tapered off, followed by my magic. I fell still.