The Siege of Shadows: Book one

Fractured Shadows (36)*

The sound of the cell door creaking open jerked me from the haze of half-sleep, my body trembling as though it were trying to escape the nightmare it had been living. Every inch of me ached, muscles sore and raw, the sting of bruises and broken skin too fresh to ignore. My breath came in shallow, desperate gasps, but it wasn't the physical pain that had me trembling. It was the fear—the fear that clung to me, weighing me down like a thousand stones.

I didn't need to look to know who was coming. I could feel him before he even stepped into the room—Kael, his presence heavy and suffocating. The walls seemed to close in tighter when he was near, pressing on my chest until I could barely breathe.

When his arms slid beneath me, lifting me from the cold, damp floor, my body jerked, flinching violently at the unexpected contact. I gasped, but my voice didn't come. My chained wrists, bound by metal bracelets and the cruel collar around my neck, pressed awkwardly against my chest, raw from where they'd rubbed against my skin.

"No..." I whimpered, barely able to move, too weak to fight, too frightened to even scream. I twisted in his hold, my body fighting against the reality that I couldn't escape, but the fire inside me had long since burned out.

It was like I was a broken thing, unable to do anything but submit. He carried me without a word, his grip unyielding, like I was no more than a burden to him, and yet his touch was cold in a way that felt almost deliberate. There was no gentleness in it—only the harsh reality that he could, and would, do whatever he wanted.

I rested my head against his armored chest, my own body too weak to resist. He wasn't even human anymore—not in my eyes. He was a monster, a living nightmare, and yet I couldn't even summon the strength to scream at him.

The silence between us was suffocating. I wanted to rage, wanted to spit in his face and demand answers—demand to know why he was doing this, why he was carrying me when he was the one who had destroyed everything. But my voice was hoarse, barely a rasp, and the words wouldn't come.

The cold of the dungeon faded as we climbed the castle's winding corridors, the warmth of the higher floors only intensifying the sense of suffocation. We passed torchlight, shadows flickering on the walls like ghosts.

When we reached his room, I barely had the energy to look around. The room was dark, the walls of stone cold and unyielding. Green velvet curtains draped the windows, filtering the light into a muted, eerie glow. A large bed sat at the center, the emerald bedding and black accents all too foreign, too alien. Everything about this place felt wrong, a world I could never belong to, and the more I looked at it, the more I realized it was where I would stay.

I wanted to scream, wanted to claw at his hands, but I didn't. I couldn't. My body was too weak, too broken.

He set me down on the bed gently, but there was nothing gentle about it. It felt like he was placing a doll in its place, something to be discarded when he was done. Then he disappeared into another room, and all I could do was wait.

The sound of running water reached my ears. I tensed, body already protesting the thought of being touched again, of being exposed to the man who had ruined me.

When he returned, Kael was in simple dark clothes, his armor gone. His black helmet still hid his face, but that didn't matter. I didn't want to see his face anyway. I didn't want to see anything.

He didn't speak, didn't even look at me as he moved toward me. When his hands reached for my chained wrists, I flinched violently, my body going rigid, heart hammering in my chest like a caged bird. The cold metal of the bracelets felt like fire against my raw skin, but I didn't pull away when he began unlocking them.