Chapter 152

Lila

I’d thought walking might help, moving instead of sitting alone in that suffocating room. But everywhere felt the same with guards glued to me every step of the way.

Even wrapped in a shawl, I couldn’t shake the cold. I couldn’t stop shaking, period.

The palace should have been comforting with its soft carpets and sunlight spilling in through tall windows, but everything felt too small, too confining.

After wandering a short while, I turned a corner, drawn by faint voices echoing ahead.

Two servants stood just beyond the archway of the next hall, heads bent together, voices pitched low. Their aprons were dusted with flour; they must have slipped out from the kitchens.

“…saw the papers myself,” one whispered, her voice quick, urgent.

“…can’t believe he’d marry Elena. Not after everything…”

My steps faltered. Elena?

“…keeps it quiet because of the girl he’s got locked in the Royal wing,” the other murmured. “Poor thing. Bet she doesn’t even know.”

They laughed softly in that awkward, nervous laugh of people who shouldn’t be talking about something at all. Still, the sound cut through me like glass.

I pressed back against the wall, my breath caught in my throat. My hands curled against my chest, fingertips pressing into my skin.

I should have walked away or covered my ears. Instead, I stayed, desperate to hear more.

“He’s doing what’s best for the Packs,” one said, as if that explained everything. “Tradition matters. Can’t have a Luna with a broken wolf.”

The words hollowed me out. Broken wolf. That’s all I had every been to my own Pack. It seems that’s all I’d become here too.

I didn’t hear the rest. I backed away slowly. My heart thudded in my ears, loud enough to drown their gossip out. Each step felt unsteady, like the floor might vanish under me.

By the time I stumbled back to my chambers, my legs felt like someone else’s. Boneless, heavy, too unsteady to belong to me.

My hands were trembling so badly I fumbled the latch twice before it gave way.

One of the guards tried to help me but I brushed him off.

I slipped inside and leaned hard against the wood, willing my heart to slow.

Elena.

Of course it was Elena. Perfect, unblemished, everything I wasn’t. The one who’d been meant for Damon before I was forced to pretend to be her.

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing Ruby to say something, anything. A growl, a word, a whisper in the back of my mind. But her silence was total. My wolf was practically gone.

The emptiness where she used to be festered like another wound.

I slid down the door until I hit the floor, knees pulled to my chest. My shawl slipped off one shoulder, pooling in my lap, but I didn’t bother fixing it.

I just stared at my bare toes and wondered how long I could stay invisible before someone noticed I was gone.

Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimed the half hour. I lost count of which one, or how long I’d been sitting there.

I rested my forehead on my knees and closed my eyes. For a moment, I let myself imagine I was back home, before the trials, before the palace walls swallowed me whole. Before Damon.

The memories were warm and cruel all at once.

The air in the room was stifling, too warm and too still. I pulled at the collar of my shawl but it only tangled around my neck, sticky against my damp skin.

My breaths came shallow, quick. I wasn’t panicking yet but I felt close to it. The dizziness hit first. A sudden tilt of the floor beneath me, like the palace itself had shifted.

I grabbed for the nearest surface – the edge of the writing desk – and felt splinters bite into my palm. My hands shook so badly I almost knocked over the candle resting there.

The poison. I knew it was the poison still working in my body.

I hadn’t told anyone how much worse it had gotten. The way my hands trembled constantly now, how my chest felt tight at night, how every sound hurt.

My appetite was gone. My sleep fractured. Even my reflection looked foreign with hollow cheeks, eyes ringed in shadows, lips pale as a ghost.

I crossed to the bed, but restlessness prickled under my skin, jittery and unbearable. I paced instead; three steps to the window, three steps back, until the walls blurred and the rug slipped under my bare feet.

The whispers I’d overheard played over the pounding in my skull.

He’s marrying Elena.

Broken wolf.

I pressed my palms to my ears as if I could crush the voices out, but it only made my head throb harder.

My body was clammy, sweat slicking down my spine, yet my hands were ice-cold. My breathing hitched.

“Ruby?” My voice cracked. The name felt strange on my tongue now, distant and almost foreign. “Please. Say something.”

Nothing.

I bit the inside of my cheek, hard enough to taste blood, but even that couldn’t ground me.

The walls were too close. The air too thick. Every inch of this room reeked of confinement. Gilded cage or not, it was still a cage.

I yanked at the curtains, pulling them open so violently the rod clattered. Cold air seeped through the cracks in the sill, carrying faint smoke from the distant kitchens.

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass and closed my eyes. My breath fogged faintly against the pane, a ghost of me staring back.

I wanted to scream. To break something. To claw at the walls until my hands bled. But I couldn’t even find my voice. The storm stayed bottled inside me, simmering under skin too thin to hold it.

My knees gave out without warning. I crumpled to the floor, shawl pooling around me like shed skin.

My palms stung against the floorboards, rough and unyielding, and I stayed there, hunched and trembling, until the tremors quieted into exhaustion.

Somewhere beyond the door, footsteps passed. Low voices murmured. Laughter, faint and fleeting. The palace lived on while I withered in confinement.

I dragged myself to the bed eventually, climbing onto the mattress like it might swallow me whole. The sheets were cool, smelling faintly of lavender and ash, and I curled into them, small and tight.

My chest ached with grief, rage, and longing. Maybe all of it. Maybe none.

I stared at the ceiling until tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

“Get me out of here,” I whispered to no one.

The words scraped my throat raw, breaking in the middle like they didn’t want to leave me.

I waited for the creak of the door, the heavy tread of boots, some sign that anyone had heard.

My body curled tighter, a shiver running through me so hard my teeth knocked together. Every joint ached, my muscles buzzing with weakness. The sheets that had seemed cool before now felt damp against my skin, clinging and suffocating.

I pressed my face into the pillow, trying to hide from the emptiness pressing in on every side.

“Please.”

No answer came. Not from Ruby. Not from Damon. Not from anyone at all.