Irina’s POV

Nicolas had been gone for maybe twenty minutes.

I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about it.

*Their time here is short,* he’d said.

I knew what that meant. I’d told him I knew what that meant. And I did. I did know.

That was why I needed to go now.

---

Sofia had left a cloak on the chair by the door. Heavy wool, dark gray, the kind the palace staff wore when they had to move between buildings in the cold. I didn’t know if she’d meant it for me specifically or if it had just ended up there. I put it on anyway.

The hood was deep enough to cover most of my face.

I looked at myself in the mirror for one second. Pale. The bruise finally fading. Eyes that had something in them I didn’t completely recognize.

I pulled the hood up and went out.

---

The cells were in the east substructure.

Two floors down. Past the laundry level. Through a door that needed a specific handle pull, weight forward, that I’d figured out by accident two weeks ago and filed away without knowing why.

The stairs were stone. Old stone, the kind that predated everything built on top of it. The smell changed on the way down—warmer above, colder below, and underneath the cold something damp and iron-sharp that the cleaning staff clearly didn’t bother with.

My footsteps sounded too loud.

I slowed them.

From somewhere ahead—not close, but not far—a sound.

I stopped.

Listened.

A voice. Low and ragged, bouncing off stone walls, impossible to make out but unmistakable in tone.

I kept going.

---

The corridor opened into a long stretch of stone with doors set into each side. Iron. Old. The kind of doors that didn’t need to announce what they were.

A guard at the far end saw me coming and went very still.

I kept walking.

He looked at my face. Stepped aside without a word.

I stopped in front of the first door.

Wrong one. I could tell from the silence.

The second.

There.

---

He heard me before I opened the door.

"Well." Maxim’s voice. Rough at the edges, still that voice. Still that particular register. "Finally decided to come take a look?"

I pushed the door open.

The smell hit first. Dried blood and stone and something underneath it that I didn’t want to think about too hard. The cell was lit by a single source from the corridor—enough to see by, not enough for anything else.

He was sitting against the far wall.

The Maxim I’d known had always been the most controlled person in any room. Jacket pressed. Hair perfect. The performance never cracking.

This was different.

His face had been worked over. Not dramatically—nobody had been artistic about it. Just thorough. His lower lip was split. One eye swollen mostly shut. Bruising spread from his jaw up toward his temple in that dark purple that meant recent and deep.

He looked at me.

That one good eye. Still sharp. Still exactly the same.

"Look at that," he said. "They let the pet out of her cage."

I stood in the doorway.

"You look better." He said it like a fact. Flat. "Rested. He fucking you regularly or just keeping you around for decoration?"

My hands stayed at my sides.

"Where’s my father?" I said.

"Next door." He shifted against the wall. The movement cost him and he didn’t hide it well. "They threw him in without a scratch. Wasn’t even worth their time." He looked at me. "He cried, you know. Your father. Big tough beta of Iron Thorn, sat in the dark and *cried.* Pathetic." Something moved in his eye. "Runs in the family, I guess."

I looked at the bars between us.

"You came all the way down here," he said. "So what do you want, Irina? You want to see me like this? Does it make you feel good? Does the little omega feel powerful now?"

"I just wanted to see you," I said.

He laughed. It split his lip and he didn’t flinch. "See me." He repeated it. "Right. Because your life is so great now. Because the alpha king marked you and suddenly you think you’re something." He tilted his head. "How’s that going? He tell you he loves you yet? He hold your hand? Look you in the eyes and say you’re *special?*"

I said nothing.

"He’s going to get bored." Maxim’s voice went flat. Certain. The voice he used when he was done pretending and just stating facts. "That’s what you don’t get. Men like him—men like *us*—we don’t keep omegas around because we want them. We keep them around because it’s convenient. And the second it stops being convenient—" He snapped his fingers. "Gone. You know that, right? Deep down you know it."

My jaw tightened.

"You’re not his mate." He said it like he was correcting a mistake. Patient. Almost kind. "You’re a thing he found. A broken little thing with no wolf and no pack and nothing going for her except the bond. The moment that stops being interesting—" He smiled. "You’ll end up exactly where you always belonged. On your knees. Begging someone to keep you."

I kept looking at him.

He pushed himself up. Onto his feet. It took real effort—I could see it in every line of him—and he did it anyway and stood there and gripped the bars and looked at me and the charm was completely gone now. Just Maxim. Just the thing underneath.

"You want to know what you are?" His voice dropped. Quiet. Quiet was always worse. I’d learned that a long time ago. "You’re a whore who got lucky. That’s it. That’s the whole story. You spread your legs for the right man and now you’re walking around like you won something." His eye was fixed on my face. "Nobody wants you, Irina. Nobody ever wanted you. Katerina ran because she couldn’t stand to watch it anymore—even your own *sister* couldn’t stand you. Your father stood right there in this building and didn’t say a single word to help you. You think that’s a coincidence? You think that’s bad luck?" He leaned forward. "That’s just what you are. Something people leave. Something people use and throw away and don’t think about twice."

He watched my face.

Looking for something. The flinch. The way my eyes would drop. The small collapse that he’d trained into me over a year of knowing exactly where to press.

"The alpha king doesn’t like you," he said. "He owns you. There’s a difference. And the second some real alpha female walks through his door—someone with a wolf, someone with a pack, someone who’s actually *worth* something—he’s going to look at you and wonder what he was ever thinking. And you’re going to stand there with that stupid look on your face—" He smiled, and it was ugly, and it was real. "The same look you always had. Like you’re surprised it’s happening again."

I stood there.

Everything in me was very still.

He kept going.

"You know what I used to think, watching you? Every day, in that pack house?" He tilted his head. "I used to think—how does she keep going? How does something that worthless keep getting out of bed in the morning? What does she think is going to change?" He almost laughed. "And now look. You’re here. In his palace. And nothing’s changed. You’re still the same nothing you always were, just in nicer rooms."

My hand moved.

I didn’t plan it.

It just—moved.

I crossed the distance and my palm came up and I hit him through the bars, open-handed, as hard as I could reach.

The sound cracked off the stone walls.

His head snapped sideways.

He grabbed the bar. Steadied himself. Turned back slowly.

And his face—

I’d watched his face for a year. I knew every version of it. Every performance. Every shift from charm to anger to that cold, specific cruelty he kept underneath everything else.

I had never seen this version.

Completely, totally shocked.

Like the math he’d been running for years had just returned an answer that couldn’t be right.

He stared at me.

My palm was stinging. My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my teeth. My whole arm was shaking, just slightly, and I didn’t care.

I looked at him.

At the bars. At the stone. At the single corridor light throwing shadows across his bruised, swollen, shocked face.

I thought about a year of swallowing words. A year of looking at the floor. A year of making myself small enough that I took up less space than he wanted me to.

I looked at him and I felt—

Nothing. Clean and cold and nothing.

"I’m not a toy," I said.

My voice came out steady.

"Maybe I was. Maybe that’s all I was to you." I held his gaze. "But you’re in there. And I’m out here. And whatever I am—"

I looked at him one more time.

At everything he was now, behind those bars, in that cell, in this building that belonged to someone so far above him it wasn’t even the same world.

"I’m not a toy or not," I said. "Doesn’t matter."

I turned toward the door.

"Because I’m still doing better than you."

I paused.

One breath.

"You’re going to die in here."