Chapter 235: He Felt Every Lash On Her Back

Dexmon Drakenfell had been knocked unconscious exactly four times in his life. Twice in training. Once by his father’s fist. Once by Gavriel, which he’d never admit to.

He didn’t go under gently.

Whatever hit him, hit him like a door kicked off its hinges, and on the other side was someone else’s life.

The world inverted.

He didn’t fall into her memories so much as her memories swallowed him whole.

A crowd. Hundreds of people, packed into a cobblestone square framed by stone buildings draped in Viremont banners.

"By order of Lord Viremont, the slave known as Silverveil is hereby sentenced to forty lashes for her crime. Let every collar in this square remember what freedom costs. You run, you will be caught. There is no mercy."

Dex’s blood ran cold.

Then he heard it. The crack of leather on skin. Pain lanced through his own back in tandem. Followed by a sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

A little girl screamed.

He shoved through the crowd, but his hands passed through them like a ghost. Tethered to her memories, forced to watch.

She was fifteen. Maybe younger. Her wrists were bound to a wooden post in the center of the square. Her shirt was torn down the back, exposing a spine he could count every vertebra of.

A man stood behind her with a whip with the kind of calm that comes from repetition.

Crack.

Her body jerked against the post. A strangled cry tore from her throat, high and thin, bitten off at the end because she was trying and failing to hold it.

Dex’s hands shook. His jaw locked so hard his molars ground audible and his vision went red at the edges.

The whip came down again. Across the same spot. Her legs buckled and the ropes at her wrists were the only thing holding her upright. Blood ran in thin rivers down her back, pooling in the waistband.

A woman in the crowd turned away. A man pulled his daughter’s face into his hip so she couldn’t see.

Nobody stopped it.

CRACK.

Her scream cut off into a wet, choking gasp. Her head dropped forward, chin to chest. Her fingers twitched against the rope, reaching for purchase that wasn’t there.

Dex counted. He couldn’t stop himself. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. At twenty-two, she stopped screaming. Her body still flinched, the muscles involuntary, but the sound was gone. She had retreated behind a wall he recognized because he’d built versions of it himself.

At thirty, her head lolled to the side and her eyes were open but vacant. Gone. Wherever she was, it was far from this square.

At thirty-eight, the man paused. Wiped his brow. Took a drink of water.

Resumed.

Thirty-nine. Forty.

The ropes were cut and she dropped face first into the cobblestones, arms useless, back a landscape of flesh and muscle.

Nobody picked her up.

Dex was on his knees. He didn’t remember going down. He couldn’t breathe. His hands were on the ground, pressing into cobblestones that weren’t real, and every instinct in his body was screaming at him to pick her up and carry her out of this, and he couldn’t.

She lay in the dirt for a long time until Viremont left. Then a cloaked figure ran out sobbing.

A man ran out behind her, picking her up.

"Elara, boiled water and clean linen. Now."

✦✦✦

The whipping square vanished. What replaced it made him wish for it back.

A white-haired girl hung from the ceiling by her wrists, silver chains coiled around her torso.

Serena was sixteen, maybe seventeen.

She stared at the wall, tears falling.

"Aurelia, are you there? I’m so sorry."

The memory shifted. It looked like a few weeks but Dexmon wasn’t sure. She was curled up on the ground in the same windowless cell. Her cheekbones were sharper. Silver cuffs circled her wrists and a collar sat tight around her throat.

"Aurelia. Please don’t die on me too." Her voice cracked.

Dex fell to his knees next to her, his eyes burning. Serena had downplayed what happened to her wolf when she explained it to him. She never said she called for Aurelia every day.

"Why didn’t you tell me any of this?" he asked, knowing she couldn’t hear.

He reached for her, but his hands went straight through her like air.

"Baby, if I would have known you were out there, I would have burned this goddamn place to the ground to get you out."

The memory kept shifting as if time were showing him glimpses of each day. They alternated her from hanging by her wrists and her curled up on the stone floor. She was always wrapped in silver chains. A death sentence for wolves.

It was known that Viremont was the only kingdom with slaves and to still use silver on women. But most thought the silver punishments would still keep the woman working. On the wrists or a collar so others could see what would happen if they stepped out of line. Otherwise, it’d cost more to keep them alive.

The fact she survived it was a miracle. The time sequence stopped. Her cell door opened and a hooded figure entered. The man who saved her in the streets.

"Marxus?" Her voice came out weak.

✦✦✦

The scene shifted again, Serena lying on a bed looking better than she had in the cell. Elara stood next to her, eyes red.

Marxus entered. "Third time runners is execution, Serena. Are you sure?"

"What are they going to take from me? You can’t execute someone who stopped being alive a year ago."

Dex’s fingers were numb watching this. She didn’t sound like Serena at all. The fight was beaten out of this poor girl.

"I’m going with you. She won’t be caught a third time."

"Elara, you don’t have to. It’s dangerous."

Elara held up her hand. "I swore to protect you and I’ve failed miserably at it. Let me do this right, Serena."

✦✦✦

The room dissolved into forest.

They were running, and behind them, wolves were in pursuit.

Elara’s breathing was ragged. "Oh gods. I’m going to get lashes. And—"

Serena cut her off. "No you’re not, Elara. Hold your breath."

She grabbed Elara’s hand and pulled her off the trail, down a ravine. They hit an ice-crusted river at the bottom hard enough to knock the air from both their lungs.

They submerged. The cold hit Dex’s chest through the memory, phantom ice in phantom lungs. He could feel her panic, could feel the fire in her muscles, could feel the silver poisoning still eating through her system.

She held Elara beneath the surface as torches swept the ravine above them. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. A minute.

Elara’s hand squeezed hers, running out of air.

They both emerged gasping and shaking so badly their teeth chattered in unison.

"Elara, if I tell you to shift and run, you do it. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Good. Shift and run and get your core temperature up. I’ll be right behind you. We go south."

South was Drakenfell territory.

Dexmon did the math. The distance between Viremont and where he had found her was seven days minimum for a healthy wolf, running non-stop. Serena had done it half-dead, wolf-crippled, silver-sick, and on foot.

✦✦✦

The cold of the river evaporated. Heat replaced it. Firelight. More wealth than Dexmon had ever seen.

White marble and fountains streaming from the walls. A woman sat in a chair by the fire, her profile illuminated in amber. White hair and green eyes.

A king stood at the window, broad-shouldered. Their voices carried the specific weight of a conversation that had been happening for a while.

"The prophecy was clear, Haldor," the woman said. "Three souls bound across every lifetime."

"I am aware of what our daughter is, Seraphine. I didn’t marry you under the impression that she would be normal." The man turned from the window, expression guarded. "But even you have said this. Her abilities are advancing beyond what they should be at her age."

Seraphine’s lips pressed together. "So what? We have mages who can help her."

"The mages agree with me. Something that powerful needs to have their powers capped until she is old enough to learn control."

"She never has done anything to warrant that." Seraphine’s tone shifted. Fierce, protective, and aimed like a drawn blade. "So what. She’s had a few clumsy accidents. She’s six. She also healed a boy’s broken leg and saved a bird."

"Accidents? Are you joking? Were you at that banquet?"

"Maybe our six year old daughter shouldn’t be at a banquet that late. I was against that to begin with. And for the record, your great aunt was scaring the daylights out of her and me both."

Haldor rubbed his hand down his face. "Yes she was grabbing Serena’s cheeks. But Serena fabricated a bubble around her and wouldn’t bring it down."

Haldor and Seraphine exchanged a look and both started laughing. It was short-lived.

"I’m sorry, but I am putting my foot down. We are wiping her memories of her abilities and binding them."

Seraphine stood. "You want to take her power from her."

Haldor crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. "No. I want to protect her."

"By stripping a piece of who she is."

Haldor exhaled through his teeth. "When would she ever need it to defend herself? She’s a princess. She will be protected. Guarded. She will never be in a position where gold magic is her last resort."

Seraphine pulled out of Haldor’s reach. "It feels wrong."

"Seraphine."

"Do what you think is right." Her voice was flat. The flatness of a woman whose opinion had been heard and dismissed. "But I will remember this conversation when it comes back to haunt us."

She pulled away from him and left the room. Haldor watched her go, and for one unguarded second, his composure cracked. Grief flickered across his face. The specific grief of a man who knows he’s right and hates himself for it.

Then the mask returned.

He followed her out.

The scene shifted. Same night. Same castle.

Serena was in bed. Six years old, with white hair fanned across the pillow and a stuffed white wolf tucked under her chin. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was wrong. Too controlled. Too even.

She was awake. Pretending.

The door opened.

Haldor entered with a mage in dark robes.

Haldor’s face was granite, but his hands were fists at his sides.

"Do it," he said.

The mage knelt beside the bed. Long fingers reached for Serena’s forehead.

She was rigid under the covers, every muscle locked, breathing through her nose because she didn’t dare breathe through her mouth. She’d heard the conversation about the prophecy, about three fated souls, about her gold, about binding.

Dexmon knew she did because these were her memories. And she stayed silent, letting this man do this to her.

The mage’s fingertips touched her forehead.

Gold light flickered beneath Serena’s skin, instinctive, resisting. Then it dimmed. Dimmed further. Went dark.

Her body relaxed. Her breathing evened out, genuinely now, the tension leaving her limbs as the compulsion took hold.

The mage stood and turned to Haldor. "It is done. The binding will hold unless disrupted by proximity to a fated tie. If that occurs, the gold will resurface, and the binding will deteriorate."

The door closed behind them, and six-year-old Serena lay in the dark, stripped of her own power and her own memory, holding a stuffed wolf that couldn’t protect her either.