The floor of the Slave Chamber was cold, a damp limestone slab that sucked the remaining warmth from my body. I lay there, my broken arm a mangled mess of purple flesh and white bone fragments, watching the black oil from Elias-5’s carcass pool around my boots. My breath came in ragged, wet rattles. I could taste the copper of my own internal bleeding, a thick, metallic syrup coating my tongue.
"Esther, you were always so stubborn," the Matriarch said. Her white heels clicked on the stone, sounding like a judge’s gavel. She stood over me, looking down with eyes that held no more warmth than the silver wires in Elias’s chest. "You thought this was about a boy. You thought it was about a lover. It was never about them."
She reached down, her fingers cold as ice as she grabbed my chin and f
