BOUND IN ASH

CHAPTER NINE: THE THREAD BIANCA PULLS

Elara's back had not fully healed by the time Bianca cornered her three days later, the wounds still raw enough beneath her dress that every movement carried a dull, constant ache she had learned to work around the way she had learned to work around everything else in this palace.

She was carrying folded linens toward the candidates' wing when Bianca stepped directly into her path, two of the other candidates trailing behind her, clearly delighted at whatever was about to unfold.

"There she is," Bianca said, tone bright and cutting all at once. "The famous whipped slave. Fifteen lashes, I heard. What did you do, girl, steal bread from the kitchens?"

Elara kept her eyes down, arms tightening around the linens. "It was a misunderstanding, my lady."

"A misunderstanding." Bianca circled her slowly, the way Greta had that first day, assessing and unimpressed, though with far more malice behind it. "How curious, that the alpha would personally order such a severe punishment over a misunderstanding. One almost wonders what a slave could possibly do to warrant that kind of attention from a king."

The other two candidates laughed softly behind their hands, and Elara felt heat rise in her face, though she said nothing, staring fixedly at a point somewhere past Bianca's shoulder.

"Show us," Bianca said suddenly.

Elara's head came up. "My lady?"

"Your back. Show us." Bianca's smile sharpened. "I want to see what fifteen lashes from an alpha king look like. I have never seen wounds from someone so important before."

"Please," Elara said quietly, hating the word even as it left her mouth, hating that she had to ask at all. "I have duties to finish."

"I did not ask what your duties were." Bianca's voice cracked like a whip of its own now, all pretense of playfulness gone. "I am a guest of this pack and a candidate for its throne, and you are a slave. You do not tell me no."

One of the other candidates reached out and yanked at the back of Elara's dress before she could step away, tearing the fabric just enough to expose the raised, angry lines still healing across her shoulder blades. A collective sound moved through the small gathered group, somewhere between fascination and disgust.

"Interesting," Bianca said softly, studying the marks with a coldness that made Elara's skin crawl. "Very interesting indeed, that a king would mark his property this thoroughly over paperwork." She leaned closer, voice dropping just for Elara to hear. "I do not know what you are to him, girl, but I intend to find out. And when I do, I promise you, being whipped will feel like mercy compared to what happens to whatever you are hiding once I bring it before the council."

She straightened, smoothing her skirts, the pleasant mask sliding smoothly back over her face as she turned to the other candidates.

"Come. This is dull now." She spared Elara one last glance, cold and assessing. "Fix your dress before someone important sees you looking so pathetic."

They swept away down the corridor in a rustle of silk and quiet laughter, and Elara stood alone, gripping the torn fabric closed with one shaking hand, linens scattered forgotten on the floor around her feet.

She did not cry. She had promised herself weeks ago that she would not give this palace her tears anymore, not where anyone could see, not for anything less than the deaths that had already earned every tear she had left in her.

She gathered the linens instead, hands steady through sheer force of will, and filed Bianca's name away with all the others.

The list was getting longer. She intended to remember every single name on it.

***

Silas found her an hour later in the kitchen garden, the same corner she always retreated to when the day had taken more from her than she had left to give, and he did not need to ask what had happened. Word of the confrontation had already spread through the palace the way everything eventually did.

"I heard," he said simply, sitting down beside her, offering the usual small parcel of bread she no longer bothered pretending she did not want.

"It does not matter," Elara said, though her voice betrayed how much it did.

"It matters," Silas said, quiet but firm. "It matters that a guest of this pack thought she had the right to tear a slave's dress open in a public corridor for entertainment. It matters more than you are allowing yourself to feel right now, because you have decided feeling things is a luxury you cannot afford."

Elara said nothing, because he was not wrong, and there was little point pretending otherwise with him.

"I cannot protect you from everything in this palace," Silas continued, tearing off a piece of bread for himself. "I am gamma, not alpha. I do not have the authority to stop the candidates from treating you however they please, or Greta, or anyone else with more standing than you currently hold. But I will keep doing what I can. Quietly. Where it will not draw attention to either of us."

"Why," Elara asked again, the same question she had asked him weeks ago in the kitchen, still without a satisfying answer. "You still do not fully understand why you help me. You have told me that yourself."

"No," Silas agreed. "I do not. I only know that something in me will not let me walk past you and pretend I do not see what is happening. Perhaps someday that will make sense. Until then, I am simply going to keep bringing you bread and hoping it is enough."

Elara looked at him for a long moment, something tight in her chest easing slightly at the simple, uncomplicated honesty of it, a rare thing in a palace built almost entirely out of lies and careful cruelty.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and meant it more than she had meant anything she had said to another living soul since the day her family died.

Silas only nodded, and the two of them sat together in silence as the evening settled in around them, one small pocket of quiet kindness in a place that seemed determined to offer her none.

It was not enough to undo what Bianca had done, or what Kael had ordered, or any of the countless small cruelties stacking up around her every single day.

But it was something. And in a palace like this one, Elara was learning to be grateful for whatever scraps of something she could find.

***