Marked

Chapter 11

RIV POV

The door shut with a solid thunk, and the lock slid home with a satisfying finality. I exhaled. Alone again. But her presence still lingered in the air—like smoke after a fire. Sharp and clinging. I could still hear her voice in the silence. Still feel the heat of her eyes on mine.

She was angry. But not reckless. Not cruel.

I shifted against the stone wall, the manacles tugging at my wrists with a dull scrape of metal. My arms ached. My jaw ached. And somewhere in the back of my skull, a sharp throb pulsed from where I’d been struck.

She’d asked what I wanted. As if I knew how to answer that anymore. I wasn’t here for them.

I was here because of the pull. The flicker of something ancient and restless in the woods. The magic that hummed like a low drumbeat I hadn’t been able to ignore. I was following something. Someone.

Her.

And now I was chained to a wall in a rebel outpost that hadn’t existed on any map in fifty years. I tilted my head back against the cold stone and closed my eyes for a moment. She hadn’t used my name. Hadn’t even tried to guess.

Smart.

There was power in names. But still…

It stung, the way she said murderer. As if she knew every life I’d taken. As if she’d seen them die with her own eyes.

She hadn’t. Not really. And yet, her voice had cut deeper than any blade. I opened my eyes again and stared at the ceiling. Stone. Dust. Silence. I could wait. I’d waited through worse.

I heard the footsteps long before I saw her. Light. Measured. No hesitation.

The lock turned again with a clean click, and the door opened just wide enough for her to step in, dragging something behind her. A wooden stool.

She set it down in the threshold, just outside the chain’s reach—clever, cautious—and sank into it without saying a word. She didn’t draw her weapon. Didn’t posture or pace or raise her voice.

She just sat there, arms resting on her knees, staring at me like she was trying to solve a puzzle she didn’t quite have all the pieces for.

“I just want answers,” she said at last.

Her voice was calmer this time. Controlled, but not cold.

“Give them to me now, and this doesn’t have to get worse. My companion is already suggesting… harsher methods.”

She didn’t say the word torture, but she didn’t need to. It clung to the air anyway.

I leaned back against the wall, letting my wrists pull lightly against the chains, just enough to make them rattle. My smirk was faint, but deliberate.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Sleep deprivation, starvation, a few well-placed blows? Maybe a knife if she’s feeling theatrical?”

Her lips tightened, but she didn’t rise to it. I shrugged.

“Tell her not to bother. I’ve lived through worse. I won’t break.”

Her silence stretched. I could feel her weighing my words. Measuring them.

Then—

“I don’t need you to break,” she said. “I just need your name.”

I looked at her for a long moment. This strange, sharp-edged Fae female who’d dragged me through the woods, chained me to a wall, and was now trying to convince herself that this wasn’t personal.

Gods, she was beautiful when she was angry. But dangerous when she was calm.

“My name,” I said slowly, “is something only a few people have earned.”

I let the words linger between us. Then I leaned forward, eyes locked on hers.

“And you haven’t earned it yet.”

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t scowl or spit or threaten to carve the name from my throat. She just… tilted her head. Studied me.

And then—just like that—said, “Ryn.”

Her voice was quiet, but firm. No fanfare. No flourish. Just the name. It landed harder than I expected. She wasn’t trying to gain the upper hand, wasn’t baiting me.

She was giving something. And I hadn’t earned it.

“Why tell me that?” I asked, watching her closely. “You think if you share, I’ll start spilling secrets in return?”

Her mouth curled just slightly at the corner. Not quite a smile. Not quite mockery.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe if I’m honest with you… you’ll be honest back.”

I stared at her for a long moment, not answering. She didn’t press. Didn’t fill the silence like most people did when they got nervous. She just waited. And that unsettled me more than any threat could have.

Ryn.

Now she had a name. Now the wild-haired, sharp-tongued, forest-walking female had a name to go with the blade she carried and the weight in her voice. And I hated that it made her feel more real.

She shifted slightly on the stool, and her eyes drifted to the floor.

“When I was young,” she said, almost absently, “my parents were killed.”

The words came out quiet, like they’d been said too many times and still never softened.

“Killed by the king. For no reason other than trusting someone they shouldn’t have.”

She looked back up at me, and something in her gaze sharpened.

“I hate what he stands for. The death. The fear. The control.”

I blinked. Not at her grief. But at her boldness. Because that kind of talk—even whispered—was enough to get someone executed in the streets of Nythral. And she said it like she wanted me to hear it.

“Careful,” I murmured, voice lower now. “That kind of hatred can get you killed.”

She didn’t even blink.

“It already has,” she said. “Just not me.”

For a long moment, I said nothing. Because I didn’t know what to make of her. This small, stubborn, maddeningly brave creature.

But gods help me…

I respected her.

“How long ago?” I asked before I could stop myself.

My voice came out quieter than intended—rougher, like the question cost more than I meant it to. She didn’t hesitate.

“Twenty years,” she said. “I was six.”

I did the math before I even meant to. Six, plus twenty. Twenty-six. That was it. She was only twenty-six.

And yet she looked at the world like someone three times her age—like someone who’d lived through fire and didn’t flinch when it burned again.

Her face hadn’t changed. Still calm. Still steady.

But I saw it now—the small lines at the corners of her eyes. The way her fingers twitched sometimes when she wasn’t thinking about it. The silence she wore like armor.

Scars on the inside. Scars on the outside. I’d seen enough of both to recognize the weight when someone carried them. I hated it. That flicker of understanding. That sharp edge of recognition.

Because this—this quiet, stubborn, female sitting just out of reach—was supposed to be the enemy.

She was supposed to be a means to an end. She was supposed to be easier to dehumanize. But she wasn’t. She was real. Too real.

And every word she said laid me bare in ways I didn’t want to think about. Because I knew what came next. The closer I got to the hunted—the more I felt for them—the harder it always was in the end. And this one?

This one was already laying my heart wide open. I looked away. Just for a breath. Just to break the spell her eyes were weaving without even trying. But the damage was already done.

Twenty-six.

Too young to carry that much grief. Too strong to have come through it without breaking. And yet there she sat—shoulders square, gaze steady, voice calm—like the weight of the world was something she’d already learned to carry.

And gods help me… I wanted to know how. I wasn’t supposed to feel this. Not for anyone. Not ever.

It made the job harder. Clouded judgment. Slowed the blade. And feelings… they got you killed.

I’d learned that the day my mother died. And yet here I was. Chained to a wall, staring at a rebel who hated everything I supposedly stood for…

And wondering what her laugh sounded like when she wasn’t holding the world together. I clenched my jaw, forcing my gaze back to her. Forcing the walls back up.

“You survived,” I said finally. “That’s more than most.”

She didn’t thank me. Didn’t smile. Just nodded once. “I did. Because I had no choice.”

There it was again. That fire. No drama. No flare. Just quiet conviction. Like a storm that knew exactly what it was and had no interest in proving it. And it was starting to pull at things inside me I hadn’t let move in years. Things that felt too much like hope.

Too much like home.

This couldn’t happen. Not with her. Not now. Not ever. Because I’d seen what happened when you let the hunted become more than a name on a list. You lost yourself. You lost them.

I pulled the chain taut behind me and leaned back into the stone wall again, hoping the cold would dull what she’d stirred loose.

But it didn’t. Because Ryn—with her blade and her silence and her haunted green eyes—

Wasn't just slipping past my defenses. She was unmaking them.