A Second Prisoner
872 Words
Isolde spun ready to fight, fangs already lengthening in her mouth, before she recognized the face in front of her.
Rowan.
"It's me," he whispered urgently, releasing her wrist the moment he saw the panic in her eyes. "Selene sent me to find you when you didn't come back. What happened? You're shaking."
Isolde grabbed the front of his shirt, dragging him further into the shadows, her voice barely audible even to him. "There's a girl locked in Damon's private quarters. Chained. Half starved. She's been there for years."
Rowan's face went pale. "Chained how? Selene needs to hear this immediately."
They found me in my father's study, still awake, still hunched over the ancient record book with Kade beside me, both of us trying to make sense of a bloodline neither of us fully understood. Isolde burst through the door with Rowan close behind, and the moment she began to speak, I felt the floor drop out from under me all over again.
A second Marrow heir. Held captive for years, her power partially awakened by force, kept as a backup plan in case whatever Damon needed from me failed to manifest the way he wanted.
"He's been planning this for far longer than we realized," Kade said quietly, his hands curling into fists on the desk. "This isn't a scheme he built in the last few months. This is something he's been working toward for years."
"We have to get her out," I said immediately.
"We can't," Isolde said. "The chains are keyed to his blood. Breaking them any other way kills her instantly."
I thought of the story bible my own bloodline seemed to be writing without my permission, generations of Ashworth women hiding a truth even from themselves, a fever that took my mother before I could ever ask her what she knew, a grandmother I barely remembered at all.
"What if there's another way to unlock chains like that," I said slowly. "Something in the old magic itself, not tied to Damon's blood specifically, but to the bloodline the chains were meant to contain in the first place."
Kade looked at me sharply. "You mean your blood."
"I mean if the Marrow line and the Ashworth line are truly connected the way that record book suggests, maybe my blood carries enough of the same old magic to break a binding meant for that bloodline, without needing Damon's blood at all."
The room went quiet.
"That's an enormous risk," Rowan said carefully. "You don't know how to control whatever power you supposedly carry. If you try to use it and it goes wrong, you could kill yourself trying to save a girl you've never even met."
"I know," I said. "But if I don't try, Damon uses her as a backup weapon tomorrow night regardless of what happens to me, and either way one of us pays the price for a plan neither of us ever agreed to."
Kade reached across the desk and took my hand, his grip firm and warm, grounding me in a way I did not expect. "If you're doing this," he said, "you're not doing it alone. I still have access to parts of that wing my father doesn't know about. I can get you close enough to try."
Isolde nodded slowly. "I can create a distraction. Enough noise to pull the guards away from that corridor for a few crucial minutes."
Rowan exhaled hard, running a hand through his hair. "I really hope none of us regret this by morning."
We moved before dawn could steal our courage, slipping through the academy grounds under cover of the last dark hours before sunrise, Isolde peeling off toward the guard barracks to stage her distraction while Kade led me toward the hidden corridor Isolde had described.
The false wall was exactly where she said it would be, seamless against the stone until Kade's fingers found the hidden latch and eased it open without a sound.
The girl inside flinched at the light, curling instinctively away from us, chains rattling against silver scorched skin.
"It's alright," I whispered, kneeling slowly in front of her, hands raised, palms open. "We're here to help you. My name is Selene Ashworth."
The girl's eyes snapped open fully at my name, wide and disbelieving, and for a moment, she simply stared at me like she had seen a ghost.
"Ashworth," she breathed. "You're really her. The one from the old stories."
"What old stories," I asked, my heart pounding.
The girl's gaze dropped to my hands, to whatever she could sense beneath my skin that I still could not fully name myself.
"The stories my grandmother told me before Damon Wolfe took our family apart," she whispered. "About the last time a Marrow heir and an Ashworth heir stood together. About the war it started, and the terrible thing that happened to stop it."
Behind me, Kade went very still.
"What terrible thing," he asked slowly.
The girl's eyes lifted past my shoulder, fixing on something over my head with a look of pure dread.
"That one," she whispered.
I turned, and standing in the doorway behind us, wearing an expression of calm, patient triumph, stood Alpha Damon Wolfe.
- Writer
