Elle POV
When I came fully back to my senses, it wasn’t to Blake’s warmth.
It was to cold stone beneath me.
To the weight of restraints.
To the quiet hum of a room that didn’t belong to the palace.
My senses sharpened despite the blindness—the air smelled different here. Dust. Old magic. The faint echo of wind hitting stone walls thick enough to swallow sound.
Wherever he’d brought me…
it was isolated.
I shifted, barely, and the metal connecting my wrists to the collar rattled. My ankles were cuffed again too—looser than before, but enough to remind me that movement wasn’t mine to take freely.
He hadn’t removed anything.
Not even while I slept.
My stomach tightened.
He said this was for travel.
For secrecy.
For my own safety.
But every time I woke…
I was still bound.
A dol
