The stone beneath my fingers had forgotten warmth. Days, or was it weeks? , had passed since I first woke in this prison with chains tight enough to cut. The silence was constant, broken only by distant coughing or the occasional howl of wind through broken slats. But it wasn’t the cold or the hunger that kept me awake tonight.
It was the fire building beneath my skin.
I sat in the centre of my cell, staring at a loose brick near the floor. My wrists were bruised, my lips cracked. Still, I focused.
Feel it, I told myself. Don’t just pull from the bond. Let it remember.
My mark had been dormant since the night they dragged me away, bleeding from the bite in my side. I’d barely survived the journey. Yet something had shifted recently. In the dark hours between sleep and madness, I’d begu
