Chapter 10 – Back to the Cage
1085 Words
I didn’t take his hand.
For one long, suspended heartbeat, I just stared at it—broad palm, scar across the thumb, knuckles nicked from some old fight. A stranger’s hand. A warning. A way out.
My wolf pressed against my chest, torn. Take it, she snarled. Run.
But behind Cassian, through the trees, I could see the faint, familiar glow of Mistveil’s lanterns. My father sleeping under my mother’s watchful eye. Coren. Kessa. A pack that might be rotten at the core, but was still mine.
I pushed to my feet under my own power, ignoring the flare of pain in my shoulder.
“I can’t,” I said, voice raw. “Not yet.”
His hand dropped without impatience, just a small, resigned tilt of his head.
“Then you’d better move,” he said. “Those idiots won’t be the only ones sniffing around. They never are.”
I glanced at the bodies. One dead, two groaning, one vanished into the dark.
“You’re just going to let him go?” I demanded. “He’ll report back. They’ll know—”
“That their convenient ‘accident’ failed?” Cassian’s mouth curved, sharp. “Good. Let them scramble.”
He stepped past me, crouched beside one of the downed wolves and rifled through his leathers with efficient hands. A folded scrap of parchment, a small insignia pin—no pack mark, but a stylized crescent with three vertical cuts through it.
Not Serapha’s symbol. Not any temple’s I knew.
Cassian pocketed it.
“You didn’t see me,” he said without looking up. “You tripped a patrol of freelancing scum and survived by the skin of your teeth. You killed one, scared the others off. That’s the story.”
He rose, finally meeting my gaze again. “And if you’re smart, you won’t tell your pretty healer anything about any of this.”
I tightened my grip on the vial. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Debatable,” he said. “You still walked out here alone.”
I bristled. “I needed proof.”
“You got it. And nearly got your throat opened for the trouble.”
Something warm and wet trickled down my neck. I wiped at it; my fingers came away red where the knife had kissed my skin.
Cassian’s gaze flicked to the smear of blood, then back to my eyes, something unreadable in his expression.
“Go home, Mistveil,” he said quietly. “Patch yourself up. Hide that” —he nodded at the vial— “somewhere no one will sniff it out before you’re ready.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then,” he said, stepping backward into the shadows, “you decide whether you’re going to keep pretending you can fix this from inside their cage.”
The night seemed to swallow him. One blink, and he was gone. Only the disturbed undergrowth and the fading echo of his scent proved he’d ever been there.
My legs felt hollow as I dragged the bodies just over the border—far enough that any blood found would be “outside Mistveil jurisdiction.” Let the Council explain that to itself.
The vial burned in my pocket all the way back.
By the time the main house loomed ahead, my dress was torn, my hair wild, my neck crusted with half-dried blood. A patrol at the edge of the clearing spotted me first.
“Beta candidate down!” someone shouted.
I winced. Subtlety, dead.
Wolves converged—Jarek, Kessa, a cluster of guards. Kessa’s eyes went huge.
“Lyris, what the—”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Border scuffle. Four rogues. They underestimated me.”
Jarek’s gaze cut to the torn cloth at my throat, then to my empty hands.
“Where’s your spear?” he asked.
“Buried in someone’s ribs,” I said. “You’re welcome.”
He stared a moment longer, then jerked his chin. “Infirmary. Now.”
Of course.
The sharp, antiseptic air of the medical wing hit me like a wave. Eryx spun from a cabinet at the sight of me, color draining from his face.
“Lyris.” He was at my side in an instant, hands hovering, eyes scanning. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
His concern would’ve felt real, once.
“Just a patrol that went wrong,” I said. “I’m not the one you should be worried about. There are bodies near the border—”
“We’ll send a team,” Jarek said behind me. “You sit.”
Eryx steered me onto a cot, fingers gentle under my chin as he tilted my head to examine the cut at my throat. His touch left a trail of icy heat.
“This could’ve been deeper,” he murmured. “You were lucky.”
I caught his wrist before he could reach for a tray of pre-mixed solutions.
“No blends,” I said quietly. “Not tonight.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “Lyris—”
“Just clean it,” I insisted. “Stitches if you must. No herbs. No drinks. I’m clear enough.”
Something hard flickered in his gaze, gone so quickly I almost missed it.
“As you wish,” he said.
His hands were steady as he cleaned and dressed the cut. The whole time, his scent wrapped around me—soap, steel, herbs.
No smoke. No heather. No wild pine.
No Cassian.
By the time he was done, the shaking inside me had calmed enough that I could stand without my knees giving out.
“Try not to make a habit of this,” he said softly, fingers brushing my jaw. “I can’t fix you if you keep throwing yourself at knives.”
I held his gaze, thinking of the vial pressing against my hip like a secret brand.
“I’m done letting anyone ‘fix’ me,” I said. “From now on, I decide what I break.”
Later, alone in my room, I pried up the loose floorboard under my bed and slid the pale green vial into the dark.
Proof.
Someone else had seen it. Someone outside Mistveil.
I lay awake until the sky began to lighten, Cassian’s words echoing in my skull.
Come with me. Or go back and die on schedule.
I’d gone back.
But for the first time, the cage didn’t feel inevitable.
It felt… temporary.
- Writer
