The Fallen Princess: Unbound

Chapter Thirteen

The cave did not open into darkness. It opened into a world. The mist thinned as they were marched forward, and the stone corridor widened into a vast hollow that stole Zaria’s breath. Not because it was beautiful in a polished way, but because it was alive.

A cathedral grown rather than built. Roots as thick as pillars arched overhead, braided into ribbed supports that held the ceiling like a living spine. Bark-latticed walkways wound along the walls in graceful curves, and the rock itself glimmered faintly with veins of pale mineral that caught whatever light existed here and turned it soft.

Water ran in narrow channels carved into the floor, but it ran without sound, as if the enclave had taught it silence. Bioluminescent lichen glowed in thin bands along the roots, a muted blue-green that made everyone’s skin look slightly unreal.

Even the air felt engineered. Cooler than the forest, resinous, clean beneath the damp. It smelled like sap hardened over time and smoke that had learned to behave. Sanctuary, Zaria realized. Not a cave. A sanctuary hidden inside a wound of the earth.

The archers kept their bows trained as they guided the four of them down a root-lined path that spiraled deeper into the hollow. More people watched from openings in the barkwork, faces half-hidden, red eyes bright and unblinking. No one spoke. It wasn’t fear exactly. It was discipline.

The tattooed woman walked in front, not hurried, not uncertain. She belonged to this place the way the roots did: by right of endurance.

“Stop,” she said at last, and they were brought to a flat space lit by lichen and a low brazier that gave off more heat than flame. Two guards stepped forward with iron blades, not swords, not weapons meant for fighting. Tools.

“Search them,” the tattooed woman ordered. Zaria’s spine tightened. She didn’t resist, but her body wanted to. The guards patted down her cloak and belt with brisk efficiency, finding steel and leather and the small necessities of travel.

Her dagger was removed first, her familiar one, the weight she’d carried so long it felt like a part of her. Then her short sword. Then the thin, hidden blade stitched into the lining of her cloak. The guard paused at the last, brows lifting. “She’s thorough,” he murmured.

Aldric’s mouth quirked. “Princesses usually are.” A guard took Aldric’s sword, his second knife, then his third. Aldric watched them pile his weapons like a sacrifice and sighed dramatically. “If you steal my favorite one, I’ll haunt you.” No one laughed.

Zakai surrendered his weapons without expression. He looked like a man who didn’t need steel to be dangerous. Then they searched Koen. Koen stood without moving, eyes on nothing, posture loose enough to look unbothered.

A guard’s hands went to the hem of his tunic, lifted it to check for hidden blades and froze. The tattooed woman stepped closer, impatient. “What is it.” The guard’s expression tightened. “Scars.” Koen didn’t flinch.

The guard pushed the tunic higher to expose more skin, and Zaria felt her stomach clench, not at gore, but at recognition. Marks. Not the kind earned in battle. These were deliberate. Repeated.

Layered over each other, old and new enough to be a history written on flesh: thin pale lines, thicker ridges, some shaped like burns, some like lash marks. Each one looked like it had been given with purpose. Like punishment.

The tattooed woman went still. For the first time since Zaria had met her, the anger in her face faltered, just a fraction, as her eyes tracked the scars with something that wasn’t softness, but shock. Her hand lifted as if to reach out, then stopped.

A tremor crossed her mouth, quick as a swallowed breath. Then her expression snapped back into hardness so fast it almost looked like a lie. Behind her, Koen’s mother made a small sound. Not a wail. Not even a cry.

A single, broken breath that escaped her throat like a sob that had been waiting years for permission. Koen’s face didn’t change. But his eyes flicked, only a fraction of a second, to his mother’s.

Zaria saw it. Saw the way his gaze caught on her and then pulled away as if the contact burned. Aldric, apparently unable to let any moment stay completely unpunctured, tilted his head and muttered, “That must’ve hurt.” Zakai’s look could’ve killed him.

The tattooed woman’s gaze snapped to Aldric, warning sharp enough to slice skin, then she turned back to Koen. “Cover him,” she ordered the guard, voice rougher than it had been. The guard lowered Koen’s tunic quickly, almost respectfully.

Koen didn’t adjust it. He didn’t hide himself in shame. He simply stood there like a man who’d stopped expecting privacy long ago. The tattooed woman exhaled through her nose, as if steadying something in herself. Then, finally, she looked at all four of them.

“My name is Maeryn,” she said. “And before you ask... no, I don’t owe you hospitality.” Her eyes lingered on Koen again, almost against her will. “We are not oath-bound,” she added, voice hardening. “We are not shifters. We are not your father’s tools.”

Her mouth twisted around the word father like it tasted bitter. “We are what’s left.” Maeryn stepped closer, the ink along her face catching the lichen glow. “If you want access to the book, you will earn it.”

Zaria’s heart beat once, heavy. “How.” Maeryn’s gaze slid to Zaria’s uncovered hair, her pale skin, the faint sense of light that made the air around her feel different. “Truth Rite,” she said simply. “You will speak one sentence each under ward. You will bleed into the ink. If you lie, we will know.”

“And if we tell the truth?” Zaria asked. Maeryn’s eyes narrowed. “Then you will be permitted to ask for the book.” Zaria’s mouth went dry. “Ask.” Maeryn’s lip curled faintly. “We do not hand it over like a trinket. It chooses.”

“And the price?” Aldric asked, tone still light but eyes sharp. Maeryn’s gaze went cold. “There is always a price.” Koen didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But Zaria could see the subtle tension in his hand where it still hovered near his side, fingers loose as if he could look relaxed while holding himself back from something older than anger.

Maeryn lifted her hand. “Bring them.” They were guided deeper. Through a corridor where roots wrapped stone like ribs. Past doors grown from bark and bone-white resin. Down into a chamber that felt different the moment Zaria stepped inside. Like the air thickened, like the space recognized her light and judged it.

A circle had been carved into the floor and filled with a thin line of salt-black powder. Iron nails marked four points at the edges. In the center sat a shallow bowl carved from dark stone, half-filled with viscous sap-ink that gleamed faintly in the lichen light.

The ward hummed. Not loud. But steady. A vibration in the bones. Maeryn gestured. “One at a time,” she said. “Blood first.” A guard handed each of them a small iron needle. Not sharp enough to be cruel. Sharp enough to be honest.

Zaria pricked her finger. A bright bead of blood welled. She let it fall into the sap-ink. The ink reacted immediately, rippling, tightening, as if it had tasted her and decided she was real. Zakai did the same.

Aldric grimaced theatrically. “I hate needles,” he muttered, then pricked his finger anyway. His blood sank into the ink, and the ward pulsed once. Koen did it last. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even blink as the needle pierced skin. His blood fell into the bowl like a drop of night.

The sap-ink shivered. Not violently. Attentively. Maeryn dipped two fingers into the ink and drew a line across each of their wrists. Simple bands that looked like tattoos at first, until the ink sank into skin like it belonged there, dark and cool and faintly alive.

Zaria’s wrist tingled. Not pain. A sense of being marked. Bound, not as a prisoner, but as someone under sanctuary law. Maeryn’s voice lowered. “One sentence each. Speak to the ward. Not to me.”

She looked at Zaria. “You first.” Zaria drew a slow breath. The ward thrummed, waiting. She could feel it listening, as if the air itself had become ears. “I will pay a cost,” Zaria said, voice steady, “to free the oath-bound, even if it changes me.”

The ink on her wrist warmed faintly. The ward pulsed once... acceptance. Maeryn’s gaze shifted to Zakai. Zakai didn’t hesitate. “If anyone here tries to use her magic,” he said, calm as stone, “you’ll go through me.”

The ink on his wrist cooled, then steadied. Aldric went next, lifting his chin as if he was about to make a joke and then didn’t. “I’m afraid,” he admitted, quieter than Zaria expected from him, “but I’m still here.” The ward thrummed again, deeper this time, like something old approving courage.

Then Maeryn looked at Koen. Koen’s face remained unreadable. But Zaria could feel him, somehow. Like the ward had sharpened her senses to the edges of people, to the things they held inside.

Koen’s gaze flicked briefly to his mother standing at the chamber’s edge, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles looked pale. Then he faced the ward. “I am Voryn’s son,” Koen said, voice quiet, “and I will not serve him again.”

The sap-ink on his wrist flared, just a flicker of dark light beneath skin. The ward answered. Not with warmth. With recognition. And the chamber seemed to exhale as if it had been holding its breath for years.

Maeryn’s expression tightened, as if the ward’s reaction confirmed something she didn’t want confirmed. She stepped back, gaze sweeping them all. “No lies,” she said. It sounded like grudging permission. “No hidden intent.”

Zaria’s pulse hammered. “So we’re allowed to see it.” “You are allowed to dine,” Maeryn corrected, and her eyes flashed with warning. “Then, if you still want it, you will ask.” They were guided out of the ward chamber, ink still cool on their wrists.

Koen’s mother fell into step behind them, silent. Not trying to touch him. Not trying to claim him. Just close enough to prove she couldn’t stop herself from being near.

At the entrance to the main hollow, Maeryn gestured to a long table carved from dark wood, set beneath root-arches strung with pale lichen light. Food had been laid out—simple, hearty: roasted roots, spiced fish, bowls of fruit that smelled sharper than anything Zaria had tasted on the surface, bread dense and warm.

People gathered quietly around it, watching with the same careful eyes. Not hostile now. Wary. As if they were deciding whether these strangers were the beginning of the end. As Zaria moved toward the table, Koen’s mother stepped closer to Koen’s side and stopped.

She didn’t reach for him. She simply looked at him, really looked, now that she’d seen what his tunic hid. Her voice came soft, but it hit like a blade. “All these years… and I still thought of you every day.” A pause, raw and restrained.

Koen didn’t react. Not outwardly. But Zaria saw the tell. A single, slow blink. And the smallest tightening at the corner of his jaw, like he’d swallowed something sharp. It was enough to prove the words had landed.

Aldric leaned closer to Zaria under his breath. “If we die here,” he whispered, “tell the dragons I fought bravely.” Zaria’s mouth twitched. “We have dragons waiting at the forest edge,” she murmured back. Aldric nodded solemnly. “Good. I’d hate to disappoint them.”

Zaria slid into a seat beside Koen without thinking. It felt natural, less a choice than an instinct, drawn by the strange new awareness that he was the hinge between this place and the world she’d brought with her.

Koen sat stiffly, eyes forward, hands folded as if the act of eating in front of his people was more difficult than facing arrows. Zaria’s voice lowered. “Has Zephira… tugged on the anchor?” she asked carefully.

Koen’s gaze shifted to her, then away again. “No,” he said. Relief loosened something in Zaria’s chest. She didn’t know what she’d been bracing for. Her daughter crying and Koen feeling it across the continent, a pull like a hook in his ribs, but the fear had lived there anyway.

Zaria hesitated, then tried gently, “Your mother—” Koen went still. Not anger. Not refusal. A quiet, instant stillness that told her too soon. Zaria stopped herself. Let the subject drop like a stone into deep water.

Across the table, Koen’s mother watched them, her eyes cautious, worried, and full of questions she didn’t know how to ask without breaking something. After a moment, she rose and approached Zaria directly, hands folded in front of her as if keeping them from reaching.

She looked at Zaria, then at Koen. “What are you to one another?” she asked, voice level, but Zaria heard the tremor beneath it, the fear that Koen had returned bound to someone else’s fate. Zaria met her gaze, steady. “Friends,” she said simply.

Koen’s head inclined once. A single nod. No flourish. No speech. But it was agreement. And it made something bloom quietly in Zaria’s chest, warm and unexpected, because for Koen, that small confirmation was enormous.

His mother studied his face, searching for something that still looked like her boy. Maeryn’s voice cut through the low murmur of the table. “Eat,” she ordered. “Rest.” Her eyes fixed on Zaria. “Because when the book is brought out, you don’t get to hesitate. It doesn’t like hesitation.”

Zaria’s fingers curled lightly against the table’s edge. She looked down at the dark band of sap-ink on her wrist. It felt like a promise. Or a warning.

And somewhere deeper in the sanctuary, beyond the roots and wards, Zaria could almost feel it... an object waiting in the dark like a closed eye. The book.