POV: Beth
For a long moment, I don’t breathe.
The voice hangs in the cold air between our cells, too casual for a dungeon, too smooth to belong in filth. It sounds as though it should drift over dice and candlelight in some crowded tavern, not echo through corridors where screams rot into the stone.
My eyes search the opposite cell, but torchlight only reaches so far. I make out bars slick with rust. Beyond them—nothing but a shape slouched in shadow, long legs stretched out, chains glinting faintly around wrists and ankles. A man, that much I can tell. Not young, not old—something dangerous in the calm of his posture.
My throat is raw from crying, but words stumble out anyway. “Who… who are you?”
Silence.
Then, soft and amused: “A better question, sweetheart, might be who you are.”
Sweetheart. The word scrapes like sandpaper.
I wipe my face with trembling fingers, suddenly painfully aware of my thin shift, my bare wrist marked and exposed. I pull my knees up, trying to hide myself, but the cell feels too small, every breath fogging in front of me like I’m being watched by the dark itself.
The man chuckles—low, lazy, infuriatingly relaxed.
“Ah. Frightened little bride. Crying in silk rags, shaking like the sea in storm. Pretty sight, really.”
My spine straightens at the mockery. “I am not— I was not crying.”
“Oh, of course not.” Something metal scrapes as he shifts, chain links clinking softly. “That was another girl sobbing her lungs out on the floor. Must have missed her on my way in.”
Heat stings behind my eyes again. I dig my nails into my palms to stop the tears. “Leave me alone.”
“If I wanted silence,” he drawls, “I’d talk to the guards.”
His voice carries humor like a blade—playful, sharp, meant to cut. I press my back against the wall, trying to steady my breath. It only makes me more aware of the freezing damp soaking through cloth into skin.
“So?” he asks after a beat. “What’s a bride doing in chains? Don’t tell me your prince found someone prettier in the pews.”
The memory of Adrian’s disgust burns fresh. My stomach twists. “He… he rejected me.”
“Well,” he says lightly, “that was unwise of him.”
I blink, stunned. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know fear when I smell it, and I know fire under it.” His tone is infuriatingly calm, as if he were lounging in a sunlit courtyard and not rotting beneath a palace. “You’re shaking like a leaf, yet not one tear now. That means backbone. The interesting ones always have a little bite.”
“I don’t—” I start, but my voice breaks. “I’m not interesting. I’m just—”
“A girl wearing royal lace in a sewer,” he interrupts. “Whose father fought like a wolf before they dragged him below.” His head tilts slightly; I hear it more than see it. “And whose wrist carries a pirate’s mark.”
My heart slams so hard it hurts. “It’s just a scar.”
He laughs. Actually laughs. It’s not cruel—worse, it’s knowing. “Scar, she says. As if that brand doesn’t scream pirate the way thunder screams storm.”
My pulse pounds in my temples. “I’m not pirate blood. I’m not— I didn’t know what it meant. I never—”
“You’re wearing the mark,” he says simply. “Meaning doesn’t care whether you knew.”
I clutch my wrist, shoving it beneath my shift sleeve as if I can hide the truth from his unseen eyes. “My father said it was nothing. He—”
“He lied.” No hesitation. No softness. “He must have had a reason. Men don’t hide nothing for seventeen years.”
Silence fills the space where my denial should be.
He shifts again—metal grinds stone, chains rattling lazily. If he is in pain, he masks it beneath indifference so smoothly I almost believe he enjoys this place.
I force myself to look harder. A faint glint reveals cuffs at his ankles, thick enough to tether a bull. His posture is too relaxed for someone who has been beaten, starved, or broken like the others further in. He sits like a man choosing to rest, not forced to. His voice carries not fear, but boredom.
“Why are you not afraid?” I whisper.
A pause. Then a low smile in words: “I’ve been in darker places than this.”
The answer chills more than the dungeon.
“What does that even mean?” My whisper comes out thin, but I can’t stop asking.
“It means chains don’t bother me.” A yawn rustles the straw beneath him. “Seen worse iron. Heard worse screams. So tell me, princess bride—why are you afraid of a mark on your own skin?”
Because everything I thought I was is gone. Because Father looked at me like he was losing me even before the guards took him. Because nobles recoiled like I was diseased. Because I don’t know who I am anymore.
But I swallow all that and say nothing.
He seems to hear my silence anyway. “Denial won’t warm you here. Nor will prayers. You’ve entered a different world now.”
“I just want to go home.” My voice cracks. “I want— I want my father.”
He doesn’t laugh this time. When he speaks, it’s quieter, though still soaked in that dangerous confidence. “Then you need more than tears. You need teeth.”
Before I can respond, boots slam on the upper stairs—heavy, approaching. I shrink against the wall. The opposite cell remains still, as if its occupant expected this.
Two guards appear carrying clubs and an iron hook. They stop before his cell.
“You again,” one snarls. “Still too comfortable?”
The man sighs like someone inconvenienced during dinner. “Came to keep me company? I’m flattered.”
He stands—or tries to. Chains jerk him back. Light catches his face at last, just enough to paint the edges: strong jaw shadowed with stubble, a split brow healing badly, hair dark and unbound, falling to his jawline. Eyes unreadable in the low light—but watching everything.
One guard strikes through the bars. The club hits him across the shoulder with a wet crack. He grunts—barely—then smiles.
Smiles.
“That all you’ve got?” he asks.
The second guard curses and jabs the iron hook through the bars, catching his ribs. He doubles slightly, breath hissing, but laughter ghosts through clenched teeth.
“Saints,” he mutters, “you two hit like noblewomen.”
I stare, horrified. Blood trails down his side, mixing with the wet stone. Yet he stands straighter, if only to spite them.
A third blow lands. His knee buckles—then straightens. His jaw flexes.
Why does he not beg? Why does he taunt them? Why does he look at pain as if it’s an old friend?
Something coils tight inside me—fear, yes, but something else. Fascination. Unease at the wrongness of calm strength in a place meant to break men.
The guards tire quickly. Their kicks lose force. One spits at him. “Rot here, beast.”
He gives a lazy half-smile, breathing hard. “Beast is flattering. Come back when you want entertainment.”
They leave, muttering, boots fading up the stairs. When the last echo fades, his laughter returns—low and tired, but real.
I can’t tear my eyes away.
He sinks back against the wall, chains rattling, head tipping toward the bars as if looking directly at me in the dark.
“See?” he murmurs. “Nothing to fear.”
My pulse hammers. “How—” My voice is barely sound. “How can you be so calm after that?”
“Pain reminds me I’m alive.” His tone stretches like a cat in sunlight. “Besides—it’s temporary. Chains are temporary. Dungeons, temporary.”
He pauses, letting the silence settle like a net. “I’m only here because I chose not to leave. Yet.”
The implication slams into me. He could escape? Then why—
I swallow, voice trembling. “If you can escape, why don’t you?”
“I said I could,” he corrects lazily. “Not that I will. I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
Chains slide with slow deliberation. His voice lowers, softer, almost intimate—the tone of a secret told through bars.
“For the right distraction.”
I inhale sharply.
Before I can answer—before I can decide whether to shrink back or force myself forward—his silhouette shifts deeper into shadow, fading into the dark like smoke.
“Sleep well, princess bride,” he murmurs. “Tomorrow, the real world begins.”
A chill drips down my spine like melting ice.
For the first time since entering this place, I am more afraid of the living than the dungeon itself.