Lumina.
It had been six dawns since I arrived at the Valemont estate, and my strength failed me each passing dawn. I grew weaker, and Aegor had refused me treatment for my fever.
He was a terrible Alpha.
Aegor was devastatingly wicked, and I couldn’t understand how he had ever managed to find a woman willing to marry him. What woman in her right mind would want to be with such a monster? Had he forced her?
My gaze shifted to his wife.
When I first arrived, the smell of urine that assaulted my nose was from her… she had wet herself.
She was in a coma, and each morning, maids, healers, and maesters would buzz around her bed. The maids would clean her and feed her, while the healers would administer their redundant herbs and tonics.
Aegor would then storm in and command me to sing. But I could barely manage it. Whenever I tried, tiny cracks would appear along the bars of the cage, spreading like delicate fractures through the metal. But with my mind clouded by fear and my body weakened from hunger and exhaustion, I couldn’t focus enough to control my voice.
When he noticed the cracks, he threatened me.
“If another crack appears on the bars of this cage, your head will roll faster than you can open your mouth!”
To punish me, he would withhold food, instructing the servants not to feed me. I would go for dawns without a meal. And when he did feed me, it was scraps. He gave me just enough to keep me alive.
Like clockwork, they all came in and were attending to her when suddenly, she started jerking violently. The maids panicked and pinned her down to the bed while the healers and maesters raced to stabilize her.
The head maester turned to one of the maids. “Go get the Alpha, quickly!”
She hurried out.
A few moments later, Aegor stormed in, rage engraved in every line on his face. He stood by and watched silently as the healers and maesters did their jobs. After they had her settled, the lead maester took him to a corner of the chamber and whispered to him.
Most of the conversation was lost to me, but I caught the end of the dialogue.
“…She doesn’t have much time left, and I don’t know how long we can keep her alive. If something isn’t done soon, I’m afraid she’ll be gone before this cycle is over… It’s now or never, Alpha.”
I watched as Aegor’s face moved through several distinct stages of emotion.
Then his eyes landed on me, and he stalked over to the cage, each deliberate step sending a jolt of fear through me. When he reached the bars, he unlocked it with a cold metallic click.
He reached into the cage, seized me by the hair, and dragged me across the floor toward his wife’s bedside. Pain tore through my scalp with every step, and I struggled to keep up as tears stung my eyes.
He squatted and snarled, whispering into my ear. “It’s been six dawns, and I’ve run out of patience, Velari.” He yanked my hair backward with such force that I thought my neck would snap. Pain shot through my neck, and a gasp tore from my throat. “So you can either sing…” His grip tightened. “Or die.”
It was then I really saw what she looked like.
Alora was young but frail. Her hair had thinned to wisps, and her cheeks were hollow. She was painfully thin, her arms and legs reduced to little more than bone, as though the sickness had devoured every ounce of flesh from her body. Her skin stretched taut over her jutting bones, while her stomach protruded unnaturally.
She must have been beautiful once. Even now, beneath the ravages of her illness, I could still glimpse the woman she might have been.
“I told you before,” I said, my voice strained as a result of the pressure on my scalp. “My song will aggravate her condition; it will backfire and kill her.”
With a brutal palm, he caught me across the jaw, sending a flash of white-hot pain shooting through my teeth and knocking me sideways.
“I don’t care!” he barked. “Sing, or die!”
The tears that threatened at the corners of my eyes fell.
Mistreated, starving, and broken, I sang—and my lament filled the room.
Alora’s body began to glow.