“A cage to protect you from worse cages.” He placed the dagger in her hand, curling her fingers around its hilt. “Cut me. Freely. And if you choose not to, I will walk you to the mortal border tonight and break the binding myself—damn the cost.”
She was the entertainment.
Kaelen looked at the crown of thorns, still wet with his blood. She looked at the empty throne, the cold hall, the shadows that had been her only company for three years.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to a slab of obsidian.
But she had learned something he did not expect: a bound thing can still hate.
The air in the Thorned Court tasted of rust and dying roses.
She was taken to the bone gardens that night—a labyrinth beneath the court where the roots of the great thorn-tree grew like fossilized veins. The air was cold and still. Riven met her alone, divested of his crown and his court, wearing only a simple black tunic and bare forearms crisscrossed with scars that glowed faintly silver.
The court erupted when Riven announced the Tithe was complete—not as a consumption, but as a release . The nobles howled for blood, for tradition, for the pleasure of watching a mortal break. But Riven stood before them, his wounded hand dripping black onto the white marble, and spoke two words in the old tongue.
