My eyes open, but I can only see a blurry, dark mess. Everything hurts. It's a deep, terrible pain that goes right through my body and mind, like I was violently torn apart and put back together.
I lean my head on the rough stone. My muscles burn, and I desperately fight the urge to throw up.
Then, the pain shifts. It becomes sharp, focused, and searingly real. It feels like an invisible knife is ripping through me, a magical cut aimed at my core. I scream. It's a loud, awful sound, but it changes nothing.
The agony strikes again, slicing across my cheek and jaw. Then my neck. Then my chest. I instinctively reach for the wild, untamed power that is my witch blood, desperate for the stabilizing force of my magic, but there is nothing. My inner well is a dry. My power is sealed, gone, as if it never existed.
Panic washes over me like ice, but the pain forces me to focus. I push my blurry vision past the stinging and look at the three dark shapes standing before me. They aren't just shadows; they are faces.
Three faces I know and burn with hatred for. They are the ones who caused all the torment I experienced the second I walked into this castle years ago.
They are The Progeny. The highest-ranking, the oldest and the first generation of the Vampire Lord's chosen. The are very hands trusted to enforce the foundational laws of the blood court.
In the center stands Lord Cassian, pristine in a charcoal suit, his icy blue eyes assessing me with cold, surgical detachment. To his right, Lady Isolde watches with a faint, disgusted sneer, her perfect oxblood lips curved with judgment.
And behind them, Valerius remains silent, a heavy, intimidating presence in dark leather, his amber eyes fixed on my exposed throat.
I manage a broken, rattling whisper, the words dragged out on a pained groan: "Why? I never did anything to him."
I choke on the bitter truth. In fact, it was I who lost everything from that encounter. Not only was I pressed down by that beast. Even if he was poisoned, it makes no difference. I got pregnant and gave birth.
Now I lost my daughter, and my coven. And they stand here, ready to punish me all over again.
The air thickens with Valerius's contempt. He holds the whip casually, letting the leather whisper across the floor as his steps become imposing and deliberate.
He halts, and then his long nails, sharp and cruel, dig into my jaw, instantly drawing a bead of new, warm blood. He leans in close, his sharp fangs shining under the firelight from the torches.
"Filth like you should have never married our Lord," he hisses, the sound a vile, guttural condemnation.
I am breathing heavily, my body screaming at the pressure on my shattered nerves, but my voice is steadier than my pulse. "I didn't want to marry your Lord either."
That is the trigger. Valerius's amber eyes flash with infuriated aggression. He releases my jaw with a shove and raises his arm, not bothering with the whip. He begins to hit me, his closed fist slamming repeatedly into my head and face.
The world spins, the pain is blinding, and a thick warmth instantly floods my mouth. My nose is bloody, my vision swimming, and my face is rapidly swollen, yet he shows no sign of stopping.
"Valerius, stop."
Lord Cassian's voice cuts through the pounding, cold and sharp. Valerius instantly freezes mid-strike. He turns his fierce, aggressive face to Cassian, his teeth hissing in anger at the interruption.
The small moment of defiance breaks the contact, and my head is left tilted precariously. Thick blood and spit stream down the side of my lips, staining the ground.
The agony is overwhelming, but as I blink through the haze, a single, hot tear escapes the corner of my swollen eye. This is wrong. All of it. I was never supposed to be here.
Seven years ago....
The metal cage rattled, the sound echoing the nervous rhythm of the horse-drawn cart pulling me deeper into the lowlands. Cold iron bars bit into my wrists, and the damp wool blanket they'd thrown over the cage floor offered no comfort against the chill that had settled permanently in my bones.
I didn't cry anymore. There were no tears left, only a reservoir of brittle, icy grief that held me rigid against the jolting movements.
I had always known happiness. Up in the mountains, surrounded by the towering peaks and the dense, singing forest, my mother's love had been a fortress. She had been deceived by Lord Thaurion, yes, but when she learned the truth about the powerful warlock.
The truth that he was already married and had a child, she had simply taken me home to her coven and made sure I never knew a day of want or need. We were strong, we were loved, and we were safe.
That sanctuary shattered with the war. Thaurion, in his arrogance, had cast a net too wide, dragging every neutral faction into his conflict with the vampires.
It was his ambition that had brought the fire to our peaceful mountain valley. It was his hubris that had cost me the only life I had ever cherished.
My mother. I still saw her face, framed by the wild tangle of her auburn hair, the strength in her eyes even as the battle turned against them.
I was kneeling at the freshly turned earth of her grave, the smell of mountain soil and the bitter, sweet perfume of the wind lilies I had placed there still faint in my memorywhen my father materialized.
One moment, I was alone, whispering a promise of vengeance I didn't yet know how to keep. The next, a shadow fell over me, and the air turned thick and oppressive, like breathing liquid stone.
"Lyra," Lord Thaurion said, his voice a low, silk-wrapped command that felt instantly familiar, yet monstrous.
I tried to fight. I pushed my will outward, searching for the deep, resonant current of mountain magic that always hummed beneath my skin. But the hum was gone. It had been severed, silenced by a power far older and far darker than mine.
He didn't even need to touch me. He just willed it, and my power, the fierce, nascent magic my mother had nurtured, simply folded in on itself. The suppression felt like a fist crushing my lungs. I was nothing more than a frightened girl with dirt on her knees.