POV: Sable
I burned the note.
The moment I got back to my room after dinner, I tore Caspian's note into pieces, then took the pieces to the small fireplace in the corner and watched them turn to ash. They know. Run. Three words that had turned my blood to ice the moment I read them. Three words I could not stop hearing even now, even as the last black flake crumbled and disappeared.
They know.
But who knew what? Did Garrick know about Caspian? About the way Caspian looked at me? About whatever it was that made my chest burn every time he was near? Or did he know something else — something about me, about what was happening inside my body, about the second heartbeat that would not stop pounding?
I did not have time to figure it out.
Because Garrick was coming.
I heard him before I saw him. His footsteps in the hallway — heavy, slow, unhurried. The sound of them made my stomach drop to the floor. I turned away from the fireplace and stood in the middle of the room, hands at my sides, face blank. I had gotten good at that. Making my face a wall. Not letting anything show — not fear, not anger, not anything at all. If he saw weakness, he used it. I had learned that lesson fast.
The door opened. Garrick walked in and closed it behind him. He did not lock it. He never locked it. He did not need to. There was nowhere for me to go.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he walked past me toward the bed, loosening his shirt as he went. He did not speak. He never spoke during this part. Words were not necessary. The message was always the same, and it never changed.
You are mine. This is what that means.
I stood still and let him come to me. I did not fight. I had learned early that fighting made it worse — longer, harder, more painful. So I went somewhere else in my mind. I closed my eyes and I thought about the woods. About the stream where the water ran cold and clear. About the way the air felt on my face when the wind blew through the trees. About the sound of birds in the morning, so sharp and clear that it felt like music.
I thought about anything except what was happening to my body.
It did not take long. It never did. Garrick was not interested in tenderness or connection. He was interested in one thing, and when he was done with it, he was done with me. He rolled onto his side, his back to me, and within minutes his breathing changed — slow and even. Asleep. Just like that. Like nothing had happened. Like I was not even in the room.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, and I did not cry. Not yet. Crying came later, when I was sure he was deep asleep and could not hear me. For now, I just breathed. In and out. In and out. Trying to keep the pieces of myself from falling apart.
The note kept playing in my head. They know. Run.
Run. Where? The mansion was surrounded by forest for miles in every direction. No roads. No towns. No phones that worked. The gates were guarded around the clock by wolves who could run faster than any human. Even if I made it past them — even if I somehow got through the woods — where would I go? Back to Marlowe? Back to nothing?
No. Running was not the answer. Not yet.
But something else was.
I turned my head slowly and looked at Garrick's back. His breathing was deep and steady. Completely asleep. I watched him for a long time, and something hardened inside me — something cold and sharp and quiet, like a blade being sharpened in the dark.
He thought I was weak. Everyone in this house thought I was weak. The quiet girl. The bought bride. The human who could not fight back.
They were all wrong.
I did not know it yet — not fully, not completely. But the thing inside me, the second heartbeat, the thing that had been growing stronger every single day since I arrived at Ironpaw — it was not just waking up.
It was getting angry.
And it was angry on my behalf.
I closed my eyes and breathed through the ache in my body, and I let the anger sit inside me like a fire, small but steady, warming me from the inside out. I did not fight it. I did not push it down. For the first time since I arrived at this place, I let myself feel something real.
The tears came eventually. Silent. Controlled. I let them fall but I did not make a sound. I cried for myself. For my parents. For the girl I used to be before Marlowe put me in that car. And then, slowly, the tears stopped. Because crying was done. Crying was the old Sable — the one who had nothing and no one and no way out.
That Sable was gone now.
I was not sure who was replacing her yet. But whoever she was, she was not going to lie here in the dark and let this be her life.
I lay still until Garrick's breathing told me he was deep enough asleep that nothing short of an earthquake would wake him. Then I turned onto my side, facing the wall, and pressed my hand against my chest.
Two heartbeats. Steady. Strong. Pulsing together now in a rhythm that felt almost like a conversation — like one was talking and the other was answering.
Wake up, I thought. Not out loud. Just in my mind, directed inward, at the thing living inside me that I still did not have a name for.
Whatever you are — wake up.
For a long time, nothing happened.
Then something changed.
It was not loud. It was not dramatic. It was small — so small I almost missed it. A warmth spread through my chest, radiating outward, flowing through my veins like liquid gold. My fingers tingled. My toes curled. And deep inside me, behind the second heartbeat, something stirred.
Something ancient.
Something vast.
Something that opened one eye — just one — and looked at me from the inside.
And in that moment, I understood two things with absolute clarity.
The first was that whatever had been locked inside me my entire life was not just waking up.
It had been awake for a while now.
It had been watching.
And the second thing — the thing that made my blood run cold even as the warmth spread through my body — was this:
It knew about Caspian.
It had known from the very first moment in the woods by the stream. It had felt him before I did. It had recognized him before I understood what that meant.
And it was not afraid of him.
It was waiting for him.