44: KNEEL FOR MERCY

**CELESTE**

I barely made it five paces before I whirled around, ready to march back and give Elijah a proper piece of my mind. The sheer audacity—making me his personal assistant, as if I were some servant, some pawn to move at his whim. Curse or not, I was still me. Still dangerous. Still—

The scent returned.

Stronger this time.

Like blood and honeysuckle. Like a memory I hadn’t lived but was already mourning. It filled my lungs, swept through me like a tide, and silenced the storm in my chest.

No.

No, not again.

I gritted my teeth, trying to resist, but my feet moved before I could stop them. One step, then another. The hallway around me blurred. I wasn’t thinking. I was moving. Down corridors I didn’t recognize. Past locked doors and tapestries I’d never seen. Something was pulling me. It was darker than before—more urgent, more wrong.

My throat tightened as the scent wrapped around my senses like velvet suffocating silk.

And then—I stopped.

The room before me was pitch-black save for the flicker of a hundred tiny flames. Candles in every direction, arranged in circles, spirals, sigils drawn in chalk, etched into the stone like wounds. The air was thick with smoke and something older—something sacred and profane.

In the center of it all knelt Medina.

Her hands hovered over a carved bowl of obsidian. Her mouth moved in silent rhythm, chanting something in a language I didn’t recognize but my bones did. My powers—it was like they shriveled the moment I crossed the threshold. Like the very air told me to kneel.

No.

The realization hit me fast and hot: she was restricting my magic. Actively. Purposefully.

I took a step forward, fury flaring in my chest. “Stop.”

Her eyes opened.

The candlelight turned her face into a mask of shadow and flame. “You’re not supposed to be here yet,” she said, almost bored. “But I suppose your instincts are still sharp. Pity they’ll be useless soon.”

“You’re siphoning my magic,” I said, voice tight. “You’re choking it.”

“You don’t need it,” she replied, rising smoothly to her feet. Her long hair swayed like silk behind her. “You’ve done nothing but cause trouble since you arrived. You think power is your right, but power isn’t kind, Celeste. And it doesn’t belong to the weak.”

I stepped forward to strike—to do something—but the moment my foot hit the inner ring of chalk, fire burst upward in a sharp circle around me. I was trapped. Bound. The circle flared with ancient symbols, the magic older than the language I knew.

“Try to move,” Medina whispered. “I dare you.”

I did.

And screamed.

It was like being flayed from the inside out. Pain sang through my veins. My knees buckled, hands hitting the floor hard enough to bruise.

“Oh, dear,” she purred. “That’s just the beginning.”

She walked around the circle, gaze burning like coals, her voice laced with a glee that sent ice through me. “You think because Elijah looked at you—what, once? That means you belong by his side?” She spat the words like venom. “You don’t even understand what he is. You never will.”

“You’re insane,” I gasped.

She crouched beside the line of chalk, eyes level with mine. “I am a fallen angel,” she said with reverence. “Not a witch. Not some hedge-skulking spellweaver. I was cast from the heavens. I have used the bones of gods for kindling. You? You’re a pretty little candle I plan to snuff out.”

I tried to rise, but the magic bound me down like invisible chains. My hands trembled. I could feel the last threads of my strength flickering like dying embers.

“Please…” I whispered, ashamed at the way my voice broke.

She smiled like a mother watching a child learn their place.

“Elijah is mine,” she hissed. “He will be mine again. I will not let you distract him with your pitiful, doe-eyed helplessness.”

Then she raised her hand, and the air split with the sound of cracking bone.

My bracelet—the one I’d been given after the last time she restricted me—shattered into dust.

And in its place, around my wrist, bloomed a new one. Black as sin. Thorned. Living. It burrowed slightly beneath the skin, searing with a burn that made me scream through my teeth.

This was worse than last time.

So much worse.

I could feel it. Not just cutting me off from magic—but hollowing me out. Erasing the memory of what power even felt like.

I fell to the ground, gasping, clawing at the bracelet with both hands—but it wouldn’t budge. It pulsed like a second heartbeat, a symbol of my captivity.

“On your knees,” Medina said coldly. “Where you belong.”

I already was. But that wasn’t enough for her. She raised her hand again and pain lanced through my spine, driving me forward until my forehead kissed the cold stone floor.

“That’s better,” she said, stepping back.

Tears gathered in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not here. Not in front of her.

She turned her back to me, strolling toward the nearest candle. One by one, she snuffed them out. Each flame dying felt like a coffin being nailed shut.

“Sleep tight, little witch,” she cooed. “Or whatever’s left of you.”

As she reached the door, she paused, turning slightly.

“If you think this is the end—you have no imagination,” she said with a smile that could haunt dreams. “Elijah will forget you soon enough. And when he does? I’ll be the only thing he remembers.”

She vanished into the darkness.

The door creaked shut behind her, and I was alone.

Trapped in a cold, dark room. Powerless. Bound.

I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. My whole body trembled with pain and something deeper—shame.

I’d never felt so weak.

So helpless.

Tears spilled hot and furious down my cheeks. I gritted my teeth against the sob building in my throat.

I hated her.

I hated her so much, it made my fingers curl into fists even as they trembled.

She thought she’d won. That she’d broken me.

But I would remember this.

Every flame. Every word. Every burn.

She’d taken my power. She thought that made her untouchable.

She had no idea.

I wasn’t just going to survive this.

I was going to make her pay.

And when I did?

She’d beg for mercy I didn’t have.