A Sweet Reward

A Sweet Reward
Layla

Pain pulled me back before consciousness did.

It started as a dull throb behind my eyes, then sharpened. It radiated down my cheeks, to my jaw, until my entire skull was full of it. I imagined this is what it felt like to fall off a building. Though I’d never done that before. 

I felt as if I shouldn’t even be alive. 

My limbs were unresponsive. Aching and heavy as I tried to will them to move. 

Did I even have them anymore?

I groaned softly and shifted.

Metal clinked near my ear, and my eyes flew open. 

Stone walls surrounded me, bare and cold and completely unfamiliar. 

They were close enough to my skin that I could feel the chill radiating off them without touching. My wrists were bound above me, iron biting into skin already raw. My ankles too.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

Memory crashed all at once. I remembered the garden, Varynth, the sudden dizziness, the way the world had tilted. 

“Kai.” The name was a broken whisper in the back of my throat. 

The bond thrummed in my chest, but it felt wrong. 

I froze, trying to focus on the bond instead of the pain. There was no warmth, no pull. No hum beneath my skin.

I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the bond instead of the pain. Maybe it was too much for me to process it all at the same time. 

The pain was too much. 

Something burned along my arm. I sucked in a sharp breath, finally noticing the tight bandage wrapped around my forearm. It throbbed with every heartbeat, a sting. 

The lock on a door clicked. It was a heavy thud that echoed in the room, and I went still. I couldn’t lift my head up far enough to see the door, but I could hear it. 
A slow creak that lifted in pitch until I crunched my teeth together. 

A pair of footsteps hit the ground, and Varynth stood before me. Studious eyes and an amused smile on his face. He looked so calm and composed, as if he were having afternoon tea instead of entering my cell. 

My eyes flickered to the woman who stood behind him. She was small in stature, but she held her head down, covered in a cloak. 

“You’re awake. Good.” Varynth’s voice slid down my spine, made worse by the smile that grew unnaturally on his face. 

My stomach flipped, fear and panic flushing through me. I shrank as far back as the chains would let me, and they rattled above me. 

“Check her,” he instructed.

My gaze snapped to woman behind him as she stepped forward. She pulled the hood back, and my breath caught.

She was older than me, but not by much. Her face was pale, eyes sunken and rimmed with exhaustion. There was no fight in her posture. No defiance.

But I could tell she was just trying to survive.

She hesitated for half a heartbeat before lifting her hands. With the way she moved her fingers, I knew she was a witch. 

Her hands trembled, a tightness around her mouth, and when I lifted my eyes to hers, I saw the apology written in their depths. 

“I—” My voice broke. “Please—”

She didn’t answer.

Her hand came up, fingers cold as they wrapped around my throat. Her thumb pressed firmly into the center of my forehead.

Something pushed into me. It was like being seen from the inside. What Angie had done to Kai. 

I gasped, trying to pull away, but my body refused me. My vision blurred, a strange pressure building behind my eyes as she searched through me, around me, inside me.

Then she stilled. Her expression shifted. Something in it cracked.

It exposed sadness, a heaviness I even struggled to swallow. 

She looked at me for a moment longer before turning her head slowly toward Varynth. “The bond has been severed.”

No, the word didn’t come out. It stayed trapped somewhere deep in my chest, where everything suddenly felt wrong.

“No.” This time it came out, broken, desperate.

Now, the pain didn’t matter. I reached for him, but nothing answered.

My chest heaved, panic flooding fast and suffocating as I tried again, clawing blindly at that space where he should be.

“Kai—” My voice cracked, dissolving into a sob. “Kai—please—”

Silence.

My stomach twisted violently, nausea rising as the emptiness spread, hollowing me out from the inside. My heart raced like it were trying to outrun the loss, slamming hard enough to hurt.

Varynth exhaled slowly, satisfied. “Good.”

The woman flinched.

“Leave us,” he said.

She didn’t argue. Didn’t look at me again. She just walked out, her steps quiet and obedient. The door shut behind her with heavy finality.

And then it was just us.

I tried to pull away, chains rattling wildly as terror took over completely. “Lord Varynth, please. What is this?”

He stepped closer. Tears streamed freely down my face as I shook my head.

“I told you. I’ve wanted to taste you since you were born. The little human princess born of the king.”

My heart slammed in my chest, and I pulled at the chains to no avail. “My father, he will find me and he will—”

“He won’t find you. Not here.”

I looked around, trying to find any source of light, but there were no windows.

“The bond to your mate has been severed. No one will find you here.”

He stopped just in front of me.

I had nowhere to go.

My breath came in short, broken gasps as I pressed myself back as far as the chains would allow, my heart slamming violently against my ribs.

“Your blood has been a sweet reward.”

I screamed when he reached for me, his fangs digging into my skin.