Enna lingered by the window until the moon bled into the distant horizon and the glass began to fog with her shallow breath. The chill of the mountain morning crept beneath her nightdress, raising a rash of goosebumps along her arms, but she did not retreat. Instead, she pressed her forehead to the wavery pane, watching the silhouette of Malren pace the lower gardens in a restless, predatory arc. Each turn of his head seemed impossibly attuned to her movement, though she doubted he could see her through the warped glass and the curtain of her hair. Still, the knowledge of his presence made her pulse thunder in her throat.
She pulled herself away, leaving a ghostly print in the dew-laced window, and padded back toward the heart of the chamber. The richness of the bedchamber pressed in on her—the pillowed alcove, the brocade canopies, the ancient furniture with its gnarled legs and vein-like inlays of mother-of-pearl. All around her, the detritus of centuries pressed up against the insistent weight of the present. Enna crossed to the marble-topped dressing table and reached for the battered brush; as she dragged it through her tangled white hair, the bristles crackled with static and memories of her mountain home surfaced—memories of rough wool blankets, simple wooden combs, the scent of cold air and fresh-cut yew.
The palace air was nothing like the crisp mountain breeze. Here, every inhalation carried a dense perfume of decay and secrets, the metallic tang of old blood undercut by something incongruously sweet. Lilacs, she realized, as she set the brush down. Not the distant whiff of spring, but something heady, amplified—a manufactured imitation. It coiled through the dust motes and wrapped around her lungs with each breath. There were no flowers in this palace. The scent was a message, a memory, or perhaps a mask.
Driven by a kind of desperate need to move, Enna began to explore. She ran her fingertips along the edge of the faded tapestries that lined the walls. The scenes they depicted were violent and exultant—ancient vampires in the throes of conquest, blood blooming in intricate spirals across the bodies of kneeling supplicants. The threads were dulled, but in the places where sunlight had never reached, the reds still burned. She traced the outlines with growing unease, then let her hands fall to the walls themselves. The stone was cool and uneven, the faintest hint of a seam catching her nails at one juncture. Enna pressed it, and the panel slid away beneath her touch.
A darkness yawned beyond, dust-filled and airless. She drew back in surprise, heart thumping. The opening was barely wide enough to admit a slender child, but Enna's healer's curiosity gnawed at her. She stooped, peered into the shadowed recess, and glimpsed the start of a cramped stone corridor, thick with cobwebs. Beyond, the uncertain blackness stretched, unbroken, until it merged with the hush of memory. She pulled her head out, dusted her hands on her skirt, and closed the panel. A secret, but not an escape—she knew enough of curses and blood magic to sense when a passage led only to new dangers.
A sense of futility threatened to swamp her, but she fought it off with small acts of defiance. She moved to the bookcase next, running her fingers along the spines. Most were illegible—titles rubbed away, pages clumped with mold and centuries of neglect. One volume was newer, the leather soft and almost inviting. She pried it loose, and a scattering of pressed flowers tumbled from the pages, their shapes still distinct even as they crumbled to dust at her touch. Among them were lilacs, whole and perfectly preserved.
Enna pressed one to her nose. The scent was almost overwhelming, as if all the lost summers of the world were compressed into this single brittle petal. Her heart stuttered at the thought that someone, centuries ago, had tried to keep a piece of that beauty alive in a place like this. She set the flower back between the pages and slid the book into her pocket.
She turned at the sound of footsteps, so soft that only the preternatural stillness of the palace made them audible. Malren stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the dim corridor behind him. He wore the same clothes as earlier, the black of his coat absorbing all light; only the runic silver embroidery at the cuffs and collar gleamed, as if in warning.
He took three steps into the room, and Enna felt her body tense—instinct, not intent. She met his gaze head-on. His eyes were not the glacial gray she remembered from their first meeting, but a stormier shade, turbulent with unspoken intent. He seemed, in that moment, neither predator nor jailer, but something infinitely more dangerous: a man carrying too many regrets.
"Enjoying your accommodations?" he asked, his voice a drawl, each word layered with irony and something sharper.
"I prefer my dungeons less... ostentatious," Enna replied, mustering bravado she did not fully feel. "But perhaps that's a matter of taste."
A flicker of a smile crossed his lips, then vanished. He paced the perimeter of the room, running a gloved finger along the edge of the window. "It was once the jewel of the northern provinces. My mother's domain, when she reigned." His tone was matter-of-fact, but Enna detected an undercurrent of resentment—a contempt for the memory, or for the role he played in perpetuating it.
She watched as he leaned against the window, arms crossed. "Why keep me here?" she demanded. "If the bond is as powerful as you say, what danger am I in? What threat am I to you?"
Malren regarded her for a long moment. "You misunderstand the nature of the bond," he said. "It's not a leash. Not in the way you imagine. The blood chooses its own master. Even now, if I tried to command you directly, it would rebel. It exists to balance our fates, not enforce them."
"Balance," Enna echoed, bitterness curling her words. "I fail to see any balance in this. I wake up in a stranger's palace, every movement monitored, my freedom crushed under your whim."
"The bond was never meant to be a prison." Malren's voice was flat, but the muscle in his jaw tightened. "But those who created it ensured neither of us could escape its consequences." He looked away, gaze fixed on the fractured glass as the first rays of morning caught on its shards. "If I die, you die. If you die—" He broke off, the silence more eloquent than any threat. "The chain was forged centuries ago, by those who thought themselves clever. They hoped to end an old war with new suffering."
Enna let his words settle between them, heavy as lead. She searched his face for evidence of deceit but found only the cold conviction of someone who had learned, through endless repetition, that hope was the cruelest lie of all.
"And yet you're the one with all the power," she said. "You can walk free, while I—"
Malren shook his head, sharply. "No. That's the illusion. If you attempt to leave, if the distance grows too great, the bond will tear itself raw to restore equilibrium. It will drag you back, or kill you trying." His tone was clipped, almost pained. "I don't relish this arrangement, healer."
"Nor do I," Enna shot back, her temper flaring in the face of his stoicism. "But you seem more practiced at enduring it."
He smiled, the gesture devoid of pleasure. "You learn to tolerate many things when you've lived long enough." His gaze fell to the patch of marble at his feet, where the light caught and refracted into a hundred slivers of color. "What do you see when you look out at the world, Enna Cellian?"
She bristled, recognizing the tactic—a diversion, an effort to probe her weaknesses. "Right now, I see a man so desperate to control his fate that he'll shackle a stranger to him, just to avoid his own pain."
Malren's lips parted as if to speak, but he closed them again. When he finally answered, it was so quiet she almost missed it. "There was a healer, once, who thought she could break the curse. She failed. They all failed."
The statement landed like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples through the surface of Enna's anger. She found herself wanting to ask what happened to those other healers, but the words tangled on her tongue.
"So what now?" she demanded, masking her uncertainty with defiance. "Do you intend to keep me locked in this room until I break, or until you grow tired of me?"
Malren's expression softened, but only a fraction. "You misunderstand again. The palace is yours to roam, so long as you do not attempt to cross the outer boundary. My word on that. Explore, study, deface the tapestries if it pleases you. I have no use for relics." He straightened, moving toward the door. "But know this: the bond will not let you stray. Neither of us has the freedom we pretend at."
Enna watched him retreat, tension coiled tight in her gut. She wanted to hate him, and she did—almost. But a new feeling, quieter but no less potent, seeped in at the edges of her resolve: pity, perhaps, or something less forgiving.
He paused at the threshold, hand on the frame, silhouetted against the corridor's darkness. "Be careful with the passage behind the tapestry," he said, his tone gentler than she expected. "There are things in the palace older than both of us, and they don't all answer to me."
With that, he was gone.
The silence that followed was oppressive, broken only by the faint clamor of distant wind and the low, thrumming beat of Enna's own heart. She slumped into the nearest chair and let her gaze drift over the remnants of the room—the tapestry, the hidden door, the shattered lilacs pressed between yellowed book pages. The faint scent of their perfume hung in the air, more bitter than sweet.
She would not let the bond break her. If it was meant to balance their fates, then she would find her own leverage—her own way to tip the scales.
As the sun climbed higher, casting rainbows through the stained glass, Enna pressed her hand to the place above her heart where the bond burned most fiercely. She whispered a silent vow: she would unravel this curse, even if it meant unraveling Malren himself.