Sloane's POV
I woke to silk sheets and the certainty I was about to die.
My eyes cracked open—too bright, everything too bright—and I groaned. Pain lanced through my skull. My mouth tasted like copper and ash. Every muscle in my body ached like I'd been hit by a truck.
Or rejected by a supernatural king who called me his mate and then shattered whatever the hell that meant.
The memory crashed over me. The gallery. The guards. The man with green eyes who'd looked at me like I was salvation and damnation wrapped in one package. The way his hand had burned on my arm. The way my body had recognized him before my brain could catch up.
The way it had felt when he'd said the words.
And I reject you.
My chest ached. Not the sharp agony from before, but a hollow, empty throb that made breathing difficult. Like something had been ripped out and the wound hadn't closed properly.
I pressed my palm to my sternum and felt my heart beating too fast beneath it.
Still alive. Somehow still alive.
I forced myself to sit up, and the room spun. I gripped the edge of the mattress—soft, expensive, nothing like the secondhand futon in my apartment—and waited for my vision to steady.
Where the hell was I?
The bed was massive, draped in deep burgundy silk that probably cost more than my car. The room around it was just as obscene—dark wood furniture that looked antique, plush carpet under my bare feet, floor-to-ceiling windows that showed... nothing. Just darkness outside, like the world had ended.
Or like I was being kept somewhere no one would find me.
My pulse kicked up. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood—too fast, too fast—and had to grip the bedpost as my knees threatened to give out. The cocktail dress from the gallery was gone. In its place, soft cotton pajamas that definitely weren't mine.
Someone had undressed me while I was unconscious.
My skin crawled. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the room.
A door on the far wall—not the main one, something smaller. Bathroom, maybe. I stumbled toward it, my legs shaking, and found exactly what I'd hoped for. Marble floors, a shower big enough for three people, a mirror over the sink that—
I stopped.
Stared.
My reflection stared back. Pale. Hollow-eyed. Dark circles like bruises under my eyes. But it was my eyes themselves that made my breath catch.
Silver-blue. Normal. No violet glow. No shadows writhing around me.
I touched the mirror, half-expecting it to be a trick. But the glass was cold and solid under my fingertips, and the woman looking back at me was just... me. Small, tired, scared out of my mind, but human.
"What the hell happened to me?" My voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper.
No answer. Just the echo of my own breathing in the too-quiet room.
I splashed cold water on my face, trying to wake up properly, trying to think. The last thing I remembered clearly was pain. Agony when that man—my mate, my brain supplied unhelpfully—had rejected whatever bond had formed between us. Then guards grabbing me, the crowd calling me a heretic, something hitting me from behind.
After that, nothing.
I dried my face and went back into the bedroom, moving slower this time. Testing my legs. They held, barely.
The main door was solid wood with iron fixtures that looked medieval. I tried the handle.
Locked. Of Course it was.
I twisted it harder, then pulled, then threw my weight against it. It didn't budge.
"Hey!" I pounded on the door with my fist, the sound dull and muted. "Hey, I know someone's out there! Let me out!"
Nothing.
I hit the door again, harder, until my hand throbbed. "I said let me OUT!"
Still nothing.
Fear coiled in my gut, sharp and acidic, making my stomach cramp. Cold sweat broke out along my spine, between my shoulder blades, prickling at my hairline. My throat tightened until each breath felt too shallow, too quick. My hands went clammy, trembling as I curled them into fists. The hollow ache in my chest turned sharp, painful with each hammering heartbeat.
I was trapped. Locked in a pretty room that was still very much a cell, with no idea where I was or who'd taken me or what they planned to do with me.
Heretic, the crowd had called me. Like it was a death sentence.
Maybe it was.
I turned away from the door, breathing too fast, my chest tight with panic I couldn't quite swallow down. There had to be another way out. A window I could break. A weak point in the walls. Something.
The windows were the obvious choice. I crossed to them, my bare feet silent on the carpet, and grabbed the heavy curtain, pulling iit aside.
Darkness. Complete, impenetrable darkness, like staring into a void.
I pressed my hand to the glass. It was warm. Humming faintly under my palm with something that felt wrong. Not quite painful, but definitely not natural.
Warded. The word dropped into my head from nowhere, sudden and certain. I didn't know how I knew it, but I did.
The windows were magically sealed.
I jerked my hand back, my skin tingling. The emptiness in my chest pulsed, and for a second—just a second—the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to reach toward me.
I stumbled backward, my heart in my throat. "No. No, no, no, not again."
The shadows stilled. The moment passed. But my hands were shaking, and I couldn't make them stop.
I sank down onto the edge of the bed, wrapping my arms around myself. Think. I needed to think.
Someone had taken me from the gallery. Brought me here. Locked me in this room and warded it so I couldn't escape. But they'd put me in pajamas, in a comfortable bed. Given me a bathroom. Not killed me outright.
So either they wanted me alive, or they wanted me comfortable before they executed me.
Neither option was particularly comforting.
I stood again, restless, and started searching the room properly. Methodically. The way I'd been trained to case a location for vulnerabilities.
The nightstands were empty except for a lamp and a book I didn't recognize. The wardrobe held clothes in my size—jeans, shirts, a leather jacket that looked suspiciously like mine. Someone had gone through my apartment. Had taken my things.
My stomach twisted.
The dresser drawers were full too. Underwear, socks, more clothes. All perfectly organized, like someone had taken care to make this comfortable.
Like they planned to keep me here a while.
I moved to the far wall, running my hands over the dark wood paneling, looking for seams, for hidden doors, for anything. And that's when I found it.
A section of wall that sounded hollow when I knocked. I pressed harder, and it gave—just slightly—before clicking open.
A hidden door. Leading to... stairs?
My pulse jumped. I glanced back at the locked main door, then at the darkness beyond the hidden passage.
Stupid. This was probably stupid. Could be a trap. Could lead nowhere. Could get me killed.
But staying here, waiting for someone to decide my fate, was worse.
I stepped into the passage.
It was narrow, the walls close on either side, the stairs steep and winding down into darkness. No lights. No handrail. Just cold stone under my bare feet and the faint smell of old paper and dust.
I descended slowly, one hand on the wall for balance, my heart hammering so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.
The stairs went down. And down. And down.
Until finally, they opened into a room.
Books. Everywhere. Floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound volumes, some so old they looked like they might disintegrate if I breathed on them. A library, hidden in the walls.
A secret library.
I stepped inside, my mouth dry. There was no other exit that I could see. Just books and more books, illuminated by soft lights that seemed to have no source.
I pulled one off the shelf at random. The cover was unmarked, the leather worn smooth. I cracked it open.
The text inside was handwritten, the ink faded but still legible. And the first line made my blood run cold.
A Comprehensive History of the Umbra-Blooded Bloodline and the Heresy That Condemned Them.
My hands started shaking. I sat down hard on the floor, the book heavy in my lap, and kept reading.
The Umbra-Blooded witches. Shadow weavers. Hunted to extinction during a purge a century ago. Branded heretics by a coalition of supernatural factions, executed on sight, their bloodline destroyed.
Except... apparently not entirely destroyed.
Because I'd made that artifact glow violet. Because my eyes had glowed the same color. Because shadows had reached for me like they recognized me.
I flipped through the pages, my hands trembling, looking for answers. Looking for anything that would explain what I was. What I could do. What it meant.
And there, buried in a chapter about shadow magic, I found a passage that made me stop breathing.
The mate bond is sacred among shifters, an unbreakable tie between souls. But for the Umbra-Blooded, such bonds are rare and dangerous. Our magic responds to strong emotion—especially the emotions born of the mate connection. A witch bonded to a shifter becomes exponentially more powerful... and exponentially more vulnerable.
I read it again. And again.
Mate bond. The thing that man had said—You're my mate—before shattering it so violently I'd nearly passed out from the pain.
He'd known. He had known what I was to him. And what the bond would mean.
And he'd rejected me anyway.
The hollow ache in my chest pulsed, and I pressed my hand to it again, trying to will the pain away.
Why? Why would he do that? Why reject his mate if it was supposedly unbreakable and sacred and—
Unless he had a reason.
Unless keeping the bond intact was worse than breaking it.
I sat there in the hidden library, surrounded by books about dead witches and forbidden magic, and tried to understand. I tried to piece together what the hell was happening to me.
But all I could feel was that awful emptiness where something bright and golden had lived for approximately thirty seconds before being ripped away.
All I could remember was green eyes and winter storms and the way his jaw had clenched like rejecting me had cost him something too.
"Who are you?" I whispered to the empty room. "And what am I?"
The shadows in the corners stirred, just slightly.
And somewhere deep in the darkness, I could have sworn I heard a voice—soft, feminine, impossibly gentle.
You are not alone, little shadow.
I dropped the book. Scrambled backward. My heart in my throat.
But when I looked, there was nothing. Just books and shadows and the creeping certainty that I'd lost my mind along with whatever magic had tried to surface at the gallery.
I grabbed the book again, clutching it to my chest like a shield, and ran back up the stairs.
Back to my cage.
Back to wait.
Because whoever had locked me here would come eventually. And when they did, I'd have questions.
Starting with: What the hell did they want with a heretic?