Page 68 of Wicked Court

“You can go, Elara,” comes a gruff voice from the far corner. “After your … tea.”

Axe lingers at the edge of the room, a silent force that pulls my gaze even as I try to resist. His posture is rigid against the windowpane, the muscles in his jaw working quietly as if he’s grinding down the words he wants to say.

“You don’t have to stay,” he clarifies, brows taut.

I’m not supposed to want Axe, not after the way he dominated me in the depths of this estate’s underbelly, but the craving is there, insistent and throbbing like a pulse.

“I think I’ll wait,” I say, folding my arms on the table. Threading my fingers helps to quell the shaking. “And I’d like some soup, too.”

All four of them go still.

It’s subtle, each one of them barely stirring the air around their bodies, but I’ve surprised them with my request.

“You’re ballsy, beastie,” Kaspian says, his smile slow and satisfied as he reclines on one of the head chairs. “Why would you ever want to lengthen your time with us?”

His stare shines like he knows exactly why.

“Because I’d like some answers. Trust cuts both ways, and I gave you access to a precious heirloom,” I start, my voice gaining strength as I pull the blanket tighter around my form. “Why do you all want my necklace so badly?”

The question smolders. Their secret—that they have more reasons to seek the ruby Heart than mere greed or power—scents the air like sulfur.

I see it flicker across their faces, the hesitation, the calculation. It’s unlike them to take part in quid pro quo’s. They have no responsibility to tell me anything now that they know where the jewel they’ve worked so hard for is.

The power I’m using to try and convince them is only my experience in the basement. I have to believe … to hope … that I wasn’t the only one in the thralls of different, breathtaking emotions that stripped me bare.

It wasn’t simply about domination, control, and release.

To me, there was also connection.

“Because.” Kaspian finally breaks the silence, his voice smooth but edged with something that sounds like extreme caution. “We all have our chains, beastie. And the ruby Heart... it might just be the key to breaking them.”

Wilder nods, a fierce glint in his eyes that speaks of a burning need for something. “That ruby means salvation for me, a chance to rewrite a legacy smeared by dishonor. The Sovereigns will no longer punish me.”

Axe adds quietly, turning away from the window to face me, “Each of us has a debt to pay the Sovereigns, a wound to heal.”

The anguish in his eyes now seems tinged with a flicker of hope, as though the ruby Heart could stitch together the frayed edges of his own fragmented mind.

Their admissions lay bare in the space between us, and for a moment, Thornhaven’s opulent quarters feel like a confessional.

The tension is broken when a thin, bearded man in a chef’s coat exposing his tattooed neck and forearms strides in and sets a steaming teapot in front of me.

And a bowl of split pea soup.

The sweet and savory scent of the soup wafts under my nostrils, sending a growl more bestial than Kaspian’s new nickname for me through the room.

I thank the chef, my eyes not on him but cast to the ceiling, wondering where the cameras are. Did he hear my request?

Cav nods his thanks before the chef disappears, then refocuses his attention on me, that invincible smirk on his lips as he reads the suspicion on my face.

“There is no surveillance in our wing. Yet.” Cav indicates Kaspian. “Well. There were. But Kasp felt the need to blind the Sovereigns from our comings and goings with a constant loop of a benign video.”

“Sovereigns?” I repeat. I keep hearing the name, yet the boys never explain it. I taste the strange word in my mouth as I spoon a rather large portion of the piping-hot soup into a shallow china bowl. The scent permeates my senses, momentarily blanking my mind with its promise of nourishment.

“Sovereigns. Consider them the kings of the Cimmerian Court,” Kaspian clarifies, staring across the room and out the window in almost absent-minded boredom. “It’s what we call our superiors.”

Wilder adds, “The ones who pull the strings—those higher up the food chain.”

His gaze remains riveted on me, a stark challenge against my questioning.

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