The final chamber smelled like old mana and older stone—burnt dust and something sour lingering just beneath the surface, like forgotten fear.
There was a raised dais in the center, carved with spiraling runes and flanked by softly glowing crystals. It looked too much like the others… Like a place built to strip someone bare.
I didn’t move.
The mage gestured politely, like he wasn’t asking me to climb onto a slab of ancient rock and expose the deepest parts of myself for judgment.
“If you would,” he said.
My mind reeled with memories. Short, disjointed moments, spinning through my mind fast enough to make me dizzy. Dark rooms. Moonlight catching on scalpels as they carved through flesh and nerves. A hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming too loudly.
Experiments where I was caged with all kinds of predators, forced to sit in my own filth as beast after beast was unleashed on me, each of them trying to incite enough fear, enough panic that my mana would react.
Blood-letting. Poisons. Cold-iron and so much more…
Trigger points were dug into in order to activate the body’s flight or fight mechanisms. That was where the mana hid, they said, and we needed to lure it out.
Tests, they called them. But it was never anything more than torture.
“My Queen?” the Elder tried again, confusion evident in his features.
My legs carried me forward, because apparently they hadn’t gotten the memo that this was a very bad idea. I stepped onto the platform and tried not to breathe too loudly. When I reached the dais, I twisted to sit on the stone, before lying back into the hollowed out groove in the middle.
The Elder grinned down at me, his teeth as sharp as daggers, and his eyes as hungry as wyverns. I resisted the urge to shudder.
Draven stood near the door, arms folded. Watching. Not like a king. Not like a protector, either. Just…watching. Cataloging. Waiting for proof. Though there was something tense in the ebbing of his mana, something that pulsed just beneath the surface, like a question.
The Elder mage didn’t waste time. He moved with clinical precision, placing crystals around me—quartz, sunstone, a dark violet shard that pulsed when his hand passed over it. The air felt charged. Not painful. Not yet. But I could sense it building.
He lifted his hands. “Begin by breathing deeply. Think of a time you felt your mana stir. Even faintly.”
“I don’t have mana,” I said in a flat tone.
There was no sense in lying to him, not when this was the entire point of it all. Not when he would learn that soon enough.
His expression didn’t change, he gave me a placating look.
“You must, otherwise the Shard Mother would not have paired you with our noble king.”
Did Draven hear how pompous his words sounded from the mage’s mouth?
I looked at my husband, raising my eyebrows. “Indeed, that does seem to be the conundrum of the hour.”
My husband pursed his lips, and I took my petty victory as a flimsy bolster for the pain to come.
The male gave an unctuous smile. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
My fingers curled into fists at my sides, nails carving deep into the open wounds. The pressure helped. It reminded me that I was here, now. Not in my uncle’s favorite Sanctum. Not yet beneath a scalpel. Not yet bleeding for answers that would never come.
The Elder began a soft chant, his voice weaving through the air like mist. The crystals sparked, white, then blue, then a deeper hue that faded just as quickly as it flared.
Nothing happened. Obviously.
He adjusted the stones, repositioned his palms. “Try to focus,” he said. “Even a flicker is enough to?—”
“It isn’t a matter of focus,” I bit out.
More words. Another chant. This time, light gathered between his hands and pulsed toward me like a question.