When I look back up, Nox is gone.
CHAPTER 64
ASHA
Nagivv purrs, her dark snout dry and cracked with dehydration as I pet her, whispering words of comfort that I’m not sure she can understand.
Sores have cropped up around her snout, where the iron muzzle Az had fitted to her digs into her flesh.
She whimpers as I try to soothe her. I sit in the crook of her belly and legs, swollen with dehydration, as she lies across the floor of her sanctuary.
The day of Az’s coronation, he brought me here to celebrate. I suppose he thought it would be a special sort of gift to see her again.
She’d lunged for him, nearly ripping his throat out. It was only because a fae guard, sworn by his fae oath to protect Az at all costs, jumped between them that Az survived.
The guard did not.
Az had a muzzle crafted that very day.
Nagivv took down half a dozen guards before they finally succeeded in clamping it on her.
Iron mesh forms the muzzle, so technically she can still drink, but it hardly allows room for her tongue to move, and she quickly wearies of the effort it takes to drink, much less eat.
Only because I cried to Az had he commanded the kitchen staff to beat Nagivv’s food into a puree that she could lick from the holes in her muzzle. I try to clean it for her between meals, but the holes are small, and a pungent odor has arisen from the patches from which I can’t seem to remove the bits of food, no matter how hard I try.
I don’t know what I’ll do if Nagivv dies. It hurts badly enough to watch her mistreated in this way. Especially since, over the past week, the fight inside her has seemed to sputter out.
It’s not something I would have ever imagined I’d witness in Nagivv, but I understand.
I understand, because the flame is dying inside of me, too.
It’s been a month since the coronation, since my wedding to Az.
I’ve waited so patiently for Kiran to come back for me. Of course, he would have needed to regroup, rally allies who would help him sneak into the palace or overthrow Az, or whatever he’s planning.
But every day that Kiran doesn’t come for me, I begin to wonder if he ever will.
Sometimes, I find myself angry, petulant. Like a child unable to wield her own anger, allowing it to bubble over rather than simmer.
Just yesterday, I punched a hole in the mirror in my room. The pinprick wounds on my hand have yet to heal.
I didn’t know I had it in me to punch things.
I had to lie to the guard stationed outside my room and tell him I tripped. That when I reached out to catch myself, my hand had gone straight through the mirror.
The guard seemed to believe me, but later that day, when I returned from my visit with Nagivv, I found my quarters stripped of anything that could potentially be made sharp.
I’ve already been moved to a windowless room.
That happened the night after the coronation. Az had me moved to quarters adjacent to his, ones with an adjoining wall, with a door between the rooms that locked from one side only. Apparently, my room once operated as servants’ quarters. Previous fae royalty used these rooms should one of them fall injured and need a servant nearby at all times to tend to their wounds.
Az says he enjoys having me close by. Likes the comfort of knowing I’m safe.
My theory is that he likes that my quarters don’t contain windows.
I’m not sure if he thinks I’m at risk of jumping or climbing, but he’s barred almost all the windows in the palace just the same.
I’ve developed a strange habit of hiding unimportant things from him. Bits of food underneath the mattress. Bars of soap behind the dresser. Amity’s survival kit is even stuffed in the back of the closet—Az has been careful not to undress me, so I was able to hide it under my robes—and though I’ve considered faking my death with that ressuroot of hers, I can’t figure out a way doing so would help me.
If Az thought I was dead, he’d probably just stuff me in a marble coffin, and then I would suffocate to death.
Not ideal.
As I ponder my fate, my will to fight back slowly being chipped away from me, I nestle my head into Nagivv’s dry coat and fall asleep to the hum of her gentle purr.
Az frequents my quarters at night.
Tonight is no exception, though I always hope it will be.
He never stays for long, never goes so far as to force himself upon me. A small kindness for which I thank the Fates.
But just because that threshold hasn’t yet been crossed doesn’t mean that Az hasn’t been toeing that line.
“The guards said that you had a better day today,” Az says, striding into my stuffy room. He locks the door behind him, stuffing a key into his belt.
I blink, trying to remember how I’m supposed to respond. When I first came back to the palace, I’d been playing the role of a confused girl, mind muddled by over a year of magical manipulation. I reinforced the ruse with fits of anger, coupled with long bouts of silence.
I cry myself to sleep every night, sometimes allowing Az to hold me as I drift off to sleep.
