A tremor ran through Rhys’s bones, mirroring the tremor in the floorboards beneath her worn boots. Caspian Thorne stood, a stark silhouette against the grimy clinic window. Even in the faded, too-large smock of her patient’s ward, his frame exuded a primal power. Months of forced dormancy had thinned his face, but the underlying structure remained, sharp angles of cheekbone and jaw. His dark hair, grown long and unkempt, brushed the collar of the roughspun cloth. It seemed to drink the meager light. His gaze held her, an unsettling intensity she’d witnessed once before, in a nightmare that had become a waking terror. Eyes the color of aged river stones, polished and empty. They flickered with a strange, nascent awareness that made her gut twist. Not the unfocused stare of a man newly awakened from a deep coma, but something predatory. Fear, cold and sharp, clawed at her throat. It constricted her breath, pressing in on her lungs. This was the man Valerius had forced her to keep. The man she’d seen moments before he fell down the ravine, moments before she was given an impossible choice. Her mind screamed a silent plea. Please, let him not remember. Let the trauma, the drugs, the prolonged unconsciousness have stripped away that chilling recognition. Movement. A slight shift of his weight, a subtle tilt of his head. He looked at her, truly looked, and a ghost of a smile, slow and chilling, stretched his lips. “You look… familiar,” he rasped, his voice a low grind of gravel and ash. It was a sound that scraped against her nerves. All color drained from Rhys’s face. She felt it, a sudden icy plunge in her blood. Her carefully constructed composure began to fray. He watched her, his expression a blank canvas. Then, he whispered, a mocking echo of her own thoughts, “Caspian. Caspian Thorne. That would be my name.” He paused, his eyes narrowing, studying her. “Are you important to me?” Rhys’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Fear and something else, a desperate, illogical flicker of hope, warred within her. The hope was a dangerous illusion, she knew. A distraction. Another question followed, sharper this time, a knife’s edge slicing through the air. “Or, are you someone I can just kill?” Her breath hitched. His hand, large and calloused, dipped into the pocket of his smock. He withdrew a small, ornate needle, one of her own fine surgical instruments she’d inadvertently left within reach. He toyed with it, pressing the plunger repeatedly with his thumb, a soft click-click-click. Her eyes riveted on the needle, then on his thumb. He poked it, once, twice. A bead of dark, rich blood welled up, glistening. Rhys’s breath hitched again, a rough gasp tearing at her throat. His gaze, as he watched the blood, was not human. It was the dispassionate stare of a butcher appraising fresh meat. She was the meat. Panic coiled into a tight knot in her stomach. Instinct screamed at her to flee, to grab the nearest alchemical retort and smash it over his head. But her feet remained rooted, heavy as lead. “Don’t—don’t say that,” she stammered, her voice thin, reedy. It barely sounded like her own. “I am very important to you. For real!” Her lungs burned, fighting for air. “Don’t you remember me?” He looked perplexed, a slight furrow appearing between his brows. It gave him the briefest appearance of vulnerability, a trick of the light she dared not trust. “I’m very close to you! We’ve met each other longer than you’re thinking,” she blurted, her eyes darting around the clinic, searching for an anchor, a way out. The stress was crushing, pressing down on her. “And we’re intertwined in a… complicated way.” Memory flashed, sharp and unwelcome: Valerius’s sneering face, the cold metal of a pen pressed into her hand, the contract she was forced to sign, binding her to this nightmare. The shadowy figures in black cloaks, dragging Caspian’s comatose form into her clinic under the pale light of the twin moons. She rubbed her forehead, a desperate attempt to clear the fog of terror. Should she have just gone to the Enclave’s Justice Keepers? Sought official protection? Perhaps it would have saved her from this vegetative man turned predator. A sudden, brutal force gripped her face. “Ahh!” Caspian’s hand, strong and unyielding, squeezed her cheeks. It was raw, untamed power. Her jaw ached, protesting the pressure. He wasn’t controlling his strength at all. She felt the delicate bones of her face groan under the strain. “You told me you’re important to me,” he growled, his face inches from hers. His breath, though clean, carried a faint, metallic tang. “Then why are you trembling?” “N-no, I’m not!” The lie was a pathetic whisper, caught in the vise of his grip. “Were you sold here with your fingers cut off or something?” His words were coarse, like sand and grit. She stared at him, unable to comprehend the vulgarity. “To… suck the cock of a guy who can’t even move or think?” Rhys flinched. A hot flush spread across her cheeks, which still smarted from his grip. Annoyance, sharp and sudden, cut through her fear. This man, so elegant in his unconsciousness, now spewed such filth. He rubbed his forehead, a confused frown replacing the predatory glint in his eyes. “Why can I only remember such trashy words?” His grip tightened further. All her focus narrowed to his fingers, the tendons stark and prominent on the back of his hand. They pressed into her flesh, threatening to suffocate her. A stabbing pain shot through her jaw, searing through the bones of her face. She couldn't push his hand away. Her strength was useless against his. “Please don’t scream. My ears hurt.” Rhys clenched her teeth, biting back a whimper. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, a bitter offering to her cruel fate. She knew nothing of him. Only his name, whispered by his brother. Age, occupation, family, history, what he was truly capable of—all unknown. She was adrift. Her mind raced, frantically searching for any argument, any plea, any truth or lie that could pierce through his amnesia, through his awakened savagery. Nothing. The memory of him at the ravine, the casual ruthlessness in his eyes as he looked at her, overshadowed every potential escape plan. Survival in the Ashfall Wastes demanded adaptation. The gnarled ironwood trees she so admired, growing crooked against the ceaseless wind. The resilient ash-vines that thrived in toxic soil. They bent, they twisted, they endured. This was a battle, a fight for her very existence. She had to adapt. With a surge of desperate resolve, Rhys clenched her teeth, grabbed his wrist. Her voice, though still trembling, held a new edge of defiance. “Caspian Thorne! Caspian Thorne!” He frowned, his grip loosening slightly. He lowered his hand, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly as he took in the angry red marks blossoming across her cheeks. “But we are not in that kind of relationship!” she rushed to say, fighting for control, for breath. “Don’t get me wrong. We—we…” She clawed at her mind, searching for words, for a new lie. “We got along very well! You were very kind.” Her fingers instinctively brushed the necklace around her throat, a silver pendant of intertwined roots and branches, a gift from her mother. It was her only defense, a silent charm. “You even… put a necklace around my neck.” The words emerged, ragged, her voice cracking despite her desperate effort to sound natural, persuasive. He looked down at her, his face unreadable. “So, did you suck it?” “What do you mean?” Her mind reeled, trying to comprehend the sudden shift, the raw vulgarity. “I must have fucked you like a dog.” Rhys’s carefully constructed façade shattered. A scream lodged in her throat, strangled and silent. Her whole body trembled. “Because you speak like someone who has been brainwashed.” “No, no, no!” she cried, shaking her head vigorously. Inside, she was screaming, cursing herself. It was *her* who was trying to brainwash *him*. If only he would yield. His silence pressed in, a suffocating weight. She hated the feeling of being swayed, of being outmaneuvered by this resurrected monster. “You neither treated me badly nor forced anything upon me,” she lied, her voice gaining a desperate, pleading pitch. “You never used violence or threatened me.” A litany of falsehoods, each one a betrayal of her own harrowing memory, a gamble for her life.

Ash and Thorn