The prince walked with her all the way back to her old room in the servant’s wing, where she found a bed already made, and many of her old belongings just as she had left them. The bed on the other side of the room, however, was empty.

“For caution’s sake, you will be confined to the palace for now. You will attend to your work, as well as meals and any other activities of interest inside the palace. But until you have fully earned the trust I am placing in you now, you will not be allowed out into the city, lest you prove me wrong and involve yourself in questionable matters again.”

Nova forced a thin smile. So, it was simply a different type of captivity then.

“For how long?”

Cassius smiled. “Until I say otherwise. If anyone wishes to see you, they will have to visit you here.”

With the barest bend of his head, he turned and left her room, leaving her alone, in a place that should have felt like home, but did not come close to the supposed prison she had just left.

Aurora came awake slowly, disoriented and with her head pounding. The sunshine coming in through the trees was like fire to her eyes. She tried to look away, to take in her surroundings, but the world was so bright, and her head felt as if someone was hammering away at her skull from the inside every time she moved.

Pieces started coming back to her gradually—the fog storm in the clearing, Kiran battling for the heart, and the Stormlord catching her off guard. Goddess, his soul was unlike anything she had ever felt before. As he had marched her away, she had tried to make sense of him with her magic, to understand him the way she did other souls, but he was beyond comprehension. She did not know how much of the seething darkness in him was the souls he had taken and how much was the person he had been before. Aurora was not sure that was even a distinction that existed any longer.

She had cooperated with his demands for a while, until she was certain that they were far enough from Kiran that he was out of harm’s way, then she had fought to get free. She had kicked and screamed and punched, simultaneously pulling on every decent soul she felt nearby, ready to set off a hundred skyfire storms if she needed to in order to get loose. He was strong and lean, and he wrapped an arm around her throat from behind, cutting off the scream in her throat.