Chapter 284: Free bird 1

CÉLINE

The sentinels gripping my arms smelled of leather and stale aggression. Their fingers dug into the meat of my biceps with a casual brutality that suggested they had been waiting years for permission to touch me this way.

I let them.

There was no point in struggling now, not when the verdict had already curdled in the air of that chamber, not when my father’s voice had cracked on the word daughter and the elders had mistaken that crack for fucking humanity and true fatherhood.

"Watch her ankles," the one on my left muttered. He was younger than I expected, his jawline still soft beneath the stubble, his eyes avoiding mine with a diligence that spoke of either respect or fear. I could not tell which, and I hated that I could not tell. Then it clicked when he finished it. "Rogue bitches are unpredictable."

I laughed then, a dry sound that scraped my throat. "Rogue bitches. How quickly the vocabulary changes. You guys used to fear and respect me."

The sentinel on my right, older, with scars webbing his knuckles, tightened his grip until my fingers tingled. "Keep walking."

We moved through corridors I had known since childhood, stone hallways that had witnessed my first steps, my first shift, my first lies. The overhead lamps cast shadows that danced like mocking spirits against the walls. I counted the steps automatically, a habit from years of navigating these passages in darkness, in secret, in pursuit of plans that had ultimately led me here. Thirty-seven steps to the lower stairwell. Eighty-two steps down to the detention level. The air grew colder as we descended, damp seeping into my lungs with each breath.

It was funny how sentimental I was growing.

I never did care for the cell I was in. But now... I could not help but notice that the cell they threw me into was smaller than I remembered from the rare occasions I had visited prisoners in my father’s name. The ceiling hung low enough that I could touch the stone if I stretched enough, and the walls wept moisture that gathered in dark stains near the floor. The narrow cot that was a silly excuse for a bed sagged against one wall, its mattress thin and gray with age. A bucket sat in the corner. The chains they had removed from my wrists so I could leave and be judged in the chamber waited on the cot, coiled like sleeping serpents, heavy and indifferent.

"Someone will bring you proper clothes," the younger sentinel offered as his partner locked the barred door. He would not meet my eyes, staring instead at the wall above my head. "And food. For the journey."

I stared at him until he flinched. "Proper clothes," I repeated. "For the rogue."

"Pack law requires—"

"I know what pack law requires." I turned away from them both, presenting my back as the ultimate dismissal. "Leave me."

Their footsteps retreated, echoing down the corridor until silence swallowed them whole. I stood in the center of that cell and listened to the water dripping somewhere in the darkness beyond the torchlight. Drip. Drip. A rhythm as relentless as my pulse.

Proper clothes. The phrase turned in my mind like a blade. They would dress me in roughspun wool perhaps, or poorly cured leather. No more silk. No more platinum clasps or embroidered crests. I would walk out of Valcourt territory dressed as nothing, as no one, and the packs beyond our borders would smell the absence of status before I even spoke. They would smell the void where power had been.

My fingers found the chains on the cot. The metal was cold, heavier than it looked, each link forged from platinum that had once signified wealth and permanence. I lifted one coil and let it slide through my palm, feeling the weight drag against my skin. Similar chains had bound my wrists in the chamber while my father spoke of mercy. Those chains had rattled while I screamed that I would rather die.

I understood now why he had chosen this. The realization crept in slowly, not as surprise but as confirmation of something I had suspected long after childhood when I watched him favor Theodore, when I watched him look past me as if I were furniture. He could not bear to lose another child. Not after Theodore. Not after realizing that the boy he had raised to inherit everything had died by his own blind negligence, by his refusal to see what was happening in his own house.

And now he had Étienne. The imposter. The false son who wore my brother’s ideals like a mask and answered to a name that did not belong to him. I had watched my father’s eyes when he looked at that creature, had seen the desperate hunger there, the willingness to believe because the alternative meant accepting that his bloodline ended with Theodore’s death. My father knew. Somewhere in the marrow of his bones, he knew that Étienne was not his. But he had chosen belief anyway, because belief was easier than grief.

He had spared me because he could not survive another funeral. That was his weakness laid bare, the soft underbelly I had spent years trying to find. And he had exposed it in front of the entire council, in front of witnesses, in front of the imposter who now carried his hopes like a thief carrying stolen goods.

I sat on the edge of the cot, the chains pooling in my lap. The metal chilled my thighs through the fabric of my dress. I had expected cruelty from him. I had prepared myself for the executioner’s blade, for the finality of death that would have made me a martyr in my own mind, a tragic figure destroyed by a tyrant father’s indifference. Instead he had given me this.

Exile.

A Rogue status.

A life that would be spent begging at borders I had once commanded.

The disgust rose in my throat like bile. He thought this was love. He thought that by preserving my breath, by forcing me to continue existing in a world that would now refuse to acknowledge me, he was proving something about his own nobility. He wanted to be the father who saved his daughter even when she did not deserve saving. He wanted to look in the mirror and see mercy instead of failure.

I would not give him the satisfaction.

My fingers closed around the chains, testing the length, the flexibility. Platinum was dense, unyielding, expensive beyond measure. These chains had cost more than some border houses in our territory. They had been forged to restrain highborn prisoners with appropriate dignity, to acknowledge that even in disgrace, bloodlines mattered. The irony tasted sweet and metallic on my tongue.

I would show him that he could not save me. I would show him that his mercy was as useless as his parenting, as hollow as his grief. He had lost Theodore through negligence, and he would lose me through choice. The only revenge left to me was to make him witness the failure of his own compassion.

Voices echoed down the corridor, approaching. I stood quickly, letting the chains slide from my lap onto the stone floor with a clatter that sounded like coins spilling from a broken purse. Two sentinels appeared at the barred door, older women I recognized from the eastern wing, their faces lined with the kind of exhaustion that came from service rather than labor.

"These are clothes," the taller one announced, holding a bundle of rough fabric through the bars. "And boots and travel rations that would last you a week."

"I need a moment," I replied, keeping my voice steady, reasonable, the voice of a woman accepting her fate with grace.

The shorter sentinel narrowed her eyes. "The alpha wants you gone before dawn."

"Then I have hours," I answered. "Unless you intend to dress me yourselves?"

They exchanged glances, some silent communication passing between them that I could not read and did not care to. The taller one set the bundle on the floor just inside the door, her movements quick, as if proximity to me might contaminate her.

"You have half an hour," she warned. "Then we escort you to the boundary."

They retreated, their footsteps softer than the men’s had been, almost apologetic. I waited until the silence returned, absolute and complete, before I moved.

I gathered the chains first, looping them around my forearms, feeling the weight settle into my bones. They were longer than I needed, perhaps six feet of solid platinum links, each one heavy enough to bruise if swung with intent. I had seen firsthand the way it resisted heat and pressure, the way it held its shape with stubborn pride. It seemed fitting that this would be my instrument. Valcourt’s creation would kill Valcourt’s daughter.