Bound and Burned by the One I Loved novel Chapter 8

The interrogation chamber was cold stone and dim light. 

They played the security crystal. Cassian watched Eira pour the oil-his foster sister, his “little sister,” striking the spark with a smile. He watched it three times. Four. On the fifth viewing, his hands began to shake. He gripped the stone table until his claws cracked, his knuckles white as bone. When the crystal showed Eira running from the flames while I lay bleeding, he made a sound-a wet, broken gasp, like a wolf taking a death blow to the throat. 

“She was reborn too,” he said finally. His voice was dust and ashes. “She remembered. She burned us twice. She let me burn you both times.” 

I said nothing. I stood in the shadows, watching him shatter. 

Eira, in the adjacent chamber, screamed. Not with pain-with desperation. She threw herself against the bars, her perfect silk gown tom and soiled, her face streaked with mucus and tears. “Asha !” she howled, crawling on her knees toward the dividing wall. “Please! Please! I confess everything-the fire in both lives, the lies, the manipulation! Just speak one word of kindness to the judges! One word!” 

She pressed her face to the cold stone, sobbing. “I don’t want to die in the cage! I don’t want to-” Her voice broke into retching sobs. “Last life you stole him from me! You stole my future! I only wanted it 

back!” 

I walked to the door separating us. I looked down at her through the grate-this she-wolf who had killed my daughter twice. 

“No,” I said. My voice was ice over steel. “Maximum punishment. No mercy. No pity. Let her rot.” 

They dragged her away, her screams echoing down the corridor until they forced a gag between her teeth. The silence that followed was sweet. 

Then it was only Cassian and I. 

He didn’t fall immediately. He tried to stand first-tried to reclaim the Alpha’s dignity. His legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees on the stone floor, a slow, graceless crumble, as if the bones in his legs had turned to sand. The great Alpha of the Silver Oak Pack, trembling like a leaf in autumn, crawled two paces toward me, his face buried in his hands. 

“I was wrong,” he choked out. He looked up, and I saw the ruin-eyes red-rimmed and desperate, silver hair matted with sweat and dirt, the proud mouth that had once commanded my death now slack with grief. “I killed her. Not with these hands”-he stared at his claws, horrified-“but with my choices. I take back every curse, every accusation. I was blind. I was a fool.” 

He crawled closer, shameless, broken. His fingers brushed my boot. “I have no right to ask,” he whispered, his forehead pressing to the floor at my feet, “but… one thing. Beside her grave… leave a space for me. When I die-I want to be buried with my daughter. Let me be near her. Please” 

I looked down at him. At the murderer who had killed my child twice, now groveling at my feet like a beaten cur. I saw the cowardice beneath the grief-the wish to escape judgment through death, to use sentiment as a shield. 

I said nothing. 

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