Jina woke to heat on one side of her face and cold on the other.
Firelight. Stone. Wind.
Her mouth tasted like rust.
Her tongue felt too big for her teeth.
She tried to swallow and gagged.
Not from nausea this time.
From the taste.
Bitter, metallic, wrong.
Poison didn’t have a single flavor. It had a personality. This one was patient. It didn’t rush. It sat in her blood like it owned the place.
Okay. Awake. Breathing. Still alive.
Her chest rose, but it hurt like someone had tied a strap around her ribs and kept tightening.
She blinked hard until the blur cleared.
Lysander sat at the shelter mouth, half in shadow, knife laid across his knees. He wasn’t looking at her.
He was listening to the dark.
Jina’s throat tightened for reasons that weren’t medical.
She didn’t like the way safety felt when it belonged to someone else.
She pushed herself upright slowly. The movement made her head swim.
She breathed through it.
In. Out. In—
The threads shimmered into view the moment her focus sharpened.
Four lines, anchored somewhere behind her sternum, stretching away into the Wastes like someone had hooked her into the world and forgotten to remove the barbs.
They were quieter than yesterday.
Not calm.
Just… not yanking her spine out.
Jina stared at them until her eyes watered.
This isn’t a symptom.
This is a mechanism.
Mechanism meant rules.
Rules meant leverage.
The cold thread trembled first. Tight. Controlled. Like someone holding their breath too long.
The hot one pulsed next, angry enough to burn. The fire one flickered and snapped like a flame starving for oxygen. The sharp one… smiled.
Not a sound.
A feeling. Teeth behind laughter.
Jina’s stomach rolled.
She looked away before she started hating people she’d never met.
They’re suffering because of me.
No—because of her.
Because of Aurelia.
Because of the body she was wearing.
Jina pressed her hand to her chest.
Her heartbeat stuttered under her palm, irregular as a bad drum.
First: don’t die.
Second: stop the damage.
Her mind kept going back to one idea—simple, ugly, effective.
Cut the connection.
If it was a parasite, remove it. If it was a leash, sever it. If it was a marriage rope—
Break it.
She didn’t know how.
But her body—this body—might.
Because these threads didn’t feel foreign to the skin she was in. They felt… built-in.
Like nerves.
Like muscle memory.
Jina’s fingers drifted up into the air without her deciding. She reached for the nearest thread.
The hot one.
It hummed as her hand approached, like it recognized her.
She stopped with her fingers an inch away.
Her pulse jumped.
This was a bad idea.
Her instincts screamed it.
But her other instincts—her healer instincts—didn’t let her ignore a wound just because it looked complicated.
Test. Don’t tear.
Jina pinched her fingers together in the air, as if she could grab the thread between thumb and forefinger.
She felt resistance.
Not physical. Not texture.
Pressure.
Like touching a taut rubber band stretched across her ribs.
Jina’s breath caught.
Okay. So it’s real.
She tried to pull. Just a little.
The thread tightened.
Her sternum twinged. Not pain yet. Warning.
Jina swallowed, eyes narrowed, trying to think like a surgeon and not a panicking tourist in someone else’s life.
If it’s anchored in me, pulling it might rip something internal. So don’t pull.
She released it.
The pressure eased.
Good.
Now, what about… pushing?
She touched the thread again, careful, and instead of pulling outward, she tried to press inward—like she was tucking it back into her chest. Like she was closing a door.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the thread quivered and—
A faint warmth spread from her palm into her ribs.
Not pleasant.
Not painful.
Like a system responding to input.
Jina’s eyes widened.
Okay.
Her mouth went dry.
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If they can’t hurt her… then why does this feel like getting stabbed from the inside?
The answer came with a cold clarity she didn’t like.
They’re not attacking.
They’re struggling.
Like pulling against cuffs until the skin bruised—except the cuffs were inside her ribs.
If these were bonds, and the bonds were hurting them—
Maybe she could…
Not break.
Not yet.
But loosen.
Stabilize.
Reduce the harm.
She didn’t have language for it, but she had the concept. Triage. Damage control. Stop the bleeding before you do the reconstruction.
She reached for the cold thread next.
The moment her fingers brushed it, a jolt of unknown terror punched through her chest so hard she saw spots.
Jina jerked her hand back with a gasp.
Her lungs seized.
Her fingers went numb.
The cold fear didn’t feel like hers. It came with a taste—clean and sharp, like snow and steel.
Her heart skittered.
Okay. That one is fragile. Don’t touch it like that.
She pressed her hand to the stone to steady herself.
Breathing. Count.
In. Out. In—
The fire thread snapped.
It yanked hard enough that her whole ribcage felt like it shifted.
Pain lanced up her sternum.
Jina bit down on a sound.
Lysander’s head turned instantly.
He didn’t move yet. He just watched her with those wolf eyes, waiting to see if she was dying.
Jina forced her voice steady. “I’m fine.”
Lysander’s gaze narrowed. He didn’t look convinced.
Jina ignored him and returned to the hot thread.
Because anger was easier to touch than terror.
She reached out again, slower this time, and made a decision.
Not careful.
Not small.
She was going to try to close it.
Close all of them.
If her body knew how to create these bonds, it might know how to end them. Maybe the “release” switch was there and nobody had told her where it was.
Jina’s fingers spread.
She wrapped her hand around empty air like she was holding four invisible reins.
The threads responded immediately—tightening, humming, vibrating.
Her chest pressure increased.
Her vision narrowed.
Okay.
Now. Close.
Jina pictured a knot untying. A clamp releasing. A tourniquet loosening without snapping the vessel.
She pushed inward with her mind, not her hand.
A word rose up in her throat—
Not a word she knew.
A word her body wanted.
It sat behind her tongue like a splinter, sharp and ready.
Jina froze.
Command.
Not the command word itself. Something adjacent. Something that carried weight.
Her stomach turned.
She didn’t want to find out what came out of her mouth.
So she didn’t speak.
She just pushed harder with intent.
For a fraction of a second, the threads dimmed.
Like candles sucked of oxygen.
Jina’s breath caught.
It worked.
It—
Then the backlash hit.
The pain wasn’t a strike.
All four threads snapped tight at once.
It was recoil—like she’d tugged a live nerve and every end of it screamed back at once
The world went white.
Pain detonated in her chest so violently she couldn’t even scream.
It felt like someone grabbed her heart in a fist and squeezed.
Not metaphor.
Mechanics.
Her ribs didn’t break, but her soul—whatever that meant—felt like it tore.
Jina folded forward, choking on air that wouldn’t enter.
Her hands clawed at the ground. She couldn’t find the edge of the pain. It was everywhere.
And inside the pain—
Voices.
Not words.
Impressions.
Rage. Shock. Panic. Fire.
Four distant presences reacting like she’d just stabbed them through the bond.
I didn’t mean—
The thought didn’t finish.
She gagged and spit blood onto the stone.
A shadow moved.
Lysander was suddenly there, one knee in the dirt, hands on her shoulders.
“Your Highness!” His voice cut through the roar. “Look at me. Breathe.”
Jina tried.
She couldn’t.
The pain kept clamping her lungs shut.
Her fingers dug into his sleeve without permission, clutching like a drowning person.
Lysander’s grip tightened—anchoring, not restraining.
He leaned in close enough that she felt his breath.
“Breathe,” he ordered again, low and sharp. “Now.”
Something in his tone bypassed panic and hit instinct.
Jina dragged air in.
It came in jagged.
It burned.
But it came.
Her vision returned in pieces—firelight, stone, Lysander’s face too close, eyes hard with controlled fear.
She sucked in another breath.
And another.
The pain didn’t vanish, but it retreated from apocalypse to knife.
Her throat worked. She swallowed and tasted blood.
Lysander’s eyes flicked to her mouth.
“What did you do,” he said.
Not accusing.
Demanding information.
Jina shook her head once, trembling. “I— I tried to—” She swallowed hard. “I tried to let them go.”
Lysander went very still.
The air between them tightened.
“You tried to break the bonds,” he said.
“I tried to—” Jina coughed, a wet sound. “I tried to close them. Like— like shutting a door.”
Lysander’s jaw clenched.
For the first time since she’d woken, anger cracked through his control.
“Not like that,” he said.
Lysander’s eyes flicked over her face—too pale, too shaken. “You used to clamp them down.”
His voice went lower. “You didn’t flinch.”
Jina swallowed blood and forced steadiness into her voice. “Then I don’t remember how.”
She hated how true that sounded. “Or the bond is unstable. Or the poison is making everything worse.”
“They can’t strike you,” Lysander said, like it was a rule carved into stone. “But they can fight the chain. And the chain punishes both sides.”
Silence.
Wind hissed outside the shelter.
The fire popped.
Lysander’s eyes held hers, and in them she saw something ugly and honest.
Helplessness.
Jina stared at him through the shaking. “Do you know how, then?”
“No,” he said.
Jina’s chest tightened again, smaller this time.
Not just pain.
Fear.
Because if he didn’t know—
Nobody knew.
These men were chained because nobody had an answer.
Jina’s gaze drifted to the threads again, dimmer now but still there.
They pulsed weakly, like bruises.
The hot one burned with fresh rage.
The cold one trembled tighter than before.
The sharp one flickered with something like… laughter.
The fire one thrashed, then steadied.
And beneath all of it, a shared reaction she couldn’t ignore:
They had felt her touch.
They had felt her try.
They knew she’d reached for the lock.
Jina swallowed.
Her hands were shaking so hard she couldn’t hide it anymore.
“Okay,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “Okay. So it hurts them if I pull.”
Lysander’s gaze sharpened. “It hurts you too.”
“Yes,” Jina breathed. “I noticed.”
Her attempt at humor died on her tongue when Lysander didn’t move.
He was still holding her shoulders, but his grip had softened.
Not kindness.
Careful restraint.
As if he was afraid of what he might do if he let himself feel it fully.
Jina stared at her blood on the stone.
She pressed her palm to her sternum and felt her heart stumble.
So the bonds are not ropes you cut.
They’re nerves you don’t rip out while you’re awake.
Her mind—stubborn, pragmatic—kept turning the problem anyway.
If pulling hurt them, then she needed a different approach.
Not force.
Not break.
Stabilize.
Like splinting a fracture.
Like stopping a hemorrhage.
She looked up at Lysander. “I need information.”
His eyes didn’t leave her face. “What kind.”
“Anything,” she said. “What are they. How do they work. Who taught Aurelia—” She stopped, because the name in her mouth felt dangerous. She corrected fast. “Who taught me. What happens when they weaken. What happens when I die.”
Lysander’s jaw tightened again at the last question.
“Don’t say that.”
Jina’s laugh came out thin and ugly. “It’s a relevant question.”
“It isn’t,” Lysander said, and his voice had the edge of an order.
Not a Command.
A vow.
Jina swallowed. Her throat burned.
Outside, the wind surged, making the rock shelter groan.
Lysander shifted his body slightly, shielding her from the draft without thinking.
He realized he’d done it a second later and stilled.
Jina pretended not to notice.
Because if she looked too closely at the instinct, she might start relying on it.
And reliance was how you died in unfamiliar worlds.
Lysander exhaled once, controlled.
“The bonds are marriage,” he said.
Jina blinked. “Marriage.”
“Yes.”
The word should have been absurd.
It wasn’t.
It fit the way the threads sat in her ribs like ownership.
It fit the way their emotions bled into her body without consent.
Jina’s stomach turned.
“Then why can’t I—” She swallowed. “Why can’t I release them.”
Lysander’s gaze dropped, briefly, to the air where the threads would be if he could see them.
“Because you didn’t make them to be released,” he said quietly.
That landed like a stone to the teeth.
Jina’s fingers curled into her palm.
Not anger.
Disgust.
At Aurelia.
At the system.
At the fact she was wearing the face of the person who built this cage.
She forced herself to breathe through it.
“Okay,” she said, voice steadier than she felt. “Then we do harm reduction.”
Lysander stared. “What.”
Jina wiped blood from her lip with the back of her hand. “We keep them alive. We stop the bonds from collapsing and killing everyone attached.”
Lysander’s eyes sharpened like he was hearing a new kind of battle plan.
“How.”
Jina looked at the threads again.
They were quieter now.
But they were watching.
She could feel that.
The hot one pulsed like an angry heartbeat.
The cold one held its breath.
The sharp one smiled with teeth.
The fire one seethed under restraint.
Four men she’d never met—tethered to her, reacting to her hands like she’d grabbed their throats.
Jina swallowed hard.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “But I know what not to do.”
She lifted her shaking hand and let it hover near the threads—without touching.
“No pulling,” she said. “No forcing. No—” her tongue stumbled over the next part because it was still new and terrifying “—no Commands.”
Lysander’s gaze flicked to her mouth.
His expression tightened.
He knew what Command was.
He knew what it did.
Jina didn’t explain. She didn’t want to.
She wasn’t sure she could talk about it without tasting that splinter-word again.
She looked at him instead. “We need to move. There’s an outpost.”
Lysander nodded once. “Two days.”
Jina’s pulse skipped, like it heard the number and laughed.
She pushed herself up anyway.
Her knees wobbled.
Lysander’s hand shot out, catching her elbow.
He paused.
Permission.
Jina nodded once.
His grip closed, steadying her.
The threads pulsed.
Not yanking this time.
Listening.
Jina’s throat tightened.
They felt me try to break the chain.
If any of them could reach her—
If any of them could hunt through the Wastes—
Then the next time those threads yanked, it might not just be pain.
It might be footsteps.
Jina swallowed blood and fear.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Lysander’s eyes swept the horizon.
Then he looked back at her.
“Do not touch the bonds again,” he said, voice low.
Jina met his stare.
“I won’t,” she lied.
Not because she wanted to hurt anyone.
Because she couldn’t survive like this without answers.
And the only answers she had were inside the threads tied to her ribs.
She took one step.
The hot thread pulsed like a warning.
And far away, through a connection she’d just wrenched, someone’s rage sharpened into focus—awake enough to remember her hands.
