Elena:
She never saw them coming.
The tavern door burst open before dawn. Church guards in crimson coats, their breath fogging in the morning air. Behind them, Lee Rosaria stood wrapped in black velvet, her mourning veil drawn like a knife across her face.
"Elena," she said sweetly. "You've made quite a mess."
Elena bolted.
She made it as far as the alley before the butt of a rifle met her ribs. The ground rushed up — her breath gone. She heard her mother's sigh, long-suffering and familiar.
"Oh, darling. Still thinking pain is freedom?"
They dragged her home in chains.
Not iron — no. Spell-twined hemp. The kind that burned against magic veins. The kind that dampened the soul. Elena's fingers went numb. Her stomach turned.
The Rosaria estate had not changed. Cold stone. Rosewood doors. The scent of burnt frankincense clinging to every curtain like a curse.
They locked her in the east tower — the place where her elder cousin had been buried alive in scandal decades before. A tower meant to erase women.
Lee followed, silent. Not even her heels dared to echo.
Inside, there was a bed. A bowl of water. A single window.
Elena turned to face her mother. "You'll never win. I'll leave again, mark my words."
Lee didn't flinch. "He won't want you when I'm done."
The first blow came like memory. Sharp, familiar. The second knocked Elena to her knees.
Blood ran from her nose, warm and tasting of rust.
"I raised you better than this," Lee hissed. "A tavern whore. Bedding nobility like a feral cat in heat."
"I didn't beg him," Elena spat. "He asked for it."
Lee slapped her so hard her ears rang.
"You think the Church will allow it?" Lee seethed. "You think love will save you?"
"I don't believe in your Saintess."
"You don't get to choose, Elena. You were baptized in blood. Claimed in fire. You belong to the Saintess."
Lee knelt, face close.
"You belong to me."
She left Elena curled on the cold stone, breathing in short, sharp bursts. The lock clicked. Then silence.
She was alone again.
Except she wasn't.
The wards in the tower pulsed — old, angry, alive. Magic and memory soaked into the walls. Her ancestors had died here. Cried here.
Elena didn't pray. She learned long ago prayers were useless to deaf ears.