I stop eating on a Tuesday.
Not intentionally. It's not some grand gesture or calculated move designed to manipulate anyone. It's just that one morning I wake up and the thought of food makes my stomach turn in a way that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the fact that I'm slowly suffocating in a gilded cage and no one seems to notice or care.
Well. That's not entirely true. Someone notices.
The Fae Prince notices everything.
But noticing and doing something about it are apparently two different things in the Twilight Court, where politics matter more than people and alliances matter more than the girl slowly fading into the wallpaper of his carefully controlled world.
By Wednesday, I've stopped speaking too.
Not dramatically. I don't refuse to answer questions or make some statement with my silence. I simply... run out of words. They pile up in my throat like debris, and I can't figure out how to arrange them into something coherent, something real, something that might actually change anything. So I stop trying. I nod. I shake my head. I move through the castle like a ghost haunting my own life.
It's familiar, this shutdown. I know this version of myself intimately.
This is the Iris from the five years with Marcus—the one who learned that the safest place to hide is inside your own mind, behind walls so thick that nothing can touch you. Not his fists. Not his words. Not the slow erosion of everything you thought you were.
It's easier than fighting. Fighting requires hope, and I'm fresh out of that particular commodity.
Rowan finds me in the library on Thursday—or maybe it's Friday, the days are bleeding together now in a way that feels almost pleasant. I'm sitting in the window seat that overlooks the gardens, not reading, not doing anything really. Just existing in the space between breathing and not bothering.
"You're not eating," he says. Not a question.
I don't look up. The garden below is beautiful in a way that feels obscene. Flowers that shouldn't exist blooming in colors that don't have names, and I hate it. I hate how beautiful everything is here. It makes it harder to hate the place.
"I'm fine," I say. My voice comes out rough, unused.
Rowan sits down on the other end of the window seat, careful not to crowd me. That's one of the things I appreciate about him—he understands boundaries in a way most of these fae don't. "You haven't spoken to anyone in three days. You're down to about five hundred calories a day. You're sleeping fourteen hours and sitting motionless for the other ten."
"Are you keeping a detailed log of my deterioration?" I finally glance at him. "That's a bit obsessive, don't you think?"
"Someone needs to." His amber eyes are serious in a way that makes my chest hurt. "Iris, what's happening?"
I turn back to the garden. "Nothing's happening. That's the problem."
It's the truest thing I've said in weeks.
Nothing is happening. Kael made his choice—the alliance, the politics, the crown. I made my choice too, apparently, and it was to become invisible. It's what I do best. It's what kept me alive before.
The problem is that I don't want to be invisible anymore.
That's the real breaking point, I think. Not the moment I stop eating or speaking, but the moment I realize I'm choosing to disappear and I can't quite remember why that seemed like a good idea.
Rowan is quiet for a long time. Then: "Do you know what happens if you die?"
"Spoiler alert: I stop existing?"
"The binding dies with you." His voice is very careful. "And if the binding dies, Kael dies. You're connected now, whether either of you wanted it or not. Your life is quite literally tethered to his."
I process this information like I'm reading it in a book about someone else's tragedy. Kael would die. The Fae Prince, the beautiful monster who orchestrated my abduction and trapped me in a binding I never consented to, would die if I died.
The problem is that I can't quite bring myself to care.
"Then I guess he shouldn't have bound himself to someone he clearly doesn't want around."
"That's not—" Rowan stops himself. Starts again. "You're wrong. He wants you around. He's just an idiot about showing it."
I laugh, and it sounds like breaking glass. "He wants me around the way someone wants an expensive vase they're keeping on a shelf. Decorative. Functional. Disposable."
"You don't believe that."
"I don't believe anything anymore." I curl my knees up to my chest, making myself smaller. "I thought I was done with this. I thought I was past the point where I let someone's indifference kill me slowly. Apparently, I was wrong."
Rowan stands up. "I'm going to get Kael."
"Don't." I say it quietly, but there's steel underneath it. "If he wanted to see me, he'd come. If he wanted to talk to me, he'd make time. I'm not going to beg for basic human decency from a man who owns me."
He pauses at the door. "You don't own yourself either, Iris. Not yet. But you could. You're just choosing not to."
He leaves before I can respond, and I'm alone again with the too-beautiful garden and the slow, creeping numbness that feels like coming home.
---
Kael arrives as the sun is setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and red that look like something is burning.
I don't look up.
He smells like ozone and night-blooming jasmine, like lightning and flowers, and it's such a fundamentally unfair thing that he should smell like that—like beauty and danger mixed together—when I'm trying so hard not to feel anything.
"Rowan says you're dying," he says.
His voice is different. Stripped of the usual courtly charm, the careful control. There's something raw underneath it, something that sounds almost like fear, and I hate that I notice. I hate that some part of me responds to it despite everything.
"Rowan's being dramatic," I say to the window. "I'm just tired."
"You haven't eaten in four days."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're shutting down." He moves closer, and I can feel him like a storm approaching—electricity in the air, pressure building. "The way you did before. When you were with him."
I flinch at that. The fact that he knows, that he's been watching, that he understands exactly what I'm doing and why.
"How would you know anything about that?" My voice is sharp now, defensive.
"Because I've been watching you slowly disappear since the moment Morrigan suggested we formalize the alliance." Kael sits down beside me, and the heat of him is immediate, overwhelming. "And I've been too much of a coward to stop it."
I still don't look at him, but I'm very aware of him now. His proximity. The way his scent wraps around me like something alive. The fact that his thigh is close enough to mine that if I moved even slightly, we'd be touching.
"You're the Fae Prince," I say quietly. "You don't get to be a coward. You get to be ruthless and pragmatic and exactly as heartless as you need to be to keep your crown."
"Fuck the crown." He says it like a prayer, like a curse. "Fuck the alliance. Fuck Morrigan and her politics and every strategic decision I've made in the last two centuries if it means losing you."
Something in my chest cracks open.
I turn to look at him, and his silver eyes are luminous in the fading light, and he looks absolutely terrified. The Fae Prince looks afraid, and it's of me—of losing me, of what happens if I keep disappearing.
"You don't get to say things like that," I whisper. "You don't get to break me and then put me back together just because you've decided it's inconvenient if I fall apart."
"I know." He reaches out slowly, like he's approaching a frightened animal, and takes my hand. His skin is warm, and the touch sends electricity through me—not the pleasant kind. The kind that makes you remember you're still alive. "I know I don't deserve another chance. I know I've handled this like an arrogant bastard who thought he could force you into feeling something you don't feel. But I'm asking anyway."
"Asking what?" My heart is hammering now, and I hate it. I hate that he can do this to me—unravel my careful numbness with a few words and the press of his hand against mine.
"For you to stay," he says simply. "Not because of the binding. Not because of the alliance or the politics or anything except that the thought of a world where you don't exist is the only thing that's ever truly terrified me."
I should pull my hand away. I should tell him that his terror isn't my responsibility, that I can't save him from the consequences of his own choices. I should do a lot of things.
Instead, I squeeze his hand.
It's a small thing. Almost nothing. But it's the first time I've voluntarily touched him since everything fell apart, and we both feel it like a shock to the system.
"I'm breaking the binding," he says, and the words fall between us like stones into still water. "I'm going to find a way to sever it, consequences be damned. You're going to have a choice, Iris. You're going to choose to stay or leave, and it's going to be because you want to, not because you're trapped."
"Kael—"
"I'm not finished." His fingers tighten around mine. "I'm going to spend however long it takes to prove to you that I'm not him. That I'm not the man who hurt you. That I can be the kind of person worthy of standing next to you instead of above you."
I want to believe him. The hungry, desperate part of me that's been starving since he walked into the garden wants to believe him so badly I can taste it.
But belief is dangerous. Belief is how you end up with someone's hands around your throat.
"You can't just decide this," I say. "You can't just make a choice that affects your entire kingdom because you've decided you want to save me. That's not love, Kael. That's just a different kind of control."
"I know." He releases my hand and stands up, and I feel the loss of him immediately, physically. "Which is why I'm telling you first. Before I do anything. Before I talk to Rowan or the council or anyone else. You get to decide if this is what you want."
He moves toward the window, and the dying light catches the silver in his hair, and he looks like something from a fever dream—beautiful and impossible and terrifying.
"I'm going to break the binding," he says again, quieter this time. "And then I'm going to wait for you to decide if you want to stay. That's the only choice that matters to me anymore."
He leaves before I can respond, and I'm alone again with the too-beautiful garden and the first genuine feeling I've had in days.
It's hope.
It's also terror, because hope is how you get hurt, but I'm too tired to fight it anymore.
---
The knock on my door comes at midnight.
I'm awake—I haven't been sleeping much, just lying in the dark and thinking about what Kael said, what it means, whether any of it is real or just another beautiful lie designed to keep me compliant.
"Come in," I call out, expecting Rowan or maybe one of the servants.
It's Morrigan.
She's wearing her ceremonial robes, the midnight silk that seems to absorb light, and her black orchid and myrrh scent fills the room like poison. Her obsidian eyes are flat, unreadable, but there's something in the set of her mouth that tells me she's furious.
"My brother is making a very foolish decision," she says without preamble.
I sit up slowly. "I'm not having this conversation with you."
"You don't have a choice." She moves into the room with that unsettling grace, appearing beside my bed like she materialized from shadow. "He intends to break the binding. To release you from the alliance. Do you understand what that means?"
"It means he's giving me a choice."
"It means he's throwing away two centuries of careful strategy for a human girl who doesn't even want him." Her voice is ice. "It means he's willing to destabilize the entire court, risk war with the Seelie kingdom, and shatter everything he's built because he's developed an inconvenient attachment."
"Then that's his problem, not mine."
Morrigan leans down, and her proximity is suffocating in a way that Kael's never is. Where he feels like lightning, she feels like drowning. "It becomes your problem when you're the reason he's making this choice."
I meet her eyes. "I didn't ask him to do anything."
"No. You just had to exist, didn't you? Just had to be difficult and human and so fundamentally broken that my brother became obsessed with fixing you." Her hand reaches out, and I force myself not to flinch as she traces a finger along my collarbone. "Do you know what he is, little mortal? Do you understand what you're playing with?"
"Get your hands off me."
"Or what?" She smiles, and it's the smile of something that's never known consequence. "You'll what, Iris? Fight me? You can't even fight the urge to disappear into yourself."
That hits harder than it should, because it's true. I've been disappearing. I've been choosing numbness over feeling, invisibility over standing up for myself.
But I'm done with that.
I move faster than I've moved in days, grabbing her wrist and twisting it away from my body. It's not a particularly graceful move, and it probably won't do anything to actually harm her, but it's an action. A choice. A refusal to be touched without consent.
"I said," I repeat, "get your hands off me."
Morrigan laughs—a sound like breaking glass—and pulls her hand away. "There she is. The little fighter. No wonder Kael is so fascinated."
"What do you want?" I ask, breathing hard.
"I want you to understand that my brother is not your salvation." She moves to the window, her silhouette stark against the moonlight. "He's a prince who's bored, and you're an interesting diversion. When the novelty wears off, when he realizes that you're just a traumatized human with nothing to offer him, he'll move on. And you'll be left with nothing—no binding to protect you, no alliance to give you status, no reason for him to keep you at all."
"Maybe," I say. "But that would be my choice to make."
"Would it?" She glances back at me, and there's something almost sad in her expression. "Or would it be just another thing you survive? Another man who doesn't want you, another life where you're trying to disappear?"
She leaves before I can respond, and I'm alone again, but this time the silence feels different.
She's right about one thing: I have been choosing to disappear. And I'm tired of it.
I'm tired of being the girl who fades away. I'm tired of waiting for someone else to decide my worth. I'm tired of being so afraid of getting hurt that I hurt myself first.
The question is: what am I going to do about it?
---
I find Kael in the throne room at dawn.
He's alone, sitting in that massive chair of silver and shadow, looking like he hasn't slept. His silver eyes track me as I approach, and there's hope in them—fragile, desperate hope—that makes my chest ache.
"Your sister visited me last night," I say without preamble.
His jaw tightens. "What did she say?"
"That you're going to get bored with me. That I'm just a diversion. That breaking the binding is a mistake." I stop in front of the throne, and I'm not small anymore. I'm standing tall, meeting him at eye level even though he's sitting and I'm standing. "She's probably right, by the way. You probably will get bored. And I probably am just a diversion to you. And breaking the binding probably is a mistake politically."
"Iris—"
"Let me finish." I hold up a hand. "Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to eat. I'm going to speak. I'm going to stop disappearing. Not because you've decided you want me around. Not because breaking the binding is some grand romantic gesture. But because I deserve to exist fully, in all my broken, traumatized, difficult glory, and I'm not going to apologize for that anymore."
Kael stands up slowly, like he's afraid I'll bolt if he moves too fast.
"And if you want to break the binding, you can." I take a step closer. "But you should do it because it's the right thing to do, not because you think it will make me love you. Because love isn't something you earn by making sacrifices, Kael. It's something you build by showing up, day after day, and choosing to see the other person—really see them—even when they're difficult and broken and not worth the effort."
"You are worth the effort," he says quietly.
"I know." And I do know it now, in a way I didn't before. "But you need to know it too. Not because I'm beautiful or because I'm some magical binding or because I'm interesting. But because I'm a person, and I matter."
He steps down from the throne, and the distance between us closes until he's close enough that I can feel his heat, smell the ozone and jasmine that means he's near.
"I'm going to break the binding," he says. "Not to make you love me. But because you're right—you deserve a choice. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to be the kind of person worthy of standing next to you."
"That's a long time," I whisper.
"I know." His hand comes up, and this time he asks permission with his eyes before he touches my face. "Is that okay?"
I nod, and when his fingers brush my cheek, it feels like the first real touch I've had in days. Like waking up.
"I'm going to need time," I say. "I'm not going to trust you immediately. I'm going to have bad days where I disappear again. I'm going to—"
He kisses me.
It's not gentle. It's desperate and fierce and tastes like ozone and longing, and it undoes me completely. My hands come up to his shoulders, and I'm pulling him closer even though the smart part of my brain is screaming that this is a mistake, that I'm making myself vulnerable, that this is exactly how you get hurt.
But I'm tired of listening to the smart part of my brain.
When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine.
"I know," he says softly. "I know all of that. And I'm going to wait. I'm going to be patient. I'm going to—"
The doors to the throne room burst open.
Morrigan stands in the entrance, and her expression is absolutely murderous. Behind her are guards—Court guards, loyal to her, not to Kael—and they're all armed.
"You can't do this," she says to her brother. "You can't throw away everything for her."
Kael steps in front of me, and I feel the shift in him—the prince emerging, the warrior, the man who's ruled for two centuries through sheer force of will.
"Watch me," he says.
And the throne room erupts into chaos.
