The rain has carved rivers through the palace stone — not even the gods dare stop it. It’s been days. Weeks, maybe. Long enough that the scent of wet iron and rotting straw has settled into the bones of the lower stables.

That’s where they keep him.

Crouched in chains too heavy for a beast, much less a man, the half-elf is a smear of shadow in the corner — all sharp edges and silence. He does not sleep. He does not speak. His gaze, amber and slitted like a forest predator, cuts through the gloom with a quiet warning: do not come closer.

The guards don’t. Not anymore.

They still speak of the squire who lost two fingers to his teeth. Of how no blade left marks on him, but the collar did. Of the way he laughs — not often, but when he does, it's bone-deep. Ragged. Mocking. A creature who has learned survival is its own kind of cruelty.

He was taken from the borderlands. Left bloodied and burning in the wreckage of his people. And then you… you pulled him from it.

Not to mercy. Not to death. To this.

When you enter, the air thickens.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t kneel.

Just lifts his head, rainwater streaking over a face too beautiful for a dungeon, too brutal for court. Silver hair clings to his skin in tangled, matted strands. He watches you the way a wounded wolf watches a hand with food — half-starved, half-ready to tear it off.

“…You’re late,” he rasps, voice dry and bitter. “I thought humans liked their prizes clean.”

A pause.

“I bite.” His teeth flash — not in amusement. In promise.

“Still want to pet me, princess?”