The stairs betrayed me halfway up. Just six steps from the landing, my leg seized—a knife of pain twisting through muscle that hadn't fully healed. I froze, fingers white on the banister, waiting for the spasm to pass.

  Selwyn noticed. He always noticed.

  "Joy."

  I didn't turn. Didn't acknowledge the weakness. The embarrassment of a body that still refused to obey. Two weeks in Marcelo's cellar had hollowed me, left me with limbs that trembled after a simple morning walk in the garden.

  His footsteps approached from behind. Quiet. Deliberate.

  "It's nothing." I pushed forward, dragging the treacherous leg up another step. The long skirt tangled around my ankles, and I clutched at the fabric, lifting it just enough to free my movement.

  My calf cramped again. Harder this time. A sound escaped me—not quite a gasp, but close.

  Selwyn was beside me in an instant, one hand hovering near my elbow but not touching. Not presuming. His eyes scanned my face, then dropped to the visible knot of muscle.

  "Let me help." He knelt on the stair below mine. "Like before."

  Like before.

  Memory washed over me. The arena. The aftermath. His hands working silently at my legs while my head tipped back against the carriage wall. The warmth of his palms and that steady pressure behind my knee used to feel like heaven after a fight.

  "Joy." My name again, softer. A reminder that I'd been silent too long.

  I nodded once.

  We ended up in my room.I perched on its edge, my long skirt fanning around me in folds of deep blue fabric. Selwyn crouched beside the bed, hands hovering uncertainly.

  "May I?" His eyes met mine, careful. Always so careful since they'd found me.

  I nodded, gathering the skirt's fabric in my hands and slowly drawing it upward. The movement felt strangely intimate, more revealing than it would have been in the training clothes I once wore without thought. I stopped when the hem reached my knee, exposing my calf where the muscle still twitched and knotted.

  His gaze held mine for a moment longer before dropping to the revealed skin. The skin there was paler than before, marked with thin, healing cuts from my time in the cellar.

  He reached into his pocket. The jar appeared in his palm.

  "This will help." His voice dropped low. "From the stables."

  Another nod from me. Words seemed too heavy to lift.

  The lid popped, and the scent rose.

  Sharp. Medicinal. Camphor and mint. The sting of it caught in my throat like smoke.

  My whole body stilled. My eyes didn't blink. My breath didn't move. Suspended.

  I was back in the cellar. Face down on the bed. Wrists raw against rope bindings. The first night he brought the jar.

  Marcelo's voice, silky with satisfaction. "See how something so common can become extraordinary? Every stable boy has access to this, yet none understand its... alternative uses."

  His fingers worked the lid open. That same scent filled the damp air. My nostrils flared with animal instinct. Danger.

  "This might sting a bit at first." A cold smile that never reached his eyes. "But then... I think you'll find it quite interesting."

  The first touch had been deliberate. Calculated. No pretense of medical application. His fingers went directly between my legs, applying the liniment with meticulous precision.

  When it began to burn, I'd tried not to react. Tried to disappear into my mind. But he'd noticed.

  "No. Stay present." A sharp slap across my face. "I want you to feel this."

  The heat had spread through me. Nerve endings awakening, sensitizing. My body temperature rising with each passing second.

  "Fascinating chemistry," he'd continued, his voice academic while his intent was anything but. "It opens the pores. Stimulates blood flow. Makes everything so... responsive."

  "No one would suspect how effective it is. Right... here."

  Selwyn didn't notice. He dipped two fingers in and rubbed them together, warming the salve with slow, practiced care. His hands glistened in the lamplight, catching just enough glow to seem surreal.

  He touched my calf.

  Heat bloomed. Not the kind that soothed. It ignited like oil poured over flame. My nerve endings caught fire, each one suddenly awake. The skin beneath his fingers grew hot, until every cell screamed with unwanted awareness. My stomach clenched.

  I shivered.

  "Too cold?" Selwyn looked up, concern etching lines around his eyes.

  I shook my head. My hair fell across my eyes, a shield between us.

  The sensation spread upward. A burning tingle crawled beneath my skin, from calf to knee to thigh. The flesh grew tender, hypersensitive, until even the air felt like fingers dragging across raw nerve endings.

  My lungs constricted. I searched for something to anchor me. The blue pattern on the bedspread. The weight of my skirt across my lap. The grain of wood in the floor.

  Stay here. Stay present.

  My breath caught in my throat. I curled my toes. My hips shifted—just slightly. Reflex. Conditioning. The same horrifying response Marcelo had trained into my flesh with that vile cream.

  The ache bloomed, low in my abdomen. Familiar. Terrifying. Unwanted. A deep hollow pulse that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with manipulation. Chemistry. Programming.

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  Night after night in that cellar. The ritual was the same.

  "First we prepare the body." His clinical tone as he applied the liniment directly to my most sensitive areas. Never anywhere else. Precise and targeted.

  My muscles remembering how they'd betray me. How I'd fight the building heat, the unwanted sensitivity. How his touch would follow, exploiting the heightened sensation.

  "See how your body betrays you?" Marcelo's voice again, as he watched me respond despite my will. "It knows what it wants, even if you fight it."

  The worst part wasn't the violation. It was how he'd made my own flesh an accomplice in its own betrayal. Training responses. Building associations.

  "Soon you won't need the cream at all," he'd promised. "Your body will remember what comes next. It will prepare itself at just the thought of me."

  No. No.

  I pulled my leg back, but Selwyn misunderstood. He smiled gently, trying to ease the tension he saw but didn't understand.

  "I'm being too gentle. Sorry—let me—"

  "Stop."

  My voice cracked. It sounded foreign in my mouth. Like something wrenched from a hidden place.

  He froze, hand still pressed lightly to my leg. "Did I hurt you?"

  I stared down. Not at him. At my calf. At my own skin, which pulsed like it belonged to someone else. The flesh that was my own and not my own. The thing that had been taught to respond without my permission.

  My breath came faster. I pushed beneath the skirt, trying to rub away the liniment on my calf, but the smell clung—stubborn and sharp. It filled my lungs. Crawled up my throat.

  I fought harder for control. Focused on the sound of Selwyn's breathing. On the dust motes floating in the afternoon light. On the distant call of birds outside the window. Anything real. Anything now.

  It wasn't working. The room blurred.

  "Joy?" Selwyn's voice sounded a thousand miles away.

  My hand scrubbed harder. Panic swelled, thick and choking. The room faded at the edges. I was here and there at once—in my bedroom with Selwyn and strapped to that bed in the cellar.

  Selwyn reached for me.

  "Don't—" I choked. "Don't touch me."

  His hand froze.

  I bent over, scrubbing furiously at my leg. My fingers dragged harder, harder, until skin burned under my nails. Each stroke more desperate than the last. The skin grew red, then raw.

  I clawed at the skin just below my knee, trying to rip through the muscle memory. To scrape away the nerve endings he'd made so raw with his cursed liniment. My breath fractured into sharp, shallow gasps. My claws dug deeper, breaking skin. Blood welled beneath my nails, staining the blue fabric of my skirt that had fallen around my ankles.

  "Joy, stop!" Selwyn lunged forward, grabbing my wrists.

  I thrashed against him, my body twisting. "Let go! I need to get it off!"

  He moved faster than I could react in my panicked state. His weight pressed me back onto the bed, my wrists pinned above my head with one of his hands. His other arm braced across my shoulders, holding me down. Not crushing. Just containing.

  "Stop hurting yourself." His face hovered above mine, eyes dark with concern. "Please."

  I bucked against him, snarling. Wild. Feral. Lost in the panic of memories.

  "Joy." His voice dropped lower, steadier. Strong without cruelty. "Look at me. See me."

  I strained against his hold, chest heaving.

  He didn't flinch. Didn't release me. "You're safe. It's Selwyn. You're in your room at Ross's house."

  I fought for another moment, strength surging through my limbs. Then something in his unwavering gaze reached through the fear. His weight above me—restraining but not violating. His hands—firm but not cruel.

  And then I felt him lean close, his breath brushing against the shell of my ear.

  "Joy," he whispered. His voice didn't tremble. "You're not fighting me. Not really. I can feel it."

  I went still.

  "I know you're scared. But I'm not him. And you know that. Somewhere in there—you know I'm trying to help."

  I couldn't speak. The panic had swallowed my tongue. Had drowned my voice in its rising tide.

  "So go," he murmured. "Let go. Go away. I've got you. I'll take care of it."

  I blinked hard, trying to find something solid. His face was the only thing that didn't blur. I found his eyes.

  Dark. Steady. Not afraid of me. Not backing away.

  "Just trust me, pet. Just this once."

  His weight remained steady above me. Not shifting, not taking advantage. Just holding me safe from myself.

  I nodded.

  The tension drained out of me like someone had cut a cord inside me. I slumped beneath him. My wrists went slack in his hold. My vision turned to mist—white, soft, thick as fog rolling over snow.

  Gone.

  Not unconscious. Not asleep. But somewhere else.

  He eased his weight off me gradually. Released my wrists. His hand touched my face briefly, checking my breathing before leaving the bed.

  The scent faded. Cold air prickled against damp skin as he wiped away the liniment from my leg with a water-soaked cloth. His hands moved steadily, as if I were still watching.

  And then I heard his voice again. Not loud. Not desperate.

  "I didn't know."

  The cloth passed over my skin again. Careful.

  Something tightened in my chest, even as the rest of me hung weightless.

  I didn't answer.

  But I heard him.

  The room shifted around me—creaking floorboards, the soft hush of fabric against fabric, the whisper of the cloth dipping into water. I remained distant, floating in the white space. Time stretched and contracted. I had no sense of how long I stayed away.

  When I returned, the scent was gone. My leg was dry. Selwyn sat on the floor by the bed, leaning against the frame, a book open in his hands. He hadn't left.

  He glanced up, feeling my gaze. His face changed—subtle movement around the eyes, the smallest shift of his shoulders.

  "There you are." The corner of his mouth lifted, not quite a smile.

  I inhaled. The air smelled clean. Like soap. Like the lavender oil Clover had placed in the drawers. "How long?"

  "Nearly an hour." He closed the book, marking his place with a finger.

  I should have felt ashamed. I should have felt weak. But exhaustion crowded out everything else. "You stayed."

  His gaze held mine. "Of course I stayed."

  Something in those words unraveled me further. My throat tightened. I watched him rise, muscles shifting under his clothes. He placed the book on the small table by the bed.

  "Should I go?"

  The question hung between us. Three simple words weighted with so much more.

  I considered the darkness waiting behind my eyelids. The ghost sensations that might creep back in the silence. The scent memory lurking just beyond my awareness.

  "No." My voice sounded stronger now. Present. "Not yet."

  He nodded, settled back beside the bed. Not touching me. But there. Real. He reopened his book.

  "What are you reading?" I asked after a moment.

  He held up the cover. "The History of Naerithi Agriculture and Its Influence on Continental Trade Routes." His mouth quirked. "From Ross. Riveting stuff."

  A laugh escaped me—small and rusty, but real. "Sounds thrilling."

  "Would you like me to read some to you?" His eyes sparked with gentle humor. "I guarantee it'll put you straight to sleep."

  I shifted on the bed, moving to make room beside me. An invitation. A risk. A choice. My skirt rustled as I pulled it to one side, clearing space for him.

  "Yes." The word came easier than I expected. "Read to me."

  He hesitated only a moment before moving to sit beside me on the bed, careful to leave space between us. The mattress dipped under his weight. He opened to the first page.

  "'Chapter One: The Early Cultivation Practices of the Northern Clans,'" he began, his voice low and measured. "'Before the great migration of the Sunthorn tribes, agricultural techniques remained rudimentary at best...'"

  I closed my eyes, letting his voice wash over me. The words themselves meant nothing. But the cadence, the presence, the choice to stay—those meant everything.