Chapter 7 The Cage Finds Her

TW: Blood magic, body horror, and non-consensual supernatural themes. 

He wore no coat despite the storm. His nightshirt showed beneath a hastily fastened robe, and anger had stripped every trace of softness from his face. Clara stood several steps behind him, pale and trembling beneath Jessie’s nightcap.

For a moment, father and daughter simply stared at one another.

Then Lord Vale looked at Rowan. “Was she harmed?”

“Bruised,” Rowan said. “Her shoulder may be strained. The cuts are shallow.”

“I did not ask for a catalogue,” her father replied. “I asked whether she was harmed.”

Jessie pulled her arm from Rowan’s grasp. “How touching.”

Her father’s gaze snapped to her. “Inside.”

Jessie walked past him without waiting for permission. Mud marked every step she took across the polished floor, dark footprints trailing behind her like evidence of a crime. Her father followed, ordering Clara to fetch hot water and bandages before instructing Pritchard to place guards outside Jessie’s room.

“Two guards,” he added. “At all times.”

Jessie stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Why not chain me to the bed?”

“Do not tempt me.”

The words were spoken quietly, but they silenced everyone within hearing.

Jessie turned to face him. “You knew they were watching the cliff.”

“Baron Maddox anticipated you might attempt something reckless.”

“He anticipated I might die.”

Her father’s expression tightened. “He ordered his men to bring you back safely.”

“One of them said the cliff would solve his problem.”

Rowan shifted behind her, but Lord Vale did not look surprised enough. That hurt more than Jessie expected.

“You are frightened and exhausted,” he said. “We will discuss this in the morning.”

“There is nothing left to discuss.”

“No,” her father agreed. “There is not.”

He ordered Rowan to take her upstairs.

Jessie did not resist. She allowed Clara to clean the cuts on her hands, wrap her shoulder, and help her into a dry nightgown. She sat silently while the fire crackled and the storm gradually moved east.

“You nearly died,” Clara whispered.

Jessie stared at the bandages covering her palms. “I nearly escaped.”

Clara knelt in front of her. “Those are not the same thing.”

“They may be.”

“Don’t say that.”

Jessie looked toward the locked door. Two guards stood beyond it. Another would be watching the window below. Baron Maddox would arrive after sunrise, and by then her father would ensure she could not cross the corridor without permission.

Every ordinary path had failed. But not every path was ordinary.

“Clara,” Jessie said slowly, “my father keeps a ring of keys in his study.”

Clara went still. “No.”

“The smallest iron key opens the private library.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”

“Yes, I do. You have the same look you had before the cliff.”

Jessie rose and crossed to the window. Dawn was still hours away. The estate lay beneath a skin of rain, dark and silent, with only the guards’ lanterns glowing near the walls.

“My mother once told me there were books in that library that could answer any question,” Jessie said. “Even questions no sensible person should ask.”

“Your mother also told you never to enter it.”

“She is dead. I am about to be married to a man who wishes I were easier to control. I think circumstances have changed.”

Clara shook her head, but Jessie could see fear giving way to reluctant understanding.

“What question do you want answered?” she asked.

Jessie looked down at the blood beginning to seep through one bandage. 

“How to escape when every road in this world is closed.”

An hour later, Clara distracted the guards by claiming Jessie had collapsed. While they rushed into the bedroom, Jessie slipped through the servants’ passage, crossed the sleeping manor, and entered her father’s study.

The smallest iron key was exactly where she remembered.

By the time the first hint of gray touched the eastern horizon, Jessie had found the grimoire, stolen her father’s ceremonial dagger, and descended into the abandoned chambers beneath the manor.

The stone bit into her knees. And with dawn only a few hours away, Jessie opened the forbidden book and began to read.

The damp, iron-rich smell of the chambers’ floor, a smell she now knew was old blood, not rust, clung to the back of her throat. Her hands trembled, but she willed them still. A single candle guttered, throwing frantic shadows against walls lined with forgotten wine racks and things she didn’t want to identify.

Dawn was a few hours away. Dawn, and the Baron. His thick, ring-laden fingers and the flat cruelty in his eyes.

“No,” she whispered to the empty dark. The word was a vow.

The grimoire lay open before her, its pages brittle and stained. The Latin was elementary, the instructions deceptively simple. For liberation from an undesired fate, a single soul to bind and bargain. She’d practiced the pronunciation until her tongue was numb. Now, with the tip of her father’s ceremonial dagger, she pricked her thumb. A fat, perfect bead of blood welled up. She let it fall into the center of the pentagram she’d spent the last hour carving into the stone with a blunt chisel.

The blood hit the groove.

The world didn’t just go silent, it sucked all sound into a vacuum. The candle flame stretched into a thin, unwavering line of blue. Then the pentagram ignited.

It wasn’t just fire. It was hellfire. A violent, roaring violet flame that shot up from the lines, scorching the ceiling beams black in an instant. The heat was a physical slap, dry and scentless, stealing the air from her lungs. She fell back, her palms scraping on stone, a scream lodged uselessly in her chest.

The light coalesced, twisted, and then shattered into three distinct forms that slammed into existence within the circle.

The first one she saw was the giant. He materialized with a sound of grinding stone, crouched on all fours like a great beast. Dark brown skin stretched over a frame of pure, brutal muscle, covered in faint, glowing glyphs that pulsed like a slow heartbeat. A scar split his left brow. He lifted his head, and his eyes were live coals, burning red-orange in the gloom. A low, continuous growl vibrated through the floor and up her spine.

To his left, the air shimmered and warped. A figure stood there, pale as a grub under a rock, so ambiguous it made her vision slide away in discomfort. Long, white hair drifted as if submerged in water. Its face was a beautiful, empty mask. And its eyes… solid black. No iris, no white. Just void. It tilted its head, and a whisper brushed directly against the inside of her skull. 

‘Terrified little bird’ it seemed to whisper.

She flinched, scrambling backward until her back hit a damp wall.