Chapter 6: What Belongs To Me

"I didn’t steal it," Naya said again, her voice fraying at the edges. "I need you to believe me."

Ronan didn’t look at her the way he had before. There was no cold amusement in his expression now, no detached cruelty. This was something rawer, something bleeding at the edges.

"I’ve already given you more mercy than you deserve," he said.

"I can’t confess to something I didn’t do."

His jaw tightened. When he spoke again, he said her name slowly, deliberately, like he was carving it into stone.

"Naya Ripley."

Something in the way he said it made her stomach drop.

"You wanted to know what happens when you cross me?" His voice stayed low, controlled, which somehow made it worse. "I’ll make your life a living hell until you beg me to send you back to your family."

"I didn’t steal it," she said again, because it was the only truth she had left to offer.

Ronan turned to the guards standing near the door.

"See to her punishment."

Naya’s breath caught. She understood, with sudden and terrible clarity, that he meant every word.

What followed blurred at the edges in her memory afterward, fragmented into sensation rather than sequence. She was aware of the eyes on her. The same council members who had laughed at her over dinner now stood witness to this too, their expressions unreadable, their silence somehow crueler than their mockery had been.

She refused to beg. She refused to confess to a theft she hadn’t committed, even as fear closed around her throat tighter than Ronan’s hand had the night before.

"I didn’t take it," she said, over and over, her voice growing thinner each time.

Ronan watched from a distance, his face carved from the same stone as his voice. To him, this wasn’t cruelty. This was justice, however misdirected, for a woman he could no longer protect.

"How can you do this," Naya finally managed, "when I’ve told you the truth?"

"Truth doesn’t matter to me anymore," Ronan said. "Seraphine is dead. The necklace was found among your things. That’s enough."

Naya closed her eyes, bracing herself against what came next.

Then the doors burst open.

"Enough."

The voice cut through the room like a blade. Naya turned her head weakly and saw a man striding in, younger than Ronan, sharing the same dark hair and the same commanding presence, though his eyes carried none of his brother’s ice.

Kael Veyr’s gaze went straight to her, taking in her condition in a single sweeping glance. He didn’t spare the necklace a second look.

"What happened here?" he demanded.

"She stole something belonging to Seraphine," Ronan said.

Kael’s eyes shifted to Naya. She met his gaze, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I didn’t."

He didn’t immediately dismiss her. Instead, he turned back to his brother, something sharp settling into his expression.

"This has gone far enough."

"Stay out of this, Kael."

"She’s already hurt." Kael’s voice hardened. "Look at her."

Ronan’s expression didn’t change, but he said nothing to stop his brother as Kael crossed the room and knelt beside Naya.

She flinched instinctively when his hands came near her, unused to anything resembling gentleness in this place. Kael didn’t comment on it. He simply began tending to her injury with quiet efficiency, his touch careful in a way nothing here had been.

"Thank you," Naya whispered.

"You don’t need to thank me," Kael said, not looking up. "I’m just treating a wound."

Ronan stood a short distance away, watching the two of them with an expression he didn’t seem to fully understand himself.

He told himself it shouldn’t matter. Naya was his wife in name only, a debt paid rather than a woman chosen. He’d made that clear to her, to his council, to himself. He didn’t want her. He didn’t desire her. Whatever obligation bound them together had nothing to do with affection.

So he couldn’t explain the tightness gathering in his chest as he watched his brother’s hands moving carefully over her skin.

"Leave her," he said abruptly.

Kael glanced up. "She’s hurt."

"I said leave her."

Kael didn’t move. If anything, his shoulders squared with quiet defiance. "And who’s going to tend to her? You?"

Ronan’s eyes settled on Naya, and something in his expression flickered, unreadable even to himself.

"I will."

Naya’s eyes widened. Kael’s brows rose in matching surprise, studying his brother for a long moment before slowly rising to his feet.

"As you wish," Kael said, though his tone suggested he found the whole situation strange. He cast one last glance at Naya before stepping back and leaving the room, the doors closing quietly behind him.

Naya expected Ronan to resume whatever punishment he’d interrupted. Instead, he crossed the distance between them and knelt in front of her, taking the cloth Kael had left behind.

There was no softness in his face. His movements were precise, almost clinical, as he began cleaning the wound himself. Naya watched him, too stunned to speak at first.

This was the first time since the wedding that Ronan had done anything resembling care for her.

"Why?" she finally asked.

He didn’t look up. His hands continued their careful work, steady despite the tension radiating from him.

"Because you’re my wife," he said.

Naya frowned slightly. That explanation didn’t fit anything he’d told her before. He’d made it painfully clear that being his wife meant nothing beyond obligation, that she held no real place in his life or his affections.

"That’s not a real answer," she said quietly.

Ronan finished cleaning the last of the wound. His hands stilled. Then, slowly, his gaze lifted to meet hers, dark and unreadable in the dim light.

"And I don’t allow other men," he said, "to tend to what belongs to me."

Naya stared at him, the words settling somewhere she didn’t know how to name.

Only moments ago, this same man had ordered her punished for a crime she hadn’t committed. He’d told her repeatedly that their marriage was nothing more than paper, that she meant nothing to him beyond the debt her family owed. He’d made his indifference toward her a weapon, wielded it as often as he could.

And yet he hadn’t been able to stand the sight of his own brother’s hands on her skin.

Naya didn’t understand him.

Watching the confusion flicker briefly across his own face before he masked it again, she suspected, for the first time, that Ronan didn’t entirely understand himself either.