Chapter 164
Annalise
The castle walls no longer felt like prison bars, but that didn’t mean they weren’t. Demonis hadn’t locked me in—he didn’t have to. There was no need for chains when despair was enough to keep someone caged.
I walked through his cursed kingdom, the sky perpetually overcast in a heavy shade of gray-blue that never seemed to shift. The castle grounds stretched wide, beautiful in a way that made your skin crawl, with gardens of black roses that looked as if they had been dipped in ink and kept alive on shadows alone. The demons wandered the paths like they owned the world—and maybe here, they did. But none of them stopped me. None dared to come close.
They didn’t need to.
I was powerless.
Not because I didn’t have strength—but because my strength meant nothing now.
