Elysium: Desired by the Cold-hearted Princess [GL]-Chapter 341: Prisoner

E’s POV

When my eyes opened, the first thing I noticed was the cold.

The floor under me was made of stone, rough, uneven, and freezing against my skin. I blinked a few times, trying to focus, but the dim light in the room did little to help, and my vision remained blurred until I forced myself to breathe. Slowly, the room came into view, a small square space, barely big enough for two people to stand in. The walls were dull grey, marked with faint cracks and burn stains. The air smelled like metal, rust, and something stale, something like dust that hadn’t been disturbed in years.

It took a few more seconds for the reality to hit me.

I was in a cell, and both my hands were cuffed tightly behind me.

"What the—" I muttered, pulling against the restraints. The cuffs bit into my wrists, hard enough to sting. They weren’t ordinary shackles either, and I could feel a little bit of magic in them, binding and suppressing. Whoever made them and got me in them knew exactly what they were doing.

Panic flickered in my chest. The last thing I remembered was being with Seraphina, her limp body on the hospital bed, my hand pressed against her forehead, and the light... that blinding light. It had been everywhere, swallowing us whole, and then nothing. Just darkness.

Now I was here.

Alone.

I shifted, my body heavy but oddly... healed. My skin no longer felt like it was burning from the inside, and my lungs didn’t ache. The constant weakness that had been eating at me for days was gone. I felt alive again, even stronger than I could describe in words, but that strength was caged, contained by the chains on my wrists.

I glanced down at myself, and that’s when I saw that my reflection in the dull metal floor wasn’t Electra’s. I was still in my phoenix form.

Fully.

"What the hell..." I whispered, staring at my hands. My fingers glowed faintly, as though fire was waiting just under the surface, desperate to break free, but the cuffs dulled it—muted it, like a song cut off mid-note.

This didn’t make sense. If I’d healed Seraphina like I thought I did, I should’ve reverted to Electra. That was how balance worked. Electra and I shared the same vessel, one mind, one body—two halves of the same life. Whenever one took control, which was supposed to be Electra since she was the human, the other retreated. We weren’t meant to exist separately for too long, but right now, I couldn’t feel her.

I closed my eyes and tried to reach inward, to that invisible thread that usually tied us together. It should’ve been there, faintly at the back of my mind like it always did when Electra and I were still fully connected; instead, I was met with silence.

I pushed harder, searching, clawing through the layers of my consciousness until my head began to ache, but there was nothing.

It was like she’d vanished, completely gone.

My throat tightened. "No... no, that’s not possible."

I tried again, closing my eyes and focusing everything I had left on that single connection. "Electra," I whispered, my voice shaking. "If you can hear me, say something. Anything."

Nothing.

The silence that followed was so deep it almost felt alive, pressing against my ears, against my chest.

I let out a slow, uneven breath. "Damn it..."

My heart was beating too fast. I needed to think, but every thought led back to the same terrifying possibility, if Electra wasn’t here, if she’d somehow been erased, then what was I now? Just the leftover half of a broken soul?

No, I refused to believe that.

I healed Seraphina. There had to be a reason I was here, alive and whole, even if Electra wasn’t answering.

I forced myself to look around again. The cell was small, barely enough space to stand. The only light came from a faint line near the ceiling, where a barred vent let in a sliver of glow from the light outside. That alone told me enough.

Someone had locked me up, but they were keeping me alive.

"Where the hell am I?" I muttered, dragging myself up to sit properly. My wings, faint and translucent, flickered behind me before fading again. Whoever forged these cuffs had made sure they suppressed everything that made me what I was. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

I tested the air, listening. Somewhere beyond the walls, I could hear faint footsteps and distant voices, too muffled to make out words, but clear enough to tell that I wasn’t alone in this place.

It sounded like guards. So this wasn’t just some random holding cell.

This was planned.

"Perfect," I muttered, tilting my head back against the cold wall. "Absolutely perfect."

If Jella’s men had found out where I was, this was probably her doing. She’d wanted me dead since the moment the truth came out, but if she wanted me executed, why keep me alive at all? Why the cuffs and the cell?

I leaned my head back and shut my eyes, trying to think clearly, but exhaustion was starting to creep in again. It wasn’t the kind of tiredness that came from being weak, it was deeper than that. Bone-deep, like something inside me was incomplete, because it was.

Without Electra, I was... wrong. We were two halves, human and phoenix, meant to exist together, but now, the balance was gone, and the longer we stayed separated, the more unstable I might end up becoming.

After what felt like hours of being stuck in that tiny cell, with no clue who was really behind keeping me there, I finally heard footsteps. They were faint at first but soon grew louder, getting closer to where I sat.

I stayed still, my back against the cold wall, my wrists burning from the cuffs that dug into my skin. When the footsteps stopped right in front of my cell, I lifted my head, blinking against the faint light coming from the hallway.

Two guards stood there, and it only took me a second to recognize them. From their uniforms, the gold lines on their armor, and the crest on their shoulders, I instantly knew they were palace guards, Elmerian guards, and that was all I needed to know.

There was no way my father could’ve been behind this. He wouldn’t lock me up like some criminal. Which meant my guess had been right all along.

Jella.

I didn’t even have to wonder how she found out or how she managed to get her hands on cuffs strong enough to suppress me, but the fact that she did made my skin crawl. The woman shouldn’t have had that kind of knowledge, at least not about me. Someone must have told her or helped her, and that thought annoyed me more than being trapped here.

The guards said nothing as one of them unlocked the door and stepped in. The other followed right after. Before I could even ask what they wanted, they each grabbed an arm, dragging me up from the ground. My legs still ached, but I didn’t fight them. I just gritted my teeth and stayed quiet.

If I was right, I’d be seeing Jella soon, and I wasn’t about to waste my words on guards who didn’t matter.

After what felt like forever, we stopped in front of two large double doors. One of the guards knocked once, waited, then pushed them open.

The first thing that hit me was the smell, the second was the silence, and then I saw her.

Jella.

She was sitting on her throne like she owned the air everyone breathed, and her stupid face looked calm, but the disgust in her eyes said everything.

I didn’t look away. The guards dragged me across the room until I was standing right in front of her, and while she stared down at me, I looked away briefly only to notice that there was someone else standing beside her.

For a moment, I thought I was imagining it, but then she turned slightly, and I froze.

Iris.