Bend Her

Bend Her Plot Summary

Introduction

In the shadow of a floating castle that defies the laws of earth and sky, Princess Lisane awakens to darkness and rope burns around her wrists. The sheltered daughter of King Jaegar has been traded like currency to the All-Beast, a mage of terrifying power whose true name is whispered only in fear. What began as her father's desperate bargain to secure magical aid against the rising Deathless has become something far more dangerous—a collision between a princess who has never tasted freedom and a creature who has forgotten what it means to be human. Rhaim has lived eight hundred years in isolation, his magic transforming him into something between man and monster. He expected to use Lisane as leverage, a pretty trinket to ensure her father's cooperation. Instead, he finds himself facing the woman from his prophetic vision—the one destined to be his death. Yet as he watches her rage against the gilded cage of her former life, he begins to wonder if teaching her magic might be worth the risk of his own destruction. In a world where power comes through pain and freedom demands sacrifice, two souls will discover that some transformations cannot be undone.

Chapter 1: The Princess in the Beast's Lair

The dungeon smells of stone and despair when Lisane forces herself to stillness. Three days have passed since she woke with a bag over her head and her wrists bound, three days of refusing to give her captor the satisfaction of seeing her break. She is a princess, daughter of King Jaegar of Drelleth, and she will not beg. But hunger gnaws at her resolve, and when footsteps finally echo down the stone stairs, she finds herself asking for water, for food, for basic human dignity. The voice that answers from the darkness is low and mocking. "Do you think you deserve any of those things, Princess of Tears?" He knows who she is. The realization hits her like a physical blow—this was planned, deliberate. Her father's enemies have finally found a way to reach her despite the windowless chambers and magical guards. When her captor offers her a choice between crawling across his dining table like a cat or being treated like a dog on the floor, shame wars with desperation in her chest. She chooses survival. On hands and knees across the polished wood, eating scraps from his plate while he watches with dark amusement, Lisane tastes her first bitter lesson in powerlessness. Yet even as tears of humiliation burn her eyes, something fiercer kindles beneath them. "I will kill you," she promises, licking grease from her fingers. "In time." Rhaim—for that is his name, she learns—only nods with something that might be approval. "Of that, I have no doubt." In his floating castle high above the world, surrounded by books and bones and the detritus of centuries, the All-Beast has found his greatest experiment yet. The question is not whether she will kill him, but what she will become before she does.

Chapter 2: Bargaining with Pain for Power

The windows reveal impossible vistas that change with each dawn—rolling plains where horses graze, ocean stretches that make her dizzy, marshlands thick with mysterious shadows. Rhaim's castle moves through sky as easily as a ship through water, and Lisane stands transfixed by her first glimpse of true freedom, even if it remains beyond her reach. But there is a price for everything here, including sunlight. The thin gold chain around her neck burns with his magic, marking her as permitted to see beyond these walls. When she dares to remove it, the shutters slam closed with vindictive force. He owns even her right to witness beauty. "Women can't become mages," he tells her with casual cruelty when she begs him to teach her magic. Yet something in his tone suggests possibility, and Lisane clings to it like a drowning woman to driftwood. She has watched mages all her life, seen their power from the shadows of her windowless chambers, and felt the bitter knowledge that she would never be allowed to learn. Here, stripped of everything but her desperate hunger for more than a caged existence, she makes her choice. When he tells her to undress and shelve his books naked, she swallows her shame and obeys. When he speaks of trust and control and the price of power, she listens. The sheltered princess who once fainted at the sight of blood discovers she has deeper wells of determination than anyone suspected. As smoke curls from Rhaim's pipe and shapes itself to her will—barely, briefly, but undeniably—Lisane tastes the first drops of real magic. It's not enough, not nearly enough, but it's a beginning. And for a woman who has spent eighteen years waiting for her life to start, a beginning is everything.

Chapter 3: The Discovery of Hidden Talents

Magic hurts. This is Lisane's first and most bitter lesson as she struggles to shape smoke into arrows and keys and desperate symbols of escape. Each attempt sends spikes of pain through her skull, but Rhaim's patience seems infinite as he corrects her form, adjusts her breathing, teaches her to find the space between trying too hard and not trying at all. The pain is worth it for moments like this—when the smoke obeys her will and forms letters in the air spelling "Sir" just to make him laugh, when she feels the rush of power flowing through her like lightning in her veins. But her progress is agonizingly slow, and she can see frustration growing in Rhaim's dark eyes even as he maintains his careful instruction. Then comes the night she experiences magic by accident. Crying over her failures, ink bleeding across the pages of the journal he gave her, Lisane looks up to find her reflection replaced by something impossible—her father and brother, arguing in what looks like her father's war tent. The vision wavers and dissolves, leaving her gasping with pain and exhilaration. When she calls for Finx, the strange spider-cat creature that Rhaim created in his youth, her voice cracks with joy and terror. "Is everything all right?" the creature asks, and for the first time since arriving in this castle, Lisane can answer truthfully: "It is." The magic came from her tears, her sorrow, her desperate need to see home again. It came from pain, just as everything else here does. But it came from her own pain this time, not pain inflicted by others. As she dances around her room in celebration, Lisane begins to understand that her path to power might be darker than she ever imagined.

Chapter 4: Betrayals Revealed in Royal Blood

The revelation explodes through Lisane like shattered glass when she realizes the soldiers who captured her weren't enemies at all. Castillion the Spiked, her childhood guard, was the one who delivered her to Rhaim's doorstep. Her father made a deal—his daughter's freedom in exchange for the All-Beast's aid against the Deathless. She was never kidnapped. She was sold. The truth rewrites every moment since her arrival. Rhaim's cruel amusement when she spoke of ransom, his certainty that no rescue would come, his casual dismissal of her father's love. He knew from the beginning that she was a transaction, a payment for services rendered. The King of Tears had traded his daughter like a handful of gold coins. When Rhaim finds her starving herself in protest, their confrontation crackles with mutual rage. She sees the way his eyes flash when she mentions her father, the careful way he steers conversation away from the subject of her family. But she also sees something else—a flicker of what might be guilt when he realizes she doesn't know the truth. "I will send your letter," he promises when she threatens to waste away rather than continue their charade. But his voice holds warning when he adds, "I am never giving you back, Lisane. No matter what your letter says." The letter she writes is brutal in its honesty, laying bare every humiliation and moment of despair. But as she seals it with wax melted by her own magical fire, she adds a final line that surprises even her: "Please do not come for me. This is where I belong." Because whatever her father's betrayal cost her, it gave her something precious—the chance to become more than a pretty ornament in a windowless cage.

Chapter 5: Refusing Rescue, Choosing Captivity

The airship appears like a nightmare against the blue sky, bearing the purple cross of Ker Vethys, her former betrothed. Lisane's heart stops as grappling hooks tear into Rhaim's library windows and armed men storm across makeshift bridges between the vessels. This is rescue, the very thing she once dreamed of in her darkest moments in the dungeon. She fights it with everything she has. Vethys himself is young and handsome and utterly certain of his righteousness as he wrestles her toward his ship. "You are as beautiful as others swore," he says, as if her beauty is the only thing that matters about her, as if the magic crackling through her veins and the fire she can now summon at will are meaningless compared to the arrangements made by men. When Finx leaps to her defense, sinking fangs into Vethys's neck, Lisane's heart breaks to see the spider-cat swatted away like an insect. But her grief becomes fuel for the greatest magic she has ever worked. "GO AWAY!" she screams, and power explodes from her in a wave that sends Vethys flying and rocks his entire ship like a toy in a bathtub. Then Rhaim's beast arrives, no longer the man who taught her to shape smoke but something primal and terrifying. She watches him leap onto Vethys's ship and knows that everyone aboard is already dead. The sounds that follow—screams cut short, the thud of bodies hitting water—are the price of her choice. When Rhaim returns, still in his monstrous form, she sees the wounds her would-be rescue cost him. Blood mats his dark fur, fresh cuts weep crimson, and his eyes hold an alien hunger that makes her step back even as relief floods through her. He saved her, but the creature that did the saving is not the man who teaches her magic with patient hands.

Chapter 6: Intimate Wounds and Magical Awakening

In the healing waters of Rhaim's rooftop bath, surrounded by stars she has rarely been allowed to see, Lisane finally understands the price of power. The magic that came to her in moments of desperate need always carried a cost in pain, and her journal documents the terrible arithmetic—every spell paid for in suffering, every glimpse of her true potential bought with agony. Rhaim reads her journal and the guilt in his eyes is devastating to witness. "Why didn't you tell me?" he demands, and she realizes he never knew. Never understood that his lessons in pain were also lessons in magic, that every time he hurt her he was also feeding her power. "I would not always hurt you," he promises, and this time she believes him. When he asks permission to touch her, the reverence in his voice makes her tremble. His hands are gentle as they part her thighs, his mouth hot against her skin as he shows her that pain is not the only path to transformation. Under the vast dome of night sky, he brings her to heights she never knew existed. His tongue is clever and patient, his hands sure as they map the geography of her pleasure. She falls apart in his arms with his name on her lips, crying "Sir" like a prayer as wave after wave of sensation crashes through her. In the aftermath, floating in healing waters that shimmer with magic, she learns the constellations from him. His voice is soft in the darkness as he traces patterns among the stars, and for the first time since arriving at his castle, she feels truly safe. Not because he has promised not to hurt her, but because she has chosen to trust him with her breaking. When he carries her to bed and places her journal beside her pillow, she knows their arrangement has shifted into something deeper and more dangerous than either of them intended. She belongs here now, not because he owns her, but because she has claimed this strange new life as her own.

Chapter 7: Confrontations and Claims of Possession

The wolves howl at the edges of Jaegar's war camp as Rhaim stalks into the light of the command fires, no longer bothering to hide what he has become. His transformation is terrible to witness—bones cracking and reforming, muscles swelling beneath skin that sprouts dark fur, teeth elongating into fangs. The All-Beast stands revealed before the gathered mages and soldiers, magnificent and monstrous. "You gave her to me," he snarls at King Jaegar, his voice distorted by his changed throat. "She is mine." The words carry across the camp like a declaration of war, and indeed that is what this is. The bargain that brought Lisane to his castle is broken beyond repair. Jaegar stands his ground with the steel spine that made him a king, but even he cannot hide his fear as the creature before him speaks of convocation and betrayal. "She does want to stay with you," he admits finally, the words cutting through the night air like a blade. "For now." Helkin, Lisane's twin brother, moves with the jerky desperation of guilt barely contained. His armor gleams in the firelight, and Rhaim's enhanced senses catch the scent of his fear, the rapid beating of his heart. The boy knows something, and the knowledge sits heavy on his shoulders like a weight he can no longer bear. "Where is your friend?" Rhaim asks, his massive head tilting toward Helkin. "The one with the purple cross?" But they both know Vethys is feeding fish at the bottom of the sea, along with every man who dared to touch what belongs to the All-Beast. As the wolves surge closer, their howls rising to match his own inhuman voice, Rhaim delivers his final promise. Anyone who tries to take Lisane from him will know no peace, even in death. The jackals will scatter their bones, the vultures will strip them clean, and their names will be forgotten by history. When he races from the camp on all fours, leading his pack into the darkness, every man present understands the truth. The All-Beast has claimed his mate, and heaven help anyone foolish enough to stand between them.

Summary

In the end, Lisane's transformation is complete not because she has mastered magic, but because she has mastered herself. The frightened princess who once begged for scraps at Rhaim's table has become something fiercer—a woman who fights her own rescue, who chooses captivity over safety, who finds power in the very pain that once broke her. Her magic may require suffering to fuel it, but she has learned to transmute that suffering into strength, to find freedom within the walls of a floating prison. Rhaim's fate remains unchanged by his rebellion against it. The vision that showed him his death in Lisane's eyes still holds true, but he no longer fears the fulfillment of that prophecy. In teaching her to harness power through pain, he has created something unprecedented—a woman mage in a world that insists such things cannot exist. Whether she destroys him through love or magic or simple human agency matters less than the fact that she will do so as his equal, his match, his chosen destroyer. Some chains, once forged in fire and sealed with desire, become too precious to break.

About Author

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Cassie Alexander

Alexander connects her experiences as a registered nurse with her passion for storytelling, crafting narratives that bridge the realms of reality and fantasy. Her writing, ranging from a memoir recounting the Covid-19 pandemic to steamy paranormal romances, explores the interplay between ordinary human lives and extraordinary supernatural elements. This duality reflects her ability to weave intricate plots where demons, shapeshifters, and monsters are not just fantastical beings but also catalysts for character development and thematic exploration.\n\nHer books, such as the "Edie Spence" series, not only offer thrilling adventures but also delve into the complexities of personal and professional identity. While the memoir "Year of the Nurse" provides an introspective look at the challenges faced during the pandemic, her collaborative works with Kara Lockharte under the name Cassie Lockharte showcase a dynamic approach to paranormal romance, blending intense emotions with imaginative settings. Through her diverse genres, Alexander's method engages readers seeking escapism alongside deeper insights into resilience and empathy.\n\nFor those interested in urban fantasy and romance, her narratives offer more than mere entertainment; they present an opportunity to reflect on the resilience of the human spirit. The immersive storytelling captivates audiences who appreciate rich, character-driven plots that traverse both the human and the mystical. This bio highlights how Alexander's work resonates with readers looking for both a thrilling escape and a poignant exploration of life's myriad challenges.

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