Mia considered this. Elsa watched her weigh the options—the risk of action against the certainty of inaction, the fear of what the pits held against the guilt of leaving others to rot in them.
“Fine.” Mia exhaled. “But if we get killed, I’m blaming you.”
“Fair.”
Ari had been easier. Ryxin’s human had a streak of recklessness under all that court training, and her sharp smile when Elsa explained the plan told its own story. She’d been waiting for someone to do something. Anything. The slow suffocation of powerlessness was killing her faster than any physical threat.
“You’re using politeness as a weapon.” Ari’s dark eyes gleamed with something that looked almost like respect. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I’m a navigator.” Elsa adjusted the collar at her throat—Sylas’s mark, that weight she could never quite forget. “I find paths through hostile territory. That’s all this is.”
A lie. This was more than that and they both knew it. This was three women who’d been stripped of everything—home, autonomy, future—refusing to accept that powerlessness was permanent. This was the first real choice Elsa had made since the crash. Not survival instinct. Not reaction to threat. An actual decision, with consequences she’d have to own.
It terrified her almost as much as it felt right.
Now the three of them walked through volcanic corridors that pulsed with faint blue light, flanked by four Lux Sabers in full ceremonial armor. The guards moved like shadows with teeth—massive, silent, their amber and citrine eyes tracking every intersection they passed. Their presence was meant to be protective, but Elsa couldn’t shake the feeling that the cage had simply expanded to include a longer leash.
The bond tugged at her awareness. Sylas. She could feel him somewhere in the fortress above, his attention a distant pressure at the edge of her consciousness. He knew she was moving. She could sense his alertness sharpening, the slow coil of something that wasn’t quite suspicion but wasn’t quite trust either.
Listening. Always listening.
She pushed the awareness aside. The bond was a complication she couldn’t afford to think about right now. Every time she prodded at it, she felt him stir in response—felt his focus sharpen, his interest intensify. Better to ignore it. Better to pretend she was still alone in her own head, even if that was a lie so obvious even she couldn’t sell it to herself.
Later. She’d deal with that later.
“The corridor narrows ahead,” Mia murmured, her voice barely audible over the hum of Moon Tear crystals in the walls. “There’s a checkpoint before the pit access. Two guards, sometimes three. They rotate shifts every eight hours, but the ones on duty at midday are always the worst.”
“You’ve been here before?”
Mia’s expression went carefully blank—that practiced emptiness that came from learning which reactions got you hurt. “Yarx needed supplies from the lower levels. Medical equipment that’s only stored near the detention cells. I helped carry them.”
There was history in that flatness. Things Mia had seen that she wasn’t ready to share—maybe would never be ready to share. The pits had a reputation even among the fortress’s residents. Elsa had heard whispers. Had felt Sylas’s own strange tension whenever the subject came up through the bond.
She filed it away and kept walking.
The air changed as they descended. Warmer. Damper. The clean mineral scent of the upper fortress gave way to something rawer—sweat and iron and the acrid tang of old violence. Torch brackets appeared between the crystalline light sources, theirflames casting orange shadows that made the walls seem to breathe. The stone itself looked different here. Older. Stained in ways that didn’t bear close examination.
Ari moved closer to Elsa’s side, her court composure cracking just slightly. The difference between upper and lower fortress was visceral—you didn’t need to see the pits to feel their presence.
“I’ve heard stories,” she said quietly. “Ryxin won’t tell me details. He just...goes quiet whenever I ask. His jaw does this thing—” She demonstrated, a subtle tightening. “Like he’s biting back something he doesn’t want me to know.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
The checkpoint materialized from the gloom—a heavy iron gate set into stone walls that looked older than the rest of the fortress, weathered by centuries of heat and use. Scorch marks blackened the edges. Deep gouges scored the metal in patterns that looked almost like claw marks, layered over each other in ways that suggested generations of violence.
Two guards flanked the entrance. Not Sabers. These were different. Bulkier. Their fur was darker, shot through with gray, and their eyes held none of the controlled discipline Elsa had come to expect from Sylas’s personal guards. Where the Sabers moved like weapons kept carefully sheathed, these two lounged like predators who had no need to prove themselves.
Pit guards. The distinction was immediate and visceral.
They watched the approaching party with the lazy attention of predators who knew their territory intimately—every shadow, every corner, every way something could go wrong. One of them—the larger one, with a scar that bisected his muzzle and turned his lip into a permanent sneer—let his lips pull back from yellowed fangs in something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Well.” His voice scraped like stone on metal. “The King’s pet comes to visit the kennels.”
The Lux Sabers flanking Elsa went still. Not tense—worse. The particular stillness of warriors assessing a threat, calculating angles, determining how quickly violence would become necessary.
Elsa kept her shoulders straight, her expression neutral. Weaponized civility. That was the play. Every interaction was a negotiation, and she’d spent her entire career navigating hostile territory—even if the territory had previously been interstellar politics rather than alien dungeons.