“They’re about to find out.”
24
Elsa
Cold stone pressed against Elsa’s cheek.
Not the smooth, polished floors of Sylas’s chambers. This was rough. Ancient. The kind of surface that had absorbed centuries of suffering and couldn’t be bothered to pretend otherwise. It leached the warmth from her skin, drew it out like something hungry.
She opened her eyes. Then regretted it immediately.
The darkness wasn’t complete—a single torch guttered somewhere to her left, casting weak orange light across walls that glistened with moisture. Water dripped in an arrhythmic pattern that scraped against her already raw nerves. The air hung thick with the copper tang of old blood and something else beneath it. Something older. The accumulated residue of fear and pain soaked so deep into the stone that no amount of scrubbing would ever remove it.
Iron rings jutted from the walls at regular intervals, set into the rock at heights meant for creatures far larger than humans.Some held chains—heavy links rusted nearly solid. Others held nothing but corrosion and memory.
The navigator in her brain started cataloging automatically. Stone cell, roughly four meters square. Single entrance. No windows. Air circulation limited to whatever seeped through the door’s iron bars. Temperature below comfortable but above dangerous.
Elsa pushed herself upright. Her head throbbed—a dull, chemical ache that told her whatever they’d used to knock her out hadn’t worn off completely. The world tilted, steadied, tilted again. She braced one shoulder against the wall and waited for the nausea to pass.
Her wrists burned where rough bindings cut into skin. Not chains. Rope. Coarse fibers that bit deeper every time she moved, leaving her hands numb and tingling.
“Elsa.”
Mia’s voice came from somewhere to her right—small, shaky, but alive. The sound of it loosened something in Elsa’s chest that she hadn’t realized had been clenched.
“Here.” The word scraped out of her throat like gravel. Her mouth tasted like metal and chemicals. “Ari?”
“Present.” Ari’s voice came from closer, steadier, but Elsa recognized the strain underneath. The tone of someone holding themselves together through sheer force of will.I’m here. I’m functional. Don’t ask me how I’m feeling because we both know I’ll lie.
Elsa blinked until the darkness resolved into shapes. Mia sat against the opposite wall, knees drawn to her chest, her pale hair catching the torchlight like tarnished gold. Dried blood crusted at her hairline—a shallow wound, probably from the struggle. Her eyes were too wide, showing white at the edges, the look of someone who had reached the end of what they could process and was now just...waiting.
Ari was closer, her back pressed to the stone beside an empty iron ring. Her dark hair had come loose from its usual arrangement, hanging in tangled strands around a face that looked carved from determination. Her bound hands rested in her lap with the kind of stillness that only came from conscious effort—the decision not to shake.
Three women. One holding cell. No guards in sight.
That last part should have been reassuring. It wasn’t. Guards meant someone considered them worth watching. No guards meant their captors were confident enough—or cruel enough—to let them sit in the dark and wonder.
“Where are we?” Mia’s voice cracked on the question. Her fingers twisted in the fabric of her dress—a nervous habit Elsa had noticed before, one that meant she was trying very hard not to scream.
“Under-fortress.” Ari shifted against the stone, wincing at some unseen pain. “These are the old holding cells. They stopped using them generations ago because—” She stopped. Swallowed hard. “Because they’re too far from everything. Too isolated. The kind of place where things happen that the court doesn’t need to witness.”
Elsa filed that information away, her navigator’s instinct sorting and storing even through the fog of drugs and pain. Under-fortress. Old cells. Isolated. Far from patrols, far from witnesses, far from anyone who might care what happened to three human females in a fortress full of creatures who largely considered them furniture at best and prey at worst.
She tested the rope at her wrists, rotating slowly to assess the knots without making it obvious. Tight, but not circulation-killing tight. Expertly tied—military precision. Whoever had bound them wanted them conscious. Wanted them aware of everything that came next.
That was worse than chains. Chains were about containment, about preventing escape. This was about something else. This was about control.
“The alarm.” Mia’s eyes darted toward the door, toward the shadows, toward anything that might be moving in the darkness. “The Fallen breach—was it real? Are we—is the fortress—”
“A diversion.” Elsa kept her voice steady, matter-of-fact, even as rage built behind her ribs. “It had to be. They needed the Sabers gone. They needed us alone.”
The timing had been surgical. The confrontation at the pit checkpoint, perfectly calculated to put the Sabers on edge. The alarm, splitting their attention, triggering training that overrode personal protection. And then the grab—fast, professional, using whatever chemical compound had dropped all three of them before they could scream.
She reached for the bond. For Sylas. The thread was still there—she could feel it humming at the edge of her consciousness like a live wire pressed against her skull—but something muffled the connection. Distance. The drug still fogging her system. Layers of stone between them that seemed to dampen the signal. She couldn’t get a clear read on him, couldn’t tell if he was searching or fighting or tearing the fortress apart looking for her.
Only impressions filtered through. Fury. Fear. A roaring, desperate focus that felt like claws scraping against the inside of her mind.
Alive. He’s alive. He’s searching. Focus on what’s in front of you.