His voice remained steady. Pleasant, even. That was the worst part.
“A destabilizing element,” he continued. “A sacred opportunity wasted on a king who thinks with his instincts instead of his duty. You should be controlled by those who understand Lux’s purpose. Not monopolized by a male who can’t see past his own obsession.”
“You’re insane.” The words escaped before Elsa could stop them. Bad strategy. Don’t antagonize the captor. But something in her had snapped—the accumulated weight of captivity and fear and being treated as a pawn in games she didn’t understand.
Vask’s smile widened, revealing teeth that were slightly too sharp for a creature that claimed to serve a god of light. “Perhaps. But I’m also patient. And practical.” He turned his attention to Mia, who flinched so hard she nearly fell over. “This one, for instance. She’s been surviving by staying invisible. Keeping her head down. Hoping no one notices her long enough to cause trouble.”
Mia made a sound—small, frightened, barely human. Her shoulders curled in, making herself smaller, as if she could disappear into the stone at her back.
“Leave her alone.” Elsa’s voice came out harder than she intended, stripped of diplomacy. “She has nothing to do with this. She’s not a threat to anyone.”
“Everyone has something to do with this. That’s how leverage works.” Vask spoke with the patience of a teacher explaining basic arithmetic. “The weak ones break first. They beg. They plead. They offer anything to make the pain stop. It’s useful, in its way. Clarifying.”
He shifted his gaze to Ari. Something changed in his expression—a sharpening of focus, a predator scenting particularly interesting prey. “And this one. Ryxin’s little project. The Commander’s soft spot. Do you know what happens when you threaten something a male like Ryxin has claimed?”
Ari’s jaw tightened. She met his stare without flinching, but Elsa could see the effort it cost her. The micro-tremor in her bound hands. The rapid pulse beating at the base of her throat.
“He comes unhinged.” Vask answered his own question, satisfaction bleeding into his tone like poison through water. “Completely. Violently. Predictably. All that control, all that discipline—it shatters the moment someone touches what’s his. Two of the royal bloodline, both compromised by human attachments. Both about to make very public mistakes that will demonstrate exactly how unfit they are to lead.”
The plan clicked into place in Elsa’s mind, each piece slotting together with horrible precision. Vask wasn’t just holding them hostage. He was using them as triggers—designed to force specific reactions from specific males, reactions that would look like weakness, like instability, like proof that the current leadership was compromised by human contamination.
Elsa’s mind raced, calculating angles even as fury burned behind her ribs. He wasn’t just threatening them—he was orchestrating something larger. A political play wrapped in violence, designed to force reactions, create chaos, expose weaknesses that could be exploited.
And they were the bait. All of them. Human-shaped keys to unlock Yzefrxyl self-destruction.
“The pits.” She said it before she could second-guess herself, seizing on the one piece of information that might matter. “Rowan and Milo. Where are they?”
Vask’s eyebrows rose—a deliberate expression, performed rather than felt. “The navigator asks about the pit prisoners. Interesting. I wondered if that humanitarian concern was genuine, or merely a convenient excuse to go wandering. Most humans in your position would be focused entirely on their own survival.”
“Where are they?”
“Close.” He let the word hang in the air, savoring it. “Closer than you’d think. The under-fortress connects to the pit systems through passages that haven’t been officially used in decades. Convenient for those who need to move things—or people—without the court’s observation. Without the King’s knowledge.”
Elsa’s heart hammered against her ribs. Close. They were close. After maybe days of wondering, of planning, of trying to find a way down to them through official channels that led nowhere—they wereclose.Right beneath her feet, maybe. Through walls she could almost touch.
“Alive?”
“For now.” Vask’s tone remained pleasant, conversational, as if they were discussing weather patterns rather than human lives. “They’ve been useful. The male with the scarred hands has been making repairs in the lower systems—apparently he has some engineering aptitude that’s made him valuable. The other one hauls stones. Menial work, but it keeps him fed.”
Rowan. Scarred hands from years of engineering work on theStardancer, from all those nights in the maintenance bays keeping their navigation systems running when they should have been decommissioned a decade ago. And Milo hauling stones—Milo, who had been a sous chef, whose biggest concern had been whether his soufflés would survive interstellar transport, whose hands had been made for delicate work, not manual labor.
“I want to see them.”
“I’m sure you do.” Vask clasped his hands behind his back—a posture that somehow made him look more dangerous, not less. Settled. Patient. A predator who knew his prey had nowhere to run. “And perhaps you will. That depends entirely on what happens next.”
The silence stretched. Elsa could hear Mia’s ragged breathing, could feel Ari’s rigid stillness beside her. The torchsputtered and hissed, casting shadows that danced across Vask’s face like living things.
“What do you want from me?”
“Cooperation.” He said it simply, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. “There are systems in this fortress that respond to Lux’s touch. Grid conduits. Security protocols. Seals that have been closed since before Sylas took the throne. You carry Lux’s blessing—which means you can open things that others cannot.”
“You want me to...what? Break into your own fortress’s security?”
“I want you to demonstrate that you’re more useful to the faithful than you are to the crown.” Vask’s rust-colored eyes held hers. “The pits have systems that haven’t been activated in generations. Power sources that could change the balance of everything. If you can interface with them—prove that Lux’s blessing works through you the way the texts suggest it should—then perhaps your friends’ continued existence becomes valuable rather than inconvenient.”
Elsa’s stomach dropped.
He wasn’t just using her as bait. He was trying to weaponize whatever connection she had to Lux—to turn Sylas’s pet into a tool for his faction’s power grab. And if she refused...