“We don’t know all their routes. Not yet.” Sylas traced a claw along the ancient map, following the branching corridors that led deeper beneath the fortress. “We move too fast, we miss something. We miss something, they disappear with the females before we can reach them. This requires patience.”
The word tasted like ash. Patience, when every instinct screamed to tear through the fortress until he found her. Patience, when the bond lay silent and cold and wrong in his chest. Patience, when he didn’t know if Elsa was hurt, frightened, being used as a tool in political games she’d never asked to play.
Ryxin moved to his side—not quite shoulder to shoulder, the old rivalry still present even in alliance, but close enough to be heard without the others catching the words.
“You’re asking me to wait.” Not a question. An accusation wrapped in forced calm. “While Ari—”
“I’m asking you to trust that I want them back as badly as you do.” Sylas kept his voice low, pitched for his brother’s ears alone. “We do this wrong, we lose them. We do this right, we get them backandwe destroy whoever thought they could take what’s ours.”
For a long moment, Ryxin said nothing. His jaw worked, fangs pressing against his lower lip hard enough that Sylas caught the faint copper scent of blood. Then, slowly, his brother exhaled—a sound like pressure releasing from something that had been wound too tight for too long.
“What do you need from me?”
“I need you visible. Furious. Demanding answers from the council while accomplishing nothing.” Sylas watched understanding dawn in Ryxin’s expression—the tacticalcalculation replacing raw fury. “Let them watch you rage. Let them think you’re the threat they need to contain. While they’re focused on managing your anger, they won’t be looking for mine.”
“A distraction.”
“A weapon.” Sylas allowed himself a grim smile. “You’ve always been better at rage than I have. Use it.”
Something shifted between them. Not friendship—they’d traveled too far down the road of rivalry for that—but something adjacent. An understanding that transcended the decades of challenge and counter-challenge. Their females were taken. Their territories violated. Whatever history lay between them, this was not a battle they could afford to fight separately.
Ryxin’s nod was sharp, decisive. “I’ll give them a performance worthy of the court’s attention. But when you find them—when you findher—you tell me. Before you move.”
“Agreed.”
His brother held his gaze for a beat longer, searching for deception, then turned and stalked from the chamber. His tail caught the door frame on the way out—deliberate, theatrical, the kind of temper display that would be witnessed and whispered about within the hour.
Sylas watched him go, then returned his attention to the remaining males.
“Vor. You’ll lead the tracking. Start from the junction where the scent trail went cold and work outward. Don’t follow obvious paths—look for the routes someone would take if they wanted to avoid detection. Think like prey that knows it’s being hunted.”
The tracker dipped his head in acknowledgment. “The sedative compound they used leaves traces. Whoever applied it had to carry it, store it, clean their equipment afterward. If I can find where they prepared—”
“You can find where they went.” Sylas nodded. “Do it.”
“Keth, Dren. You’re with me. We’ll work the political angles—identify which pit administrators might be persuaded to share information about unusual activity in their sectors. Not overtly. Questions asked in passing, observations gathered without appearing to gather them.”
Keth’s massive shoulders shifted in what might have been a shrug. “Some of the administrators owe debts. Gambling, mostly. Favors they’d rather not have examined too closely.”
“Then remind them gently what happens to debtors who prove unhelpful.”
“And me, my King?” Hask asked quietly.
“You stay close to the religious quarters. Treat minor ailments, offer your services to the faithful. Listen to what they say when they think no one important is paying attention.” Sylas paused, meeting the healer’s steady gaze. “And prepare supplies for three human females who may have been held without adequate care. Whatever they need to survive extraction and recovery.”
Hask’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture suggested approval. “Human physiology is fragile in ways most Yzefrxyl don’t understand. Dehydration, shock, infections that would barely slow one of us down can kill them within days. I’ll prepare accordingly.”
“Good.”
The males filtered out through the chamber’s secondary exit—a passage that led to maintenance corridors rather than main thoroughfares, paths that would let them disperse without being seen leaving together. Sylas remained at the map, claws tracing routes he’d memorized as a pup and hadn’t thought about in decades.
The under-fortress sprawled beneath the keep like the roots of some vast, dark tree. Passages that served no official purpose anymore, chambers that had been sealed after the last warwith the Fallen, corridors that connected the religious quarters to the labor pits through routes that bypassed all standard checkpoints. His ancestors had built redundancy into everything—escape routes, supply lines, hidden ways to move through territory that enemies might think they controlled.
Now someone was using that same architecture against him.
Sylas closed his eyes and reached for the bond again. Still nothing. The chemical dampening that had severed his awareness of Elsa remained in place, a wall between them that no amount of instinct could pierce. But he’d felt her before the silence fell. Felt her determination, her stubborn refusal to break, the way she’d looked at him with those defiant human eyes when he’d given her the small freedoms that had led to this disaster.
She was still fighting. He was certain of it. Whatever Vask had planned for her, Elsa wouldn’t go quietly. Wouldn’t submit. Would map every corridor, count every step, file away every detail that might help her survive until—