“I know them.” Rowan’s damaged hands curled into something like fists. “Got the whole lower grid mapped in my head. Just needed a reason to use it.”
Elsa felt something loosen in her chest—not relief, not yet, but the first breath of something that might become hope if she let it. They were alive. They were coherent. They understood.
“We’re getting out of this,” she said, and the words felt like a vow. “All of us. I don’t care what it takes.”
“Elsa.” Rowan’s good eye held hers, and she saw something there she hadn’t expected—gratitude, yes, but also a warning. “Whatever you’re planning...be careful. These males, the ones running things down here—they’re not like the guards above. They enjoy what they do.”
“I know.”
“Time’s up.”
Vask’s voice cut through the moment like a blade. Elsa started to rise, but strong hands grabbed her arms, hauled her upright, and pulled her back from the fallen men with enough force to make her stumble. She caught herself, barely, and turned to face the Lux Priest.
He was watching her with an expression she couldn’t read. Something had shifted in his posture, a new tension in the line of his shoulders, a sharper edge to his attention. His gaze moved from her face to Rowan and Milo, then back again.
“You gave them something.” Not a question. A statement, delivered with the certainty of someone who had spent decadesreading people for weakness. “Information. A plan. I watched your lips move, navigator. You weren’t saying goodbye.”
Elsa’s blood went cold, but she kept her face blank. “I was telling them to hold on. That help was coming. Is that a crime?”
“That depends.” Vask moved closer, close enough that she could smell the incense that clung to his robes, the metallic undertone of the ritual scars at his throat. “On whether you were telling them the truth...or giving them false hope to serve your own purposes.”
He stopped barely a handspan away. This close, she could see the calculation in his rust-colored eyes, the way his mind worked through possibilities and outcomes the same way hers ran navigation equations. He knew. Maybe not the specifics—maybe not the second alarm, the eastern conduits, the extraction plan taking shape in pieces scattered across too many heads to track—but he knew something had passed between them that threatened his control.
“I’ve seen that look before,” he said softly. “That spark in human eyes. The moment when resignation becomes resistance. When survival becomes rebellion.” His head tilted, almost curious. “It’s remarkable, really. How quickly your species can shift from broken to dangerous.”
“I’m not—”
The blow came without warning.
Vask’s open palm connected with the side of her face hard enough to snap her head sideways, hard enough to send her staggering into the guard behind her, hard enough that she tasted blood where her teeth cut the inside of her cheek. The sound echoed off the stone walls—sharp, brutal, deliberate.
For a fraction of a second, the world went white. Then pain flooded in—her cheekbone throbbing, her jaw aching, her vision swimming with stars that had nothing to do with navigation.
And through the bond—
Sylas.
The connection that had been muffled since her capture suddenly blazed to life like a wire stripped of its insulation. She felt him—felt his awareness snap toward her with predatory intensity, felt his fury slam through the bond like a physical force, felt the moment his control fractured and something darker surged up to take its place.
Pain. Threat.Mine.
The word wasn’t hers—it came through the bond like a snarl, primal and possessive, stripped of everything civilized. Somewhere in the fortress above, Sylas had just learned exactly where she was, exactly what was happening to her, and the knowledge had shattered whatever restraint he’d been maintaining.
Elsa straightened slowly, one hand pressed to her throbbing cheek, and found Vask watching her with satisfaction.
“There,” he said. “That’s better. The spark is dimmer now, isn’t it? Reality has a way of doing that.”
Behind her, Mia let out a sob she couldn’t quite swallow. Ari had gone deadly still, the kind of stillness that preceded violence in people who’d learned to weaponize patience. On the floor, Rowan and Milo watched with eyes that burned with helpless fury—two men who wanted to fight and couldn’t, broken and bound and forced to witness.
Elsa said nothing. Let the blood pool in her mouth and swallowed it. Let Vask see whatever he wanted to see in her bowed head and careful silence.
What he couldn’t see was the bond humming in her chest like a live wire, carrying information in both directions. She could feel Sylas now—not just his fury, but his location, his movement, the direction of his attention. He was close. Closer than he’d been since they took her. And he was coming.
Vask had wanted to break something. What he’d done instead was open a channel.
“Take them back.” He gestured toward Rowan and Milo, and guards moved to haul the men toward the open grate. “They’ve served their purpose for now.”
“Wait—” Elsa started forward, but another guard caught her arms and held her in place. She watched as Rowan and Milo were dragged toward the pit access, watched them disappear down the steps one agonizing moment at a time. Milo looked back once, his eyes finding hers across the torchlit chamber.