There was no room for promises in a mountain steeped in aggression and betrayal, home to a monstrous species as dangerous as the Fallen they feared.
Ari gripped her wrist. “And you?”
“I’m getting our people out.”
“That’s suicide.”
“Maybe.” Elsa pulled free of Ari’s hand and turned toward the descending tunnel. Her heartbeat was a war drum in her ears, blood rushing hot and fast. Fear, yes. But something else underneath it—something that felt disturbingly like certainty. “Tell Sylas where I went. If he—” She stopped herself. If he what? Cared? Came after her? The bond between them was a live wire she didn’t fully understand, a thread of heat and awareness that had only grown sharper since Vask’s capture.
She didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need to.
Keth moved the women toward the ascending passage without looking back. Efficient. No hesitation, no argument—the way all of Sylas’s inner circle operated. Trust the order. Execute. Save the doubt for after.
Elsa turned to the Sabers. Their amber eyes gleamed in the crystal-light, blades drawn, and not one of them looked surprised to be taking direction from a human half their size.
“With me,” she said, and plunged into the dark.
The secondary passagewas narrow and cold, the stone walls weeping moisture that soaked through the thin fabric of Elsa’s gown. The Sabers moved ahead of her like ghosts, their footfalls silent despite their size.
The gate loomed ahead, but something was wrong. The faint glow she’d expected from active crystals was differenthere—brighter, more concentrated, with an undertone of sickly purple bleeding through the blue. The air tasted of copper and something chemical. Something that made her sinuses burn.
“Rowan,” she called, keeping her voice low. “Milo. It’s Elsa.”
No response. Just the hum of equipment she couldn’t identify and a wet, rhythmic dripping that raised the hair on her arms.
The lead Saber examined the gate’s mechanism, her expression shifting from clinical efficiency to something darker. She glanced back at Elsa, amber eyes holding a warning that made Elsa’s stomach clench. Whatever lay beyond that gate was worse than a simple holding cell.
Elsa nodded.
The gate groaned open on protesting hinges, and the smell hit her first—blood and burnt flesh and the acrid sweetness of corrupted Moon Tear essence. The same wrongness she’d sensed during the bonding ceremony, but concentrated. Weaponized.
This wasn’t a cell. It was a laboratory.
Stone tables dominated the space, their surfaces fitted with iron restraints sized for human wrists and ankles. Leather straps hung from adjustable frames, stained dark with use. Glass vials lined the walls in neat rows—some filled with the pure blue glow of healthy Moon Tears, others clouded with the purple-black corruption that turned Yzefrxyl into Fallen. Between them, smaller containers held something darker. Thicker.
Blood. Human blood, collected and catalogued like specimens.
“Holy shit.” The words scraped out of her, barely a whisper.
Rowan was strapped to the nearest table.
Now that she was nearer, she could see that he’d lost weight since she’d last seen him on theStardancer—the broad shoulders that had made him security detail’s most intimidatingpresence now jutted like blades beneath paper-thin skin. His eyes were closed, his chest rising in shallow, uneven breaths. But it was his arms that stopped her cold.
Puncture wounds lined the inside of both forearms, dozens of them, arranged in neat rows like entries in a ledger. Some were fresh, still weeping. Others had scarred over, pink and puckered against his pale skin. The precision of it turned her stomach. Methodical. Regular. The work of someone who had done this many, many times.
“Rowan.” She was at his side before she’d consciously decided to move, her fingers fumbling with the restraint buckles. “Rowan, can you hear me?”
His eyes snapped open. Wild. Feral. For a heartbeat, he didn’t recognize her—just saw another figure looming over him in the chemical-bright light. Then the terror drained away, leaving something worse behind.
Hope. Fragile and disbelieving.
“Elsa?” His voice was a ruin, scraped raw from screaming or disuse or both. “You’re...you actually...”
“I’m getting you out.” The first restraint gave way. Then the second. “Where’s Milo?”
Rowan’s face twisted. “Back of the chamber. They—” He stopped, his punctured arms curling against his chest. “Krix. Vask’s shadow.” He spat the name like poison. “The priest gives the orders, but Krix—” His voice cracked. “Krix enjoys the work.”
He lifted one freed hand toward the back of the chamber, and Elsa followed the gesture to find the second table. The second figure. The second horror.