Ari perched on the opposite end, legs crossed beneath a layered tunic that looked expensive. She’d clearly adapted to her situation with Ryxin—or at least adapted to its trappings. Her expression was harder to read than Mia’s open anxiety, something guarded behind those dark eyes that made Elsa think of locked doors and carefully kept secrets.
Both women looked up when Elsa entered.
“Yarx said we have an hour,” Elsa said by way of greeting. “Without guards inside.”
“They’re outside.” Ari’s voice was low, pitched to carry only as far as the walls allowed. “Two Lux Sabers. They’ll stay there unless we make noise worth investigating.”
“Then we don’t make noise.” Elsa crossed to the table and lowered herself onto one of the cushions scattered across the floor. The ceramic cups were warm to the touch when she reached for one. “What is this?”
“Some kind of tea,” Mia said. “Yarx brings it when I...when things get bad. It helps.”
The admission carried weight—the kind that came from weeks of captivity, from learning which small comforts could be trusted and which were traps dressed in kindness. Elsa poured herself a cup without asking more questions. The liquid was amber-gold, fragrant, and when she sipped it, the warmth spread through her chest like a held breath finally released.
For a moment, no one spoke. The silence wasn’t hostile—it was the kind of quiet that happened when people who’d survived the same disaster finally found each other in the wreckage.
“How much do you know?” Elsa asked finally. “About how this place works?”
Mia and Ari exchanged a glance.
“I know the hierarchy,” Mia said slowly, setting her cup down on her knee. “The healers—they’re not warriors, but they’re respected. Protected. Yarx has been...he’s been kind. As much as any of them can be.”
“Kind enough to give you information?”
“The kind that let me hear things.” Shrugging, she glanced down at her cup and sighed deeply. “The fortress runs on politics as much as power. Half the males in Sylas’s court would gut each other if they thought they could get away with it. The other half are waiting to see which side wins before they commit.”
Elsa’s gaze drifted, tracking the memory of faces, movements, the way some guards had lingered too long, watching. Others hadn’t spared her more than a glance.
“Which ones enjoy it,” she said quietly, “and which ones are waiting for something to gain?”
Mia’s expression flickered. “The pit guards—they hurt because they enjoy it. Because they can. Xar’s faction...they’re different. Strategic. They don’t waste energy on suffering that doesn’t serve a purpose, but they’ll break anyone who gets in their way without blinking.”
“Vask,” Ari added, her voice flat. “The Lux Priest. He’s the one to watch. Religious authority, political ambition, and enough patience to wait decades for the right opportunity. He thinks humans are sacred mistakes—tools that should be controlled by the faithful, not claimed by kings.”
Elsa filed the names away. Vask. The pit guards. Xar’s faction. A map was forming in her mind—not geography this time, but power. Influence. Fault lines that could be exploited or avoided.
“And claimed humans?” she asked. “Like us?”
Ari’s laugh was short and humorless. “We’re weapons. The moment a male claims a human, everyone else starts calculating how to use that against him. You more than any of us.”
“Because of Sylas.”
“That. And because of what you did at the ceremony.” Ari’s gaze sharpened. “I heard about it. The contaminated Moon Tear core. The way you cleared it with your bare hands while the whole court watched.”
Elsa’s fingers tightened around her cup. The memory surfaced: blue light blazing through her veins, the sickness rolling off that crystal like poison given form, and underneath it all—the thread connecting her to Sylas, thrumming with something that felt too personal… too close to completion.
“I don’t understand what I did,” she admitted. “Or how.”
“Neither does anyone else. That’s what makes you dangerous.” Ari leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees. “Unpredictable. Valuable. The kind of asset that makes males do stupid things—and the kind of threat that makes other males want to remove you before you can be used against them.”
The court’s predatory dynamics, laid bare. Elsa had known it on some level—had felt the weight of watching eyes during every public appearance, every ceremony—but hearing it spelled out crystallized something in her chest. She wasn’t just a captive. She wasn’t just Sylas’s obsession.
She was a piece on a board she barely understood, surrounded by players who’d been making moves for centuries.
“What about the others?” Elsa’s voice came out steadier than she expected. “From the crash. Rowan and Milo. They were with us when we were brought to the throne room. I haven’t seen them since they were taken.”
The silence that followed was different. Heavier.
Mia’s face had gone pale again, that terrified look creeping back around the edges of her mouth. Ari’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind her eyes—a door closing, or maybe opening to something she’d been trying not to see.