“I’m sitting perfectly still.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I grit my teeth. “I didn’t ask for the ritual to be interrupted.”
“No,” he says softly. “You didn’t.”
The gentleness throws me off more than anger would have.
Later, when he finally allows me out of the chamber, we examine the blade together. It rests on a stone table in a containment room, wrapped in suppression wards and silver thread. Even dulled and cleaned, it radiates malice.
I lean closer, careful.
“That poison wasn’t meant to kill instantly,” I murmur. “It was designed to destabilize magic.”
Zeidan’s gaze sharpens. “Explain.”
“It attacks conduits,” I say slowly, following the residue with my senses. “Not flesh. It scrambles flow. If I’d channeled any harder, it might have torn something permanently.”
“And the component?”
I frown. “There’s something rare in it. Resin from a dusk-bloom tree. They don’t grow near Velcryn. Or Nytheria.”
“Where, then?”
I swallow. “Southern trade routes. Controlled by Purna houses.”
The air shifts. Zeidan straightens. “That narrows our list.”
“And complicates everything,” I add.
The interrogation takesplace at dawn.
The attacker is alive, barely. Shackled in runed iron, slumped forward, eyes vacant. The silence compulsion is obvious even before I touch the magic. I can feel the spell on him from a step away, slick and barbed, wound tight around his mind like wire. It isn’t just a vow of silence. It’s a cage with teeth.
Old compulsion design. The kind meant for hired hands. The kind that protects the buyer, not the blade. If I pull too hard, the spell won’t simply resist. It will punish.
Zeidan stands at my side, a solid presence I try not to lean into.
“This is dangerous,” he says quietly. “Your magic is unstable.”
“I know,” I reply. “That’s why I need to do it.”
He doesn’t argue further. But the bond hums with tension, with worry he refuses to voice. I step forward and place my hand against the attacker’s temple.
The compulsion is brutal. Layered. Designed to shred the mind if tampered with.
Fear crawls up my spine. I breathe. I reach. The spell answers too eagerly. Magic surges through me, wild and bright and terrifyingly strong. I force it into finer threads, coaxing rather than tearing, slipping past the bindings like water through cracks.
Images slam into me. A cloaked figure. Purna robes. A voice distorted by spellwork, offering coin and absolution.
Then the resistance spikes. The attacker screams. Blood spills from his nose, his ears. His eyes roll back as the compulsion collapses inward, rupturing thought and memory alike.
I stumble back as his body goes rigid.
Then still.
Dead.