I ignore him. “Choose correctly, and I know the rumors hold weight. Choose poorly, and I learn something else.”
She studies me rather than the box.
“You’re lying.”
“About which part?”
“The trap.” Her voice is thin from strain, but the certainty within it remains intact. “You would not risk damaging what you came to collect before deciding its value.”
A low sound escapes Maelrik, not quite laughter. I feel my own interest sharpen.
She is correct. There is no blade beneath the floor. There never was. The third token triggers nothing at all. But the test was never about danger. It was about whether she reads future events, probabilities, or people.
“Then choose,” I say.
She closes her eyes.
The chamber stills around her. Even Xalith understands not to interrupt whatever this is.
At first nothing changes. Then the faint veins at her temples brighten beneath her skin. Her breathing catches, steadies, catches again. A bead of blood slips from one nostril and lands on the stone between us.
Pain. Real pain. Not performance. She is paying a price to use her power. Her eyes open abruptly, pupils blown wide, and she points to the token nearest my right hand.
I take it, place it in the far gate, and turn. The latch clicks. The iron door swings inward.
A murmur moves through the room. Her power is confirmed, but not solved. Because while the result proves ability, it proves something else more valuable to me: she chose the token before I touched it. She did not ask to inspect the box again. She did not demand time. She moved as if she had already decided while I was still speaking.
Which means she is filtering what she shows us.
Xalith steps forward. “Good. Use her.”
“Or kill her if she refuses,” Drathis says from the shadows, calm as weather. “Power like that becomes dangerous the moment it is uncontrolled.”
“It already is uncontrolled,” Veylan replies.
They begin speaking over one another, not loudly, but with the sharpened cadence of men who believe themselves practical while circling the same conclusion from different angles.
“She is human.”
“She is useful.”
“She is unstable.”
“She can be trained.”
“She can betray us.”
“She can be collared.”
I let them continue for a moment because argument reveals priorities, and priorities are always worth hearing. Xalith wants possession. Drathis wants containment. Veylan wants certainty where none exists. Maelrik watches her instead of the discussion, which means he has noticed what I have.
She has not once asked for mercy. Not once. Enough.
“No,” I say.
One word is sufficient. The chamber quiets. I step beside her and rest a hand lightly on the back of her chairless restraint, not touching skin, merely reminding everyone whose conversation this has become.
“Killing her wastes the only advantage currently available to us. Shackling her until she breaks destroys the same asset more slowly. Threats will secure obedience in the immediate sense, but obedience is not what we need.”