“No…” The word is a breath, a plea, a curse. “No.”
My wings flare wide, and I rise to meet her. Her curls hang limp and matted, clotted with dirt and blood. The stench of filth and piss burns my throat. I bite my lip hard as I brush the hair from her face.
“Zyphoro,” I whisper, the name splintering in my mouth. “Sister… do you hear me?”
She doesn’t stir. Doesn’t breathe. Her skin is ash-grey beneath the grime, her lips cracked and colorless. What hangs before me now is only the husk of her, the shadow left behind after light burns out.
“Zyphoro…” I try again, the sound barely more than breath. “Please.”
The silence that answers is unbearable. It presses into my chest, fills the space where hope should live. My heart stutters, and I can feel that familiar, suffocating weight settling over me.
Too late. I was too late again.
I rest my forehead against hers, closing my eyes against the sting. “I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here now.”
And then a sound. Faint. Trembling.
A murmur so small it could have been the sigh of the wind, but I know it. Ifeelit.
Her lips part, and a thin, broken whisper escapes.
“Daedalus…”
Then, slowly, her head shifts, just enough for her to lift it a fraction, her breath shaking.
“Daedalus,” she says again, her voice the rasp of torn glass. “It hurts.”
She tilts her head, what little strength she has spent on the motion. The collar gleams, cruel and bright.
Fury scorches through me.
Fucking Anethesis. Fucking Ithranor.
I know this device. These collars were forged to choke Fae magic. They are outlawed. Ordered to be destroyed… or so I believed.
Another gift from Ithranor to their precious Legion. A chain made for the Mordorin.
I have no key for this collar, only fury, and no time.
I slip my fingers beneath the cold silver, jaw locking as I call the smoke. It coils around my wrist, then threads itself over the collar, loop after loop, hissing as it tightens. Power snarls through me, the runes along my arms ignite. One final pull…crack.
The collar shatters, falling in a rain of silver grains that glitter before vanishing into the dirt.
Zyphoro gasps, the sound sharp and broken, as if she’s bursting through the surface of a black sea. Her eyes open, raw and red, and her breath trembles out of her. When she finally finds her voice, it’s not gratitude that spills from her cracked lips.
“Where the fuck were you?”
Her words are a blade I deserve, but I’m too relieved to complain.
I send smoke to the chains that bind her. They twist, constrict, and splinter apart until she collapses forward, weightless in my arms. Her hands clutch at my neck, her head pressing weakly against my chest.
“Thank you, brother,” she whispers, voice small and hoarse.
I hold her tighter, lowering us gently to the ground. When my boots touch the earth, Orios and the Blades are already there.
“The camp is abandoned, Rook,” Orios says, anger trembling beneath his calm. “Where are they?”
I prop Zyphoro up, her body still slumped against me. “Sister,” I murmur, “what happened here? Where is the Legion?”
