If their roles had been reversed, he would have done the same. Bind the enemy. Cage the predator. Ensure he could not rise again to strike.
He understood. He could only hope she was doing this for pragmatic reasons… and not out of spite.
Whatever her stance—whether she acted from calculation or vengeance—he was well and truly her captive now. Bound, warded, under her power. Every bargaining chip he had once carried shattered by his idiot brother’s hand.
And his father… dead.
The thought struck like a hammer. Draak was gone, and Kardoc had seized power in the Varak Plains. His brother would have wasted no time in spinning the tale, convincing the clan that Rakhal had betrayed them. That he had sold them to the humans. That he was no longer fit to live, let alone to lead.
Anger burned through him, white-hot and useless. He tried to call the shadows, to bind them to his rage, but they scattered like smoke in the wind. The wards cut him off, severed his grip, leaving him with only fragments. His weakness finished what the irons had begun.
For now.
But he was an orc, and orcs endured. His body would heal quickly, faster than these humans could imagine, so long as they left him alone. So long as they didn’t poison him… or set their torturers on him.
Rakhal closed his eyes. Darkness pressed close, but it was not the same as the shadows he commanded. This was emptier, duller.
He thought of her.
Her voice in the courtyard, steady and commanding while he lay helpless on the stretcher. Cold steel, no tremor of hesitation, not a flicker of vulnerability. He remembered now—she had given the order. She had commanded him brought here, into chains and wards.
She had been power and grace, untouchable in that moment. A queen among her soldiers, her people.
And the part of him that had wanted to claim her, to bind her to him in the old way, in vow and in fire—that part still burned.
Now more than ever.
He wanted her.
He wanted revenge—on Kardoc.
And still, despite everything, he wanted peace for their peoples.
But here he was. Powerless. Wounded. Locked deep in the earth beneath the weight of Istrial Castle.Hercastle.
What could he do?
For now… nothing but rest. Heal. The bleeding had stopped, his crude bindings of shadow sealing what they could, but shadow magic could only do so much. His body would need time.
And with time… he would grow strong again. Bit by bit. The wards might slow him, but they would not break him. His magic would seep back into him, piece by piece.
The words of his mentor came back to him, clear as if Azfar still stood beside him in the torchlight.
You are rare, Rakhal. A true kurkin—shadow-kin. Born of your mother’s shaman blood and your father’s royal line. The first King of the Varak was such as you, long before memory was written in stone. But take heed: the shadows are not a tool, they are a hunger. They will give you much, but they will demand more. And if you are not vigilant… they will take you too.
He had almost lost himself back there. He could feel it still, the pull of the ancient walls of Istrial, the shadows steeped in centuries of battle and blood. Orc blood. His people’s blood.
The shadows were of the night, of the nether, of the veil that separated life from death. And here, in this place soaked with ancient sacrifice, they had reached for him hungrily, eager to drag him deeper into their grasp.
Heal,he told himself.That is all you must do now.
She would come. She knew the bargain they had struck. For all her steel and fire, for all the walls she raised around herself, he had faith she would hold to her word.
And more than that… he wanted to see her again.
Perhaps, in the quiet moments between battle and blood, he had planted enough… seeds of promise, of heat, and of something neither of them yet dared to name.
So Rakhal closed his eyes and did the only thing left to him.
