He is in the courtyard, alone, tossing a small, leather ball against a stone wall. The silver hair is unmistakable, a stark banner of his Vrakken heritage. He is small, as is expected for a half-breed of his age, but his movements possess a fluid grace that is not entirely human. He turns, and for a moment, his gaze falls upon me.
My analytical mind takes over, all other considerations fading to insignificance. Subject is approximately five years of age. Physical condition appears optimal. There are no visible signs of The Fading—no discoloration of the skin, no tremor, no hint of the physical decay that plagues my kind. A faint, golden Purna aura, inherited from the mother, radiates from him, a sign of immense vitality. He is the cure. A living, breathing solution to the extinction of my race. The most important scientific discovery in millennia.
The boy’s eyes widen, but he does not cry out. He simply watches me, his expression one of intense, unnerving curiosity. It is an illogical response. He should be terrified.
I dismiss the thought. The child’s reaction is irrelevant. I take a single, deliberate step into the courtyard, my focus narrowing entirely on my objective.
That is when the world lurches.
A deep, groaning sound echoes from the towers above, and a vast shadow falls over me. I look up. A massive net, woven from thick, iron-laced rope and glowing with the sickly green energy of dampening magic, plummets towards me.
My inhuman speed should be more than enough to evade it. I move, a blur of motion, but I am an instant too slow. The sheer size of the net means my escape vector is miscalculated. It crashes down upon me with the force of a collapsing building.
The impact drives me to one knee. The weight is immense, but manageable. It is the magic woven into the strands that is the true threat. The moment it touches me, my strength begins to leech away, a disorienting sensation like being plunged into a vat of thick, icy tar. The power I would use to tear the net apart is smothered, dampened, swallowed by the Aethel-inspired sorcery pulsing through the ropes.
Before I can recover, a series of heavythunksechoes from hidden positions in the walls around the courtyard. Massive, iron-tipped bolts, as thick as my wrist, shoot from concealed slots, trailing heavy chains. They punch into the ground around me, pinning the edges of the net with brutal efficiency, drawing it tight, and locking me in place.
It is an elegant, well-executed trap. Far more sophisticated than the primitive snares outside. My assessment of her abilities was flawed. A critical miscalculation.
Human soldiers, clad in mismatched leather and iron, swarm from the doorways, their weapons raised. They are terrified—I can smell it—but their lines are disciplined. They surround me, but keep their distance. They are not the primary attack. They are a distraction.
I see the glint of movement from a murder hole in the wall to my left. A puff of air. Something stings my neck. A dart. I grit my teeth against the sudden, fiery numbness that begins to spread through my veins. A potent sedative. Derived from Black Root serpent venom, if I am not mistaken. Fast-acting. Designed to fell a beast ten times the size of a man.
Rage, a hot and unfamiliar sensation, surges through me. To be brought down by such crude, simple methods. Byher. I pull against the net, and despite the dampening magic, a roar of pure, guttural fury tears from my throat. The ground around me cracks, and several of the soldiers cry out in alarm.
But the poison is relentless. My limbs grow heavy. The edges of my vision begin to darken, tunneling. The sounds of the courtyard fade to a distant roar. My strength fails, and I fall forward, my body crashing to the cold, unforgiving stone.
The soldiers part, creating a path. A single figure walks through them. The boots are leather. The trousers are practical, durable wool. A dagger with a well-worn hilt hangs at her hip.
She stops just before me, and my fading vision focuses on her face. Her eyes are not wide with fear. There is no trace of the terrified slave I abandoned in a dark elf cell. They are as cold and hard as the winter stone around us.
The Anomaly.
As the darkness closes in, the last thing I see is her, standing over me, her hand resting on the pommel of her dagger, her eyes filled not with terror, but with the chilling, absolute light of victory.
9
ELZA
The air in the lower cells is cold enough to see my breath. It is a damp, heavy cold that clings to the skin and smells of wet stone and old iron. The only sound is the rhythmicdrip… drip… dripof water seeping through the rock and the soft scuff of my boots on the flagstones. Each step is a deliberate, measured beat, a queen’s procession to the gallows. My gallows, or his. I have not yet decided.
My hand is wrapped around the hilt of my dagger, my thumb rubbing the worn grooves in the leather. The cool, solid weight of it is the only anchor in a world that has begun to tilt on its axis.
Tarek stands guard before the final cell, his hand resting on his own sword, his expression grim. This cell is the deepest, carved from the very heart of the mountain, its iron door reinforced with the same kind of dampening magic the Aethel once used. The bitter irony is not lost on me.
Tarek meets my eyes and gives a single, solemn nod. I nod back, and he hauls the heavy door open. I step inside, and the door groans shut behind me, the bolt scraping home with a sound of finality.
And there he is.
He is shackled to the far wall, his arms stretched wide, the glowing green cuffs of the dampeners casting an eerie light on his bone-pale skin. They have stripped him of his leathers, leaving him in simple woolen trousers. He is not bowed. He is not weakened. He stands with an infuriating, perfect stillness, his head raised, his abyss-black eyes fixed on me as I approach. He looks less like a prisoner and more like a god waiting patiently for his worshippers to cease their theatrics.
The moment the door closed, the mental link between us, a dull hum at a distance, ignited into a roaring inferno. It is a physical presence in the cell, a storm of energy that presses in on me, making it hard to breathe. I can feel the brush of his consciousness against my own—not his thoughts, but theshapeof them: cold, analytical, and utterly calm. It is like standing next to a glacier and feeling the immense, crushing cold that radiates from it.
I stop ten feet from him, just beyond the reach of a lunge, should he somehow break free. I force my voice to be as cold as the air around us.
“Why are you here?”
His voice, when it comes, is a low, formal monotone that scrapes against my raw nerves. It is the same voice from my nightmares. “My purpose is to retrieve what was stolen.”
