Rebellion. The weapon is rebelling.
A cold calculation stirs in my chest. Not hope—I killed hope years ago. Colder. More pragmatic.
“You want me to inspect his scarification. Determine if the channels I carved are degrading or if he has tampered with the silver inlays.”
The Matron’s lipless mouth curves into what might be a smile. “You understand quickly. That’s why I chose you.” She gestures toward a secondary chamber, partially concealed by hanging drapes of dried tissue. “He’s been brought for examination. Find me something I can use.”
Find his weakness. Help them control him better.
I recognize the assignment for exactly what it is. Get close to the weapon. Learn his vulnerabilities. Give the Matron the leverage she needs to bring him back to heel.
“I’ll begin immediately, Matron.”
“See that you do.” She turns away, dismissing me. “And Harvester? Be thorough. I want to know everything.”
I bow and move toward the secondary chamber.
My heart pounds against my ribs. My palms are slick with sweat. The scars on my arms pulse with anticipation or dread—I can’t tell which anymore.
I push aside the drapes.
And I see him.
Seven feetof scarred muscle and barely leashed violence.
Kharvek sits in a reinforced examination chair—the only kind that could hold him—with his wrists bound to the armrests by blood-wards etched into the metal. He doesn’t struggle. Doesn’t need to. The restraints are a formality, a reminder of hierarchy, and everyone in this room knows he could break free if he truly wanted to.
He’s massive. I knew that intellectually—had seen him from a distance, heard the other harvesters whisper about his size—but nothing prepared me for the reality of him. His shoulders are broad enough to block the chamber’s secondary entrance. His arms are dense with muscle layered over ritually reinforced bone, every inch covered in raised silver scarification that forms channels for blood magic. The patterns are brutal, geometric, carved into his flesh during childhood and healed into permanent conduits.
His skin is deep green-gray, darkened by decades of ritual enhancement. His black hair is shorn close to his skull. His face carries the brutality of his breeding—heavy jaw, prominent tusks filed to points, and his eyes?—
His eyes find mine.
One is clouded white, milky and blind from some early trial. The other is dark and deep, the shade of old blood left to dry in shadows. Both are fixed on me with predatory intensity.
I should be terrified.
I’m not.
The realization hits me with unexpected force. This creature—this weapon bred for destruction, this monster who tears people apart with his bare hands—is watching me the way a predator watches potential prey, and I feel nothing close to fear.
What I feel is recognition. One caged thing seeing another.
“You’re the blood reader.” His voice is low, rough, scraped raw by years of disuse. He speaks in short sentences, each word bitten off and discarded. “The one they sent to find what’s wrong with me.”
“I’m here to conduct an evaluation.” I move toward the examination table, collecting my tools from a prepared tray. My hands are steady. My voice is steady. Inside, my pulse kicks hard against my ribs. “This will go faster if you cooperate.”
He tilts his head. The motion is oddly animal, a predator considering whether prey is worth the effort of killing. “Does it matter? Whether I cooperate?”
“To the outcome? No.” I arrange my implements. “To how much it hurts? Possibly.”
A flicker of dark amusement crosses his scarred features. Not quite a smile.
“You’re honest. That’s rare here.”
“I’m efficient. It’s not the same thing.”
I approach his bound arm. My own handiwork stares back at me—the geometric precision of the silver whorls I spent months perfecting during his adolescence. I lay my fingers against the raised silver scar tissue. I close my eyes and feel the resonance of the metal. The silver screams.
