Lord Sethrak stands with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out across the Warrens. He doesn’t acknowledge us immediately. Only when the doors seal shut does he turn.
He’s smaller than Zavin, but somehow commands more of the space. The bronze scales along his face have darkened with age, the amber in his eyes cooler, emptied of the warmth I’ve seen in his son. He studies me without hurry, his stare travelling from my bruisedshoulder to the blood drying beneath my split lip before returning to my face.
His face is nothing more than a carved mask. Maybe that’s what frightens me most. Not that he’s hiding what he thinks. That there might be nothing there to hide. That he really is as cold and as expressionless on the inside as he is on the outside. My life rests in his hands, and I know exactly what it’s worth to him.
Nothing.
If he decides I die, the males holding me won’t hesitate. They’ll carry out the order, clean the blood from the floor and move on with their day. By tonight, I’ll already be forgotten.
“You’re the human who hacked our network,” he says.
“I’m just a contractor. Underlord Zavin asked me to clean the ventilation shafts,” I say.
Sethrak’s expression doesn’t shift. “And yet a simple contractor was found in my unruly son’s private quarters.”
I shift carefully, biting back the protest from my shoulder. Fire lances through the joint with every small movement, a sharp reminder of how easily they’d wrenched my arm behind my back. Every second I keep them talking is another second for Zavin to realize I’m gone. Every answer is time. Every question is another breath.
“That’s private. Between Zavin and me.” I lift my chin.
Sethrak’s eyes glitter, cold and depthless. “Nothing private happens in my House.” The words fall so quietly they almost disappear into the room. “Stupid, insufferable human.”
Movement catches my eye as Kazren steps out from the shadows in the corner. The orange light from outside catches the edges of his scales, throwing jagged highlights across his face.
His lips thin into a cold, satisfied smile while his father’s equally cold eyes travel slowly over me. They know we’ve traced Kazren. Theyknow exactly what Zavin will do next because there was only one thing he could do. He needed the physical logs before he could accuse his brother. He’d never risk taking suspicions to Lord Sethrak without proof. Zavin is methodical. Predictable in his honor.
They’d counted on it.
An invisible clamp tightens around my chest. Lord Sethrak isn’t the victim of his son’s betrayal. He’s the architect of it. And now he’s looking at me with the patient, empty stare of someone calculating exactly how much trouble I’m worth.
Kazren stands next to his father, empty eyes staring unblinking at me. “You’ve been assisting my brother with a rather incriminating internal investigation against my father.”
“I merely maintain House systems.” My voice holds. Barely.
“By accessing systems well beyond your maintenance clearance? That’s rather thorough,” Kazren says.
“I fix networks.” The lie tastes metallic on my tongue. I know he doesn’t believe me. But I’m going to keep trying. Keep aiming for a grain of doubt, because every grain buys me time.
His eyes narrow by the smallest fraction. “By planting bugs in the system?”
A knot tightens beneath my ribs. I spent days looking for the pattern hidden inside their network. I never stopped to wonder whether someone was building one around us instead.
Every nerve in my body prickles. The air feels too thick to breathe. My shoulder throbs, a dull counterpoint to the sharper rhythm of my heart. Sweat traces a cold path down my spine beneath my shirt.
This isn’t an interrogation. They don’t need to ask these questions.
So why did they bring me here?
Something passes between them. The slight tilt of Sethrak’s head. The fractional deepening of Kazren’s smile. Father and son, aligned in a silence that says more than any order ever could.
Understanding. Decision.
The walls press closer. The guards’ hands are iron on my arms. The orange light from the windows dims as the distant sun slips behind the stark red mountains.
If Lord Sethrak believed I could be persuaded, he’d bargain. If I were the sort of person who could be bought, he’d make me an offer. Instead he asks only enough questions to confirm what I know, and every answer I give him is another nail in a coffin that’s already been built.
Forcing myself to keep breathing even as panic claws higher inside my chest. My back aches where the guard’s knee drove me into the floor. The split in my lip stings every time I inhale. I can still taste copper from where my teeth caught my cheek.
Think. You’ve survived two years in the Warrens. You’ve outrun syndicates and slipped through security nets that should have caught you a dozen times over. There has to be something. Some way out. Some angle you haven’t seen.
