Pivoting away from the cart, Seredryl addresses the shadowy figures lurking near the draft beasts—rough, scarred men wearing the unmarked leathers of the Dark Market flesh-brokers.
"Lord Kryven's bounty has been transferred to your accounts." Her tone hardens back into the cold superiority of her caste. "Take her deep into the merchant routes. Bury her in the market where my cousin will never find her."
"It will be done, Lady Seredryl." The lead broker climbs onto the driver’s bench, adjusting the leather reins.
Retreating into the gloom of the tunnels, Seredryl vanishes.
A thick canvas tarp is thrown over the back of the cart, sealing me in absolute darkness. The iron-shod wheels grind harshly against the stone. Lurching forward, the transport carries me deep into the merciless, suffocating belly of the Undercity.
16
ZHETRIN
The screech of metal against stone echoes through the high vaults of the estate.
Clearing the grand staircase in a blur of predatory speed, I find the doors of the main suite standing wide open with the locking mechanism entirely intact. She did not fight them in the sanctuary; she walked out into the corridor.
Rounding the corner, the dark hem of my coat snaps like a whip.
The smell of crushed bitter-root and spilled blood coats my tongue. The corridor is a scene of absolute violence, anchored by a dense brass candlestick discarded upon the polished marble, its thick base smeared with fresh gore.
The space where her warmth and lavender scent should be is completely hollow.
A low, wet groan drags my focus downward.
Sprawled against the base of an obsidian pillar lies a dark elf mercenary in scratched armor. His leg twists at a sickening, unnatural angle, the bone of his knee completely shattered. Clutching the ruin of his joint, his breaths rattle in agonized gasps.
The ambient light in the corridor dies, swallowed by the sudden expansion of my aura. Shadows detach from the obsidian pillars, twisting into predatory shapes that snuff out the sputtering flames of the alchemy lamps. My magic purges the oxygen from the hall, leaving only a dark, freezing, breathless vacuum.
The mercenary is unable to move. His terror-stricken focus collides with the violent violet rings of my irises, pure, unvarnished dread stripping the color from his scarred face.
Closing the distance, I plant the iron-shod heel of my boot directly over his shattered knee.
I bypass interrogation entirely, shifting my sheer physical mass downward.
The sickening grind of pulverized bone splinters the quiet. A high, tearing scream rips from the mercenary's throat, rapidly devolving into a gurgling choke as the absolute agony overrides his lungs.
"The human." A demonic, overlapping vibration replaces my voice, shaking the dust from the vaulted ceiling. "Where."
"Seredryl!" He claws uselessly at the unyielding armor of my shin. "Lady Seredryl ordered the tithe! We used the root-sedative! We gave her to the brokers in the lower drainage grates!"
The admission seals his fate.
Driving my heel down to crush the joint into absolute ruin, I bring the solid iron pommel of my dagger down in a singular, devastating strike against his temple. The mercenary goes completely limp, his skull fracturing against the stone.
Standing over the corpse, the freezing air burns my lungs.
My immaculate logic. My flawless tactical patience. I allowed Seredryl to enter my walls, ordering my loyal guards to ignore her movements so I could map her treason, arrogant enough to believe my wards and intellect were an impenetrable shield. Itreated the war against the Patriarch like a ledger to be balanced, playing the long game to avoid startling the snake nest.
My hubris cost me Megan.
The final chain of Khuzuth restraint snaps.
The High Sovereign of the trade routes is dead. I am an apex predator stripped of all political pretense, and the Undercity is about to drown in the blood of my reckoning.
Pivoting from the carnage, I stride back toward the grand foyer.
Tharion waits at the base of the stairs, flanked by three dozen of the most lethal Miou warriors in House Thosti. Bearing dense polearms and wicked, curved longblades, they instantly register the catastrophic, feral shift in my magic without requesting an explanation.
