Page 47 of Bite Bonded Bride

I stop with her. Behind us, the column shuffles to a halt, muttering.

"The final mechanism," I say. "It's not just a conduit. It's a needle."

The three of us stand in a dripping, violet-stained tunnel while the mountain shudders beneath our feet and the weight of what we've worked out settles over us.

"We need to get to the capital," Seralya says, walking faster this time.

We find the first strays in the ruins of what Seralya tells me was once a residential district. Three Vrakken soldiers and a woman holding a child, pressed into a collapsed alcove, hollow-eyed and wary. They see us and go rigid.

I hear the miners shift behind me.

"Stand down," I say, calmly. I turn back to the alcove. The soldier has a blade half-drawn but no strength in the arm holding it. Dried blood along his shoulder. "We're not here to fight you. We came through the upper tunnels. We're going to the capital."

The woman's eyes move to me, then to Edrin. She says something in Vrakken. Seralya answers. I catch only my name. Whatever she says, the soldier sheathes the blade.

We collect six more strays before the ruins open toward the capital's outer edge: another wounded soldier, four civilians, and an elder on two canes who refuses all assistance. Every time, there's the same moment of realization that the humans approaching are not armed, not wearing dark elf insignia. It takes longer for some than others.

It's Edrin who finds the most reliable bridge. He starts naming things. "We have water. Bandages, if you need them. Dried meat — Sera, how do you say “We're not going to hurt you?"

Seralya tells him. He repeats it badly. It works anyway.

The capital's outskirts are smoke and noise.

We smell it before we see it, burning oil, blood, and a chemical scent I associate with magical discharge, the kind that scorches the air when power moves faster than the space containing it. The sounds are layered: metal, shouting, structural collapse somewhere to the east, and beneath all of it, the mountain's new constant vibration, which has deepened since we entered.

The capital's outskirts are a combination of smoke and noise. There’s burning oil, blood, and the chemical scent of magical discharge, when power moves faster than the space containing it. The sounds are layered: metal, shouting, structural collapse somewhere to the east, and beneath all of it, the mountain's vibration, deeper now than when we entered.

I feel something else, too.

It starts as a pressure behind my sternum, faint enough to almost dismiss. Then it sharpens toward what has always been my north and simply waits for me to come close enough. Our bond. It hums against my ribs cutting through the chaos, and without thinking I change direction, following it through the smoke toward the war camp's edge.

There.

He's with his mother. They're standing over a tactical map laid across a salvaged stone surface, three other Vrakken flanking them, and Maevra is speaking in rapid tones that stop the moment she sees us. Zareth looks up.

I watch as relief moves across his face. He crosses the space to me.

I don't say anything clever. I say, "I'm here," and his hands find my face before the words are fully out, and for a moment the war camp, the smoke, the forty-three humans standing behind me, all of it recedes like a tide.

Then I feel a form of anguish in him. I pull back enough to look at him. His chin is tense.

"Veyrik," I say.

The name is barely a question. He answers it anyway, very quietly. "He died protecting me. Corrupted creatures breached the eastern corridor. He pushed me clear and—" He falters. "He didn't come back from it."

Oh.

I don't think about it. I close the space between us, wrap both arms around him, and pull him in.

He's so much larger than me that it probably looks strange, this human woman with her arms around a Vrakken prince who could break stone with his hands. He doesn't move for a while. Then he bends, and his head drops into the curve of my neck, as a shudder moves through him. Just once. He doesn't cry. He doesn't have the words for it, I think.

Maevra's voice comes from behind me, low and composed. "He took three of them with him before they brought him down. He fought until there was nothing left to fight with." A pause. "He was the finest soldier the Vrakken ever produced."

"He died because of me," Zareth says, against my neck. "He came back to my side and he died because he chose to stand behind me."

I let him say it. Let him carry it for one breath.

"He chose," I say, soft and clear. "He knew what he was walking back into. He knew you. He stood behind you because he decided what was worth standing behind, Zareth — not because you put him there. Veyrik didn't do anything in his life that he didn't decide to do. You know that better than anyone in this room."