Page 46 of Severe Husband Warning

She looks up at me, her expression softening before guilt quickly takes its place.

“Roth—“

“What were you thinking?” I ask, forcing my voice to remain low despite the tightness that still refuses to leave my chest.

“I had to know,” she whispers.

“I told you to wait.”

She lowers her gaze briefly. “I couldn't.”

“You could have,” I reply, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “But you chose not to.”

She lowers her gaze for a moment before looking back at me, a quiet anger burning in them.

“I found them.”

The quiet fury in her eyes cools my own more effectively than any apology could have.

“Tell me what you saw.”

“They're alive,” she says quietly, though the words carry no relief, her gaze drifting toward the viewport I just pulled her from. “At least they are for now.”

She falls silent, searching for words capable of carrying what she witnessed. Only then do I feel the faint tremor running through the hand still resting against my arm.

“They've built another lightning-works beneath the old spire,” she says, her voice unsteady. “The missing humans are moving, focusing crystals into something. I don't know what it is. I've never seen a conduit shaped like that before, but it looked... dangerous.”

I have seen enough military schematics to recognize the purpose behind such a design, even if I have never seen this particular weapon before.

“Continue.”

“The crystals burn them.” She wraps both arms around herself without seeming aware she’s done it. “Their hands...” She stops, steadying her breath. “The overseers don’t care. They keep forcing them forward until someone can’t stand anymore.”

She looks at me then, horror still fresh enough that it has yet to settle into grief.

“They’re killing them.”

It was a fact, stark and undeniable.

I absorb each detail without interrupting her. Reports of irregular crystal shipments that once seemed merely suspicious now take on an altogether different meaning when placed beside hidden lightning-works and civilians forced to construct whatever lies beneath this district.

The pattern is no longer difficult to see.

Malakor has been building toward this for far longer than any of us realized.

I look back toward the entrance.

“He cannot finish it.”

“He won’t,” Calla says immediately.

I look at her then. Horror still lingers in her eyes, but beneath it sits a determination I have come to recognize.

“We’ll stop him,” she says, as though there has never been another possible outcome.

“We will.”

The sincerity in her voice stays with me, carrying me back to lessons impressed upon every noble heir from childhood.