Page 4

Old habit. Bad one. Nothing’s followed us since the city — I’ve checked the ridgeline so many times my own scouts have started checking it just to see what I’m looking at — but the itch under my skin hasn’t eased once, and I know exactly what it is even if I’ve got no intention of naming it out loud. She asked me, somewhere around the second hour, whether the captaincy ever skips a firstborn son. Whether any Blackfang’s ever refused the commission outright. I told her the truth — that nobody refuses it, that wanting isn’t a privilege men in my family get — and she went quiet in a way that told me she’d already guessed my answer before she’d finished asking the question. I haven’t stopped thinking about that quiet since.

By the time the fortress breaks the treeline — black stone driven straight into the mountain’s shoulder, no banners, no gilding, nothing on its walls that isn’t load-bearing — she’s leaning out past her escort to look at it like it owes her an explanation.

It probably does. Everything in these mountains seems to, lately.

I take her to the interrogation chamber myself instead of handing her to the watch. The parchment against her ribs has already burned down one archive and put her within an arrow’s width of dying twice. I’d rather ask my own questions than read someone else’s account of the answers — and I’d rather have my own eyes on the door than trust it to a man who doesn’t know yet what’s worth guarding.

Bare stone. One table. One chair bolted to the floor so a prisoner can’t throw it. I’ve broken smugglers, deserters, and one very convincing false Warden inside this room without raising my voice once.

Lyessa Ardin’s been sitting in that bolted chair six minutes and shows no interest in breaking at all.

“You’re doing this wrong.” Before I’ve asked a single question.

“Doing what wrong.”

“Interrogating me.” She leans back, arms crossed, soot still ghosting one cheekbone. “You’re supposed to loom. Silence, a hard stare, let the guilt do your work for you. Instead you’re just standing there like you’re waiting for me to finish.”

“I am waiting for you to finish.”

“That’s not how it’s done.”

“You’ve been interrogated before.”

“I’ve read about it.” Something wry flickers across her face, daring me to call that an admission. “Extensively.”

I’ve stood in this room and watched grown men break at the knees from nothing more than my silence. She doesn’t. Doesn’t angle her chair toward the door the way every prisoner does without noticing. Leans into the space instead, chin lifted, meeting my size look for look — daring me to be exactly as dangerous as I look, and I feel that dare somewhere lower than I’d like to admit, a pull hot enough that I have to plant my boots and remind myself why I’m standing in this room in the first place.

Her pulse is going hard enough that I can see it at her throat. She hasn’t noticed I’ve noticed. Or she has, and doesn’t care, which is worse — better — I haven’t decided which yet.

“The parchment.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “Where did it come from?”

“A collapsed monastery in the Moonfall foothills. Recovered eight days ago, cataloged under my name — which is exactly why a man in Council robes was asking after my research yesterday, and exactly why the Archives are a crater tonight.” Flat, fast, the practiced patter of a woman reciting footnotes to a committee that stopped listening years ago. “I want access to the restricted Covenant records. Whatever your Council’s hiding about Blackspire, I need to see it before whoever set that fire finds a second way to make sure I never do.”

Nothing about her says frightened. Nothing about her says guilty. She sits in my chamber like she’s running the interrogation, and every answer she gives me lands less like a confession and more like a woman three steps ahead of everyone in this fortress, myself included.

“You’re a prisoner. Prisoners don’t set terms.”

“I’m a witness. There’s a difference, and given I’m the one who nearly got buried under half an archway two nights ago, I’d think a Warden could tell them apart.” She tips her head, watching me with the same unblinking focus she’d give a threat she hasn’t finished sizing up—like a puzzle missing one piece, and she means to have it whether I hand it over or not. “You don’t think I’m dangerous. You think I’m inconvenient. Those aren’t the same thing.”

She isn’t wrong. I don’t enjoy how much that unsettles me, and I enjoy even less how much I don’t want to look away from her while it does.

Warden’s the older word, if she only knew it — the title six generations of my family have carried for guarding these ruins, older than the commission Doran’s Council hands a man once he earns the rank of Captain within these walls. I gave her the family word the night I pulled her out of that alley, out of old habit more than precision. Everyone in this fortress calls me Captain. It’s the same job, most days. It has never once been the same promise.

Nobody searched her at the gate. I know because a throwing knife’s sitting in plain sight against her boot, tucked where a careless man would miss it. I don’t. She’s watched me clock it twice now and hasn’t bothered hiding it either time — daring me to make an issue of a prisoner who came through my gates still armed, or daring me to admit I’d rather she stayed that way.

Good. Let her keep it. Whoever put an archer’s eye on her in Asterhold isn’t done, and I’d rather she had a blade in reach than none at all.

The door opens before that thought settles anywhere useful. Korruk fills the frame the way Korruk fills every doorway — sideways, shoulders too broad for anything built by men his own size. He takes one look at the three feet of air between us, at the way neither of us has bothered closing it or widening it, and grins as Starfall night came early.

“Council’s assembled.” He doesn’t come in, just props a shoulder against the frame. “Asking why their Captain’s questioning a suspect personally instead of handing her to the watch like every other prisoner who’s sat in that chair.”

“She’s not every other prisoner.”

“Clearly.” He looks her over, slow, the way he sizes up anyone he hasn’t decided whether to like — and something in me goes tight and territorial before I’ve given it permission to, an ugly little flare I have no business feeling toward my own second. “Historian who talks back to a Blackfang mid-interrogation. I like her already.”

“Thank you.” Lyessa’s mouth twitches. “I think.”

“Don’t. He likes everyone who annoys me.” I’m on my feet, chamber suddenly a size too small. “Council chamber. Now.”