Page 24

VEGA

Rockslide. That’s about how gentle the Ignarath guards were, only less thoughtful. They hauled me down corridors slick with the stench of fear and blood, claws digging into my arms with all the sympathy of a butcher inspecting a slab of beef.

“Move faster, slave.” The guard had green scales, a roadmap of old scars, and eyes glazed with boredom and cheap cruelty. He shoved me hard enough that my teeth clicked, and I nearly bit my tongue. I stumbled, catching myself before I faceplanted.

The corridor corkscrewed downward, light fading out in grudging increments the deeper they dragged me.

Torches stuttered every few meters, casting thick shadows that pressed and squeezed, hungry and watching.

Something dripped down the walls. I didn’t check if it was water. It didn't exactly smell fresh.

We stopped at a door squatting at the end of the world. Wood reinforced by metal, rusty as an old nail. One guard fumbled for keys, the other kept his meat-hook grip locked on my arm, claws just shy of breaking skin.

“Your master will tire of you soon,” green-scales sneered, hot breath slithering over my ear.

I gave him nothing, just the blank bored stare of a human with better things to do.

The door screamed on its hinges, opening wide enough for a slap of foul air to slap me full in the face. Unwashed bodies. Old waste. Hope abandoned at the threshold. Shoved hard, I went down, hands scraping against wet stone, grit grinding into an already growing bruise. Great.

“Enjoy your stay,” the guard cackled, and then the door slammed behind me like a casket lid.

I waited there on the gross ground for three seconds. Let the echoes settle and the guards retreat before I slowly got up.

A cage. Stone walls wept. The floor was a slick, treacherous mosaic of who-knows-what. One torch guttered in a bracket too high to reach, coughing out more shadow than light. What a miserable place.

Over in the far corner: two figures huddled together. Kinsley was on her knees, working a filthy rag over someone’s ruined face. Yelena. She had one eye swollen shut, her cheek splotched purple and black with a busted lip. Sweat pasted her hair to her skull. Her chest moved, barely.

Kinsley looked up at my approach, her expression wrapped in something tougher than exhaustion, resignation, bone deep. “Of course it’s you,” she whispered.

“What did they do to her?” I asked, picking my way across the uneven floor.

Kinsley’s lips twisted, silent in a way that said more than words. She wrung pink out of the rag into a bowl that had maybe, once, hosted clean water. Yelena didn’t move.

I made a circuit of the cell. The waste bucket reeked in one corner.

Blankets thrown in a heap, threadbare and with more holes than fabric.

A water basin that looked like someone had used it to rinse knives.

The door behind me, solid, no easy escape.

No windows. A vent in the ceiling, barely big enough for a skinny arm, if you could break every finger.

A tomb with a view of absolutely nothing.

Rounding back to Kinsley, I crouched. The light wavered, shadowing her face, but not enough to hide the fine tremor in her hands. Up close, Yelena looked worse. The bruises on her neck were finger perfect. A chunk of her hair was torn away, scalp still angry red.

I started to ask something, but Kinsley hit me with a look sharp enough to draw blood. I swallowed the words, every useless question melting in the heat of her warning.

“If I can get you out,” I said, low, pitching it for her, not the stones or any guard who might have prying ears. “We’re looking at a month over rough terrain to get to Scalvaris. No bullshit. Who can actually do it?”

She sat back, hands knotted in that rag. Her gaze flicked to Yelena, grief in the set of her jaw, the furrow between her brows. Then back to me.

“Me. Asif. Maybe Nat.” No apology. Just inventory.

Yelena’s breathing evened, drifting, not sleep, more like the mercy of unconsciousness. Kinsley shook her head minutely, heavy with everything she wasn’t saying.

“Don’t talk about escape unless you mean it,” she warned, voice brittle with the memory of too many lies, too many false hopes.

I drew in a breath, and it stuck halfway down my throat. “I’m working a plan. I don’t have all the pieces yet.” I couldn't make promises. “Are you in?”

Kinsley’s hand hovered over Yelena’s forehead, a tenderness practiced and worn. She reminded me a bit of Selene, but her edges were harder, honed on the terrors of Ignarath. “If we run, they’ll punish everyone left behind.”

“They didn’t when Reika got out.”

A spark in Kinsley’s gaze. Was it hope? Fear? Both, probably. “She made it? Really?”

I nodded. “Yes.” I shifted closer, keeping my voice low but urgent.

“Scalvaris is … well, it's still Volcaryth, so it kind of sucks, but it's nothing like here.

It's a city built into a cave system with an underground river. They let us train with their soldiers. One of our people is training to be a healer.” I hesitated, then added, “It's not perfect, but it's not this .”

She stared me down for a beat, peeling back layers, searching for the fraud. “You trust these Drakarn?” Just a question, easy as poison.

Somewhere behind my ribs, memory flickered—Zarvash above me, scaled and burning-gold, filling me right to the breaking point, his tail tying me down at one moment and anchoring me in the next.

The way he’d looked at me, like I was the only living thing in the universe.

The heat clawed up my neck. Thank God for bad lighting.

“I trust Zarvash.” My voice didn’t shake. “With my life.”

And my heart. My soul. I melted when he called me veshari.

And I suspected that I might know what it all meant. But Kinsley didn't need any of that. It might send her screaming into the depths of the city, never to return.

She weighed that then nodded. “God, I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” I said, because this time there was no room for doubt.