Page 83 of The Shadow Orc's Bride

"No." She stepped closer. Her own voice surprised her—steady, low. "I came to stop this."

Chains clinked as he shifted, a sound that had already learned her bones. "Stop... this," he repeated, amusement a depthless thing in the wreck of his voice. "Little queen. You have no idea what they've done."

Brenna's grip shook around the lantern's handle. Eliza put a palm back—stay—and felt the girl's tremor under her touch. "Brenna," she said, not looking away from Rakhal, "listen to me."

"My lady?—"

"Go back the way we came," Eliza said. "Now. They'll return to finish what they started. If they find you here, they'll kill you." She turned then, just enough to catch Brenna's eyes. "If anything happens to me, you carry the truth out. Find someone who will listen. Run and don't look back."

"I won't leave you."

"You will. That's an order." Gentle, unyielding. "You've brought me as far as you can. Go."

Brenna's lips trembled. She stood a heartbeat longer, then nodded once, like a child trusting an old promise. "Yes," she whispered. She pressed the lantern into Eliza's hand, squeezedher fingers hard, and fled up the stair. Her steps dwindled, lost to the hum of the stone.

Silence took the chamber. Not empty—never empty—only full of a listening that made the hair rise along Eliza's arms.

Rakhal watched her with the stillness of a waiting cat. "You send away your witness."

"I keep her alive."

He tipped his head, almost a nod, almost a raid of respect. "You shouldn't be here."

"I am," she said, and crossed the last feet between them.

Up close, the damage was worse. Burned skin under the irons. Fine cuts like script across his chest. Some held dried blood; others sealed as she watched, shadow knitting with the faintest shimmer. There was heat coming off him, not fever but the kind of warmth that lives under a hearthstone. The smell of iron and smoke and him filled her mouth.

She reached for a manacle.

"Don't," he said sharply.

She ignored him. The iron was hot enough to sting. Runes flared in sluggish protest under her touch; light crawled and receded. Pain bit her palm. She didn't move.

He flinched, a tremor running through him. His breath shortened. The shadows around his wrists swelled, curious, and slid across her knuckles like cats scenting a foreign hand.

"They're draining me," he said, his voice a low growl. "Taking my blood, my shadow. Storing it in stones. They think it will light their tower. It won't. It is death that remembers."

Eliza's jaw tightened. "They mean to kill you."

"Again and again," he said. The faintest curve pulled at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Teeth. "They're very studious."

"Then I'm in time," she said, because the alternative would break something she could not afford to break.

"In time for what?" He studied her, head tilted. "To pull me from a pit and drop yourself in?"

"In time to try." She shifted her hand, palm against the iron until the sting turned to ache. "Can you still... can you call it back, any of it?"

He breathed out through his nose. A rough sound. "Not without breaking the dark that keeps me standing. And if I do that, I won't be the man you think you came for."

"I didn't come for a man I invented," she said. "I came for you."

Silence again. The air thickened as the hum deepened. The wardlines along his arms pulsed to match it. The magic in the room lifted, settled, lifted, tasting what stood between them.

"You didn't answer me," he said finally. "Why are you here? If you gave me up, why risk this? If you didn't?—"

"I didn't," she said, the words a clean cut. "They took my crown. They took my name from the city and gave it a sickness. I had Brenna and four walls and a window to watch them lie with. That's all."

He breathed once, hard. Something eased at the corner of his stillness. He closed his eyes just long enough for the tension in his shoulders to loosen—and opened them again. When he looked at her this time the black wasn't emptiness. Depth, not void.