Page 85 of The Shadow Orc's Bride

He glanced at the others. "Thalorin will want to see this. She doesn't take kindly to traitors—least of all sentimental ones."

Eliza's jaw tightened. "If Thalorin's coming," she said, voice cold, "then she should hurry. The thing she's chained is losing patience."

Yharen laughed. "Is it? Then you can die with it." He reached for her arm.

She moved before he touched her.

She had fought on battlefields; she had seen orcs charge through men twice their size. Mages were nothing compared to that. She twisted aside, drawing her dagger—sleek, balanced, sharp. He blinked, too slow to stop her.

The blade struck home—low, into the soft of his belly.

The sound was wet, short. Yharen staggered, eyes wide in disbelief. He fell back, hands clutching at the wound as dark blood spilled between his fingers.

The younger mages shouted. A wave of force slammed into her, invisible but brutal, throwing her against the wall. Stone bit into her shoulder. The dagger clattered away.

Yharen's blood spread across the floor, seeping between the cracks in the stones. It pulsed as it ran—drawn down, not by gravity, but by something older. The shadows licked at it greedily, drinking deep. The air shivered. The hum grew lower, stronger.

Eliza pushed to her feet, dazed but furious. She lunged for the dagger, but another mage thrust out his palm and a gust of pressure knocked her backward again. She hit the ground hard, breath leaving her in a gasp.

The third was chanting now, voice rising in clipped syllables, runes igniting across his hands.

"Bind her," he hissed. "Before Thalorin arrives!"

Ropes of magic shot toward her—thin, bright threads that burned cold where they touched. They wrapped her wrists, herarms, pulling tight. Though she struggled, the light bit deeper, searing through cloth and skin.

"Restrain her," one of them barked. "The queen wants to join her pet—let her watch."

The bindings froze her in place, the taste of copper in her mouth, her heart pounding.

Across the room, Rakhal strained against his chains. His eyes were open now, fixed on her. The runes on the manacles pulsed violently.

"Stop," he said, low and lethal. "You don't know what you're doing."

They didn't listen.

And beneath them, the shadows stirred. Yharen's blood continued to sink into the stones, the pulse of it beating once, twice—answering the darkness that waited below.

Chapter

Forty-Three

The dungeon vibrated with life, humming like something breathing in the dark, a long, slow inhale that made the lamps gutter. The scent of blood and oil and smoke clung to everything.

Eliza strained against the magical bonds that pinned her wrists. Every movement burned—a tight, searing heat that bit through skin and muscle alike. She tasted copper on her tongue.

"Stop this," she rasped.

No one listened.

The younger mage—barely more than a boy, his face damp with sweat—kept chanting, the sigils carved into his palms glowing like molten glass. The other stood over Yharen's body, whispering frantic prayers to a god who wasn't coming.

Yharen lay half sprawled against the wall, his blood still running dark and thick across the floor. It pooled beneath the runes carved into the dais and spread in a thin line toward Rakhal. The air vibrated as it reached him, a low, unearthly hum that made every torch in the chamber bow and flicker.

Darkness stirred, rising from the cracks like smoke, curling around Rakhal's legs and chains, sliding over the runes etched into the iron cuffs. Each drop of Yharen's blood seemed to feedthem, deepen their color until they gleamed with a liquid sheen, like black glass.

"Containment is failing!" the younger mage shouted. "The wards?—"

"Keep chanting!"