Chapter 55
Iron and sweat hung in the air, mixed with the remnants of suffering. Blood was smeared against the cold stone. Some of it had dried. Some of it hadn’t.
I was propped up in the corner, my back against the rough wall, my body screaming with every breath.
Across from me, Cindrissian and Fenric had been dumped back hours ago.
Neither had spoken.
Cindrissian was impossibly still, his body resting against the opposite wall, his crimson eyes half-lidded, unfocused, but awake. There was an unnatural stiffness to the way he sat, his limbs arranged too carefully, like he was holding himself together by force alone.
Varyth and the others were asleep.
Or as close to sleep as they could be. Their breaths were slow—the deep, involuntary rhythm of bodies that were too battered, too weak, to do anything else.
But I couldn’t sleep.
My leg throbbed, a relentless pulse of fire that refused to let up. Every heartbeat sent fresh waves of pain lancing through the splintered bone. The swelling had gotten worse. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, swallowing a groan.
Even if the pain wasn’t keeping me up, I wouldn’t sleep, not when Darian was bleeding. Not when his body was too still, his breathing too faint.
I forced my head to turn, checking again, counting his breaths. I pressed a hand lightly to his shoulder, fingers searching for the steady rise and fall of his ribs.
For a long, agonising moment, I felt nothing.
Then, a breath.
Shallow, rattling. But there.
I stifled what might’ve been a sob of relief. The torches outside crackled. A gust of damp, stagnant air drifted in from the corridor, but it wasn’t enough to ease the suffocating heat of the cell. The walls, the floors, the ceiling—it was all too close.
And still, her voice echoed.
Serve me… and they go free.
For a heartbeat—a single breath—I thought about it. Thought about saying yes.
If it meant Darian got to a healer. If it meant Brynelle and Shaelith could go home. If it meant Varyth didn’t die here, in the dark, surrounded by blood that was half mine.
Wouldn’t it be worth it?
But I knew it was a lie.
Even if Xyliria let them go, it wouldn’t last. She’d hunt them down one by one, hang their freedom to reel me back in. And what if she made me hurt them? What if she turned me into the thing they feared?
Saying yes wasn’t an option.
I glanced around again. The others were deeply asleep. I’d promised a warning if they started to stir.
Because Fenric’s shallow breathing had turned ragged an hour ago, little whimpers escaping him. But it was the trembling that made my chest tighten, the way Fenric’s entire frame shook like he was trapped in some nightmare he couldn’t wake from.
“Hey,” Linc whispered, voice rough with his own pain but infinitely gentle. He’d managed to crawl across the stone floor despite the obvious agony it cost him. “I’m here.”
His hands found their way into Fenric’s hair—tangled and matted with blood, but he combed through it anyway, fingertips massaging Fenric’s scalp with a devotion that belonged in temples. Every touch spoke of worship, of a love so fierce it burned away everything else.
Fenric tilted his head up, eyes clearer now, and Linc met him halfway. A kiss so gentle it was barely there, just the ghost of connection. Proof of life.
I squared my shoulders, shifting my position, trying to ease the weight off my shattered leg. I bit back another groan as pain flared, the bone grating under my skin.
Cindrissian moved without warning. I tensed as he crossed the short space between us silently.
His hands reached for my leg. I flinched. Couldn’t help it.
Not because I thought he would hurt me. Just because everything already hurt.
He paused, waited.
Then, after a beat, he resumed, his fingers brushing over the makeshift brace that had been tied around the break. A branch. A decayed, half-rotted fucking branch, the only thing we had found on the floor of the cell. It had worked well enough at the time. Kept the bone in place. But now?
Now it wasn’t enough.
Cindrissian unwound the bindings, his movements slow and efficient. He worked in silence, his hands deft and precise.
I watched him, because there was nothing else to do. His dark brows were furrowed in concentration, the way he studied the injury, taking in every detail. His expression remained unreadable, his grip steady.
A few minutes passed, the silence stretching between us.
Finally, I broke it. “Well, this is going on my list of the worst nights of my life.”
Cindrissian didn’t look up. “You have a list?”
“I have a ranking system.” I managed a smirk, though it was undercut by a soft grunt of pain as he moved my leg.
“Where does this one land?”
“Somewhere between ‘had to flee a coup with a teething infant’ and ‘abducted by mercenaries with terrible tempers.’”
That made him pause. His hands stilled on the brace for half a second before he resumed, adjusting the splint with another precise movement. An emotion too small to name brushed across his features.
After a moment, I tilted my head. “Where does it go on yours?”
“Well, this is up there.” Cindrissian hummed, deadpan. “Right between ‘publicly flayed in Nyxaria’ and ‘was once locked in a coffin for six days.’”
I blinked. “Was that metaphorical, or?”
“No.” He remained focused on my leg. “It was literal.”
“And the flaying?”
“Also literal.”
A slow exhale left me. “Huh.”
A long silence stretched between us.
“Well. At least now my broken leg doesn’t seem so bad.”
Cindrissian huffed a short, quiet laugh. Barely there. But real. That alone startled me more than the coffin story.
“Did you just laugh?” I gaped at him.
His expression smoothed back into blank neutrality. “No.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t.”
“You absolutely did.”
He finished adjusting the brace and sat back, his eyes finding mine. “You must be delirious from the pain.”
I snorted.
And gods help me, it hurt, but it was worth it.
Cindrissian rolled his shoulders. Then, without looking at me, he said, “If it makes you feel any better, I think you outrank the coffin.”
“High praise.” I grinned, bloody and exhausted.
The joke faded between us, settling into something that almost resembled comfort—even though nothing was comfortable here.
I shifted, trying to ease some of the pressure from my leg, biting back a grimace as pain lanced up the bone.
“Are you alright?” My question was quiet but genuine.
I expected deflection. Sarcasm. A sharp remark that would shut the moment down before it could even begin.
But instead, Cindrissian sighed. Slow. Unsteady.
“No.”
I swallowed, watching how his fingers curled against his own thigh, like they wanted to be fists but didn’t have the strength.
“What happened?”
Cindrissian’s head dipped downward.
“She made me hurt Fenric.” A tremor ran through his frame. So small I might have imagined it. He didn’t look at me. “I’ve done a lot of evil in my life.” His voice was too steady. “But that? Hurting him? That was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
A tight breath wedged itself in my throat. I forced it down. Forced myself to stay still. To give him space.
“What did she make you do?”
His head tilted.
I tracked his gaze. Fenric lay on the other side of the cell, curled against Linc, chest rising and falling in uneven, pained breaths.
Several brutal slashes marred his clothing, the fabric sliced through in jagged, ugly lines.
Blood soaked into the cloth, into the stone beneath him, turning the ground a deeper, slicker shade of crimson.
His face was half-hidden, but the exhaustion was carved into him, the way his body twitched with each breath.
Cindrissian’s fingers flexed against his thigh before curling inward, nails biting into his palm. “He won’t forgive me.” The words came low, hoarse. “And he has every right not to.”
I didn’t speak.
Because there was nothing I could say. Nothing that would make it better, nothing that would change what had been done.
I wasn’t sure what I could say, what I had been about to offer as I opened my mouth, when Fenric moved. It wasn’t much. A shift of his weight. A quiet, pained inhale. His head lifted.
And then, he raised a hand to his chest.
Two fingers.
Three taps.
A pause.
Then again.
For a long, long moment, Cindrissian didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t so much as twitch. The air in the cell was unbearably thick, pressing in too tight, too heavy. Then, slowly—as though it cost him everything—he lifted his own hand.
Two fingers.
Three taps.
Fenric’s chest stuttered violently.
For the briefest second, surprise lit his bloodied face. A raw, unguarded flash of disbelief. But then, as quickly as it had appeared, he smoothed it away. Hidden beneath a smirk, beneath smug nonchalance as he nuzzled his face against Linc’s throat.
Like it meant nothing.
Like it wasn’t a silent, aching answer.
I swallowed against the tightness in my chest, my throat suddenly dry.
Whatever had passed between them was intensely personal, a glimpse into a moment not meant for anyone else. A history I couldn’t see, but it wove through the air between them.
But the question spilled from my lips. “What was that?”
Cindrissian hesitated.
A hesitation so deep, so weighted, I expected him not to answer.
Not when whatever it was had already been a struggle for him to accept, to acknowledge.
“You know we had an… unconventional upbringing,” he said at last. “Before I was sent to Nyxaria.”
He let out a sound, somewhere between a breath and a sigh. “In our house, we couldn’t always talk aloud.”
A pause. Pain—brief, but unmistakable—ghosted his expression. “So, we invented a code.”
I swallowed again.
“And that one… what did it mean?”
Cindrissian’s fingers curled against his knee, his posture tightening. For the longest time, he didn’t answer.
Then, so quietly I almost didn’t hear, “It means I love you.”
Silence fell like a shroud. I didn’t dare tear it.
But underneath that quiet, I heard it. Not sound, exactly. Not even whisper.
The shadows.
Soft as breath, curling along the edges of the stone, brushing against my skin.
And without thinking I hummed.
A low sound. Not a tune, not really. Just... sound, to fill the ache in my chest. The heaviness of what I’d witnessed. A wordless way to hold grief that wasn’t mine but had somehow tangled itself around my ribs.
The melody didn’t stay mine for long. The shadows caught it. Lifted it. Transformed it. It was richer, older—like wind brushing through harp strings in the dark.
My lips stilled. But the music went on.
Cindrissian turned to stare at me. His eyes narrowed.
“What?” I asked, voice hoarse and quiet.
He didn’t answer right away. Just kept watching me.
“I knew someone else once… who used to sing in the dark.”
The way he said it made something in my chest twist sideways.
“Who were you in Braerlith?” His voice was clinical. Like he was cataloguing evidence.
The lie rolled off my tongue before I’d even shaped it. Smooth as silk. Easier than breathing.
“No one,” I said. “I was no one.”
His jaw tightened. He didn’t believe me.
“In my research,” Cindrissian said slowly, still watching me with that sharp, dissecting gaze. “I couldn’t find any history of shadow fire connected to Braerlith. No bloodlines. No records. Nothing.” He paused. “But...”
That but hung in the air like a knife waiting to drop.
“But what?” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“But there are older legends.” His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Stories that predate the written archives. Tales that got buried because they were too dangerous to remember.” He tilted his head. “Tell me—have you ever heard the shadows whisper before?”
I could lie. Should lie. The instinct was there, ready and willing.
But I was so gods-damned tired of lying.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Since I arrived.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Cindrissian stared at me. Not with fear—worse than that. With something like recognition. Like he’d just confirmed a theory he’d hoped was wrong.
“What?” I demanded, hating the edge in my voice. Hating how exposed I felt under that look.
“I don’t want to guess,” he said quietly. “But we need to get out of here. Now.”
“Why?”
“Because if I’m right...” He stood, movements sharp and deliberate. “You’re more dangerous than any of them realise.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means what I said.” His voice was clipped. Sharp. “You’re dangerous. And you do not tell anyone else what you just told me. Do you understand? No matter what happens—don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
There was something in his eyes that made my blood run cold.
Panic.
And that scared me more than anything he’d said.
“What the hell is going on?” My voice cracked. “Cindrissian—”
“I’m not sure,” he cut me off. His hands were shaking. Just barely, but I saw it. “When we get back to Luceren, I promise I’ll explain. But not here.” His gaze darted to the shadows pooling in the corners of the chamber. “Not where anyone might be listening.”
My throat tightened.
Listening.
Every instinct screamed at me to push. To demand answers. To make him explain why he looked at me like I was about to detonate.
But the fear in his eyes was real.
And I wasn’t stupid.
"Fine," I said, voice rough. "Fine. But you will explain."