Chapter 22
Elsa
The plan was simple. That should have been Elsa’s first warning.
Three human women. Lux Saber escort. A polite request to verify the wellbeing of fellow survivors. Everything above board, everything by the rules—or close enough to look that way.
Mia had taken convincing. She’d flinched when Elsa first approached her in the corridor outside Yarx’s infirmary, her pale eyes darting toward the guards stationed at either end like she was calculating escape routes.
The same hunted look Elsa had seen in the medical bay after the crash—before either of them knew what this world would cost them.
“You want to go where?”
“The pit access corridor.” Elsa kept her voice steady, conversational. The kind of tone she’d used with nervous ship captains and territorial navigators back when her world still made sense. “I want to deliver food and medicine. Check on Rowan and Milo. Make sure they’re still alive.”
Mia’s jaw tightened. She had a way of going still that reminded Elsa of prey animals sensing a trap. “You want to walk into the pits and ask nicely if we can visit the prisoners.”
“I want to make a formal request through proper channels. With witnesses. With an escort.” Elsa met her gaze without flinching. “Hard to accuse us of sneaking when we’re announced at every checkpoint.”
Something flickered behind Mia’s careful composure. Not hope—Mia had learned not to trust hope in this place—but calculation. The math of survival that every human in the fortress ran constantly, weighing risks against rewards against the simple question of making it to tomorrow.
“And if they say no?”
“Then I document the refusal. I escalate. I make it clear that the Alpha King’s claimed female was denied a reasonable request, and I make sure everyone who matters knows about it.” Elsa paused. “They don’t have to let us in. They just have to look unreasonable when they refuse.”
The silence stretched between them. Somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and closed. Claws clicked against stone. The fortress breathed around them, alive with sounds Elsa was still learning to parse.
“You really think that’ll work?”
Elsa thought about Sylas. About the bond that tugged at her awareness even now, that constant low hum of connection she couldn’t ignore no matter how hard she tried. About the way the court watched her every move, weighing her worth, calculating her usefulness.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that being the Alpha’s claimed female has to be worth something. And I’d rather find out where the limits are now than discover them later when it matters more.”
Mia considered this. Elsa watched her weigh the options—the risk of action against the certainty of inaction, the fear of what the pits held against the guilt of leaving others to rot in them.
“Fine.” Mia exhaled. “But if we get killed, I’m blaming you.”
“Fair.”
Ari had been easier. Ryxin’s human had a streak of recklessness under all that court training, and her sharp smile when Elsa explained the plan told its own story.
She’d been waiting for someone to do something.
Anything. The slow suffocation of powerlessness was killing her faster than any physical threat.
“You’re using politeness as a weapon.” Ari’s dark eyes gleamed with something that looked almost like respect. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I’m a navigator.” Elsa adjusted the collar at her throat—Sylas’s mark, that weight she could never quite forget. “I find paths through hostile territory. That’s all this is.”
A lie. This was more than that and they both knew it.
This was three women who’d been stripped of everything—home, autonomy, future—refusing to accept that powerlessness was permanent.
This was the first real choice Elsa had made since the crash.
Not survival instinct. Not reaction to threat.
An actual decision, with consequences she’d have to own.
It terrified her almost as much as it felt right.
Now the three of them walked through volcanic corridors that pulsed with faint blue light, flanked by four Lux Sabers in full ceremonial armor.
The guards moved like shadows with teeth—massive, silent, their amber and citrine eyes tracking every intersection they passed.
Their presence was meant to be protective, but Elsa couldn’t shake the feeling that the cage had simply expanded to include a longer leash.
The bond tugged at her awareness. Sylas.
She could feel him somewhere in the fortress above, his attention a distant pressure at the edge of her consciousness.
He knew she was moving. She could sense his alertness sharpening, the slow coil of something that wasn’t quite suspicion but wasn’t quite trust either.
Listening. Always listening.
She pushed the awareness aside. The bond was a complication she couldn’t afford to think about right now.
Every time she prodded at it, she felt him stir in response—felt his focus sharpen, his interest intensify.
Better to ignore it. Better to pretend she was still alone in her own head, even if that was a lie so obvious even she couldn’t sell it to herself.
Later. She’d deal with that later.
“The corridor narrows ahead,” Mia murmured, her voice barely audible over the hum of Moon Tear crystals in the walls. “There’s a checkpoint before the pit access. Two guards, sometimes three. They rotate shifts every eight hours, but the ones on duty at midday are always the worst.”
“You’ve been here before?”
Mia’s expression went carefully blank—that practiced emptiness that came from learning which reactions got you hurt. “Yarx needed supplies from the lower levels. Medical equipment that’s only stored near the detention cells. I helped carry them.”
There was history in that flatness. Things Mia had seen that she wasn’t ready to share—maybe would never be ready to share. The pits had a reputation even among the fortress’s residents. Elsa had heard whispers. Had felt Sylas’s own strange tension whenever the subject came up through the bond.
She filed it away and kept walking.
The air changed as they descended. Warmer.
Damper. The clean mineral scent of the upper fortress gave way to something rawer—sweat and iron and the acrid tang of old violence.
Torch brackets appeared between the crystalline light sources, their flames casting orange shadows that made the walls seem to breathe.
The stone itself looked different here. Older.
Stained in ways that didn’t bear close examination.
Ari moved closer to Elsa’s side, her court composure cracking just slightly. The difference between upper and lower fortress was visceral—you didn’t need to see the pits to feel their presence.
“I’ve heard stories,” she said quietly. “Ryxin won’t tell me details. He just...goes quiet whenever I ask. His jaw does this thing—” She demonstrated, a subtle tightening. “Like he’s biting back something he doesn’t want me to know.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
The checkpoint materialized from the gloom—a heavy iron gate set into stone walls that looked older than the rest of the fortress, weathered by centuries of heat and use.
Scorch marks blackened the edges. Deep gouges scored the metal in patterns that looked almost like claw marks, layered over each other in ways that suggested generations of violence.
Two guards flanked the entrance. Not Sabers.
These were different. Bulkier. Their fur was darker, shot through with gray, and their eyes held none of the controlled discipline Elsa had come to expect from Sylas’s personal guards.
Where the Sabers moved like weapons kept carefully sheathed, these two lounged like predators who had no need to prove themselves.
Pit guards. The distinction was immediate and visceral.
They watched the approaching party with the lazy attention of predators who knew their territory intimately—every shadow, every corner, every way something could go wrong.
One of them—the larger one, with a scar that bisected his muzzle and turned his lip into a permanent sneer—let his lips pull back from yellowed fangs in something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Well.” His voice scraped like stone on metal. “The King’s pet comes to visit the kennels.”
The Lux Sabers flanking Elsa went still. Not tense—worse. The particular stillness of warriors assessing a threat, calculating angles, determining how quickly violence would become necessary.
Elsa kept her shoulders straight, her expression neutral. Weaponized civility. That was the play. Every interaction was a negotiation, and she’d spent her entire career navigating hostile territory—even if the territory had previously been interstellar politics rather than alien dungeons.
“I’m here to request access to the detention level,” she said, her voice carrying the calm authority she’d learned from years of dealing with ship captains who thought navigators were glorified map-readers. “I want to deliver supplies to the human prisoners and verify their condition.”
The scarred guard exchanged a look with his partner. Something passed between them—amusement, maybe, or anticipation. The kind of look that said this should be entertaining.
“Deliver supplies.” He rolled the words around like they tasted interesting. “The Alpha King’s pretty problem wants to play healer now?”
Pretty problem. Elsa filed away the phrase. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard herself described that way—whispered in corridors, muttered behind barely-closed doors. The court had already decided what she was: a complication. A variable that disrupted Sylas’s carefully maintained control.
They weren’t wrong. She just intended to be more than that.
“I’m making a formal request. Through proper channels.” Elsa gestured toward the Sabers. “With escort and witnesses. I believe that’s the correct procedure?”