Chapter 39
Tess
The barrier came down in a wall of copper light.
Burke came through first. He took in the corridor in one sweep—the open cells, the victims on the ground, the bound operatives, the team scattered between them—and his face didn't change. He just started working.
"Medical, down here. Bring stretchers. We've got twenty-plus civilians, some non-responsive."
His team poured in behind him. Riders I recognized from the Guild—two of Burke's squad, an instructor I'd seen in the training hall—and they moved through the corridor with the efficiency of people who'd done extractions before. Checking pulses. Stabilizing. Lifting.
I was kneeling beside the fae man who'd grabbed my hand. He was still holding it. His grip had gone slack in the last few minutes—not unconscious, just somewhere far away, his eyes open and fixed on a point on the ceiling that didn't have anything on it.
"Hey." I squeezed his hand. "We're going up now. You're going to be okay."
He didn't respond. But his fingers tightened once.
A Rider knelt on his other side—a woman with earth-toned magic glowing at her palms, warm, steady. Restoration magic. She ran her hands over him without touching, reading his injuries, and nodded at me.
"I've got him. Let's get you looked at too."
"I'm fine."
She looked at my burned arm. At the bruises. At the way I was swaying slightly on my knees.
"Let's get you looked at," she said again, in the tone of someone who wasn't asking.
The corridor was emptying. Burke's people and the team were getting the victims up the stairs—carrying the ones who couldn't walk, guiding the ones who could.
Raze had the werewolf girl on her feet, his arm around her shoulders, her weight against his side.
She was walking but barely. His jacket was still around her.
Mason was helping carry a man who'd gone non-responsive. I felt him through the bond—exhausted, hurting, but the solid bedrock warmth of him was still there underneath everything. He caught my eye as he passed and the bond pulsed once. "I'm here. Are you?"
"I'm here."
That was enough. For now, that was enough.
A pulse of heat at the base of my neck—Ciaran. There and gone in half a second. He was watching. He wanted me to know.
We went up.
The stairs were harder than they should have been.
My legs were shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the steps and everything to do with the fact that I'd pushed my entire magical reserve through a psychic bridge twenty minutes ago and my body was only now getting the bill.
The restoration Rider stayed behind me. I didn't lean on her. I wanted to.
The middle floor—the lab—was a wreck. Broken glass, scattered equipment, scorch marks on every surface. Garanth's remains were gone. Someone had dealt with that while we were downstairs. I didn't look too hard.
The top floor. The security room where they'd first engaged the guards. Then the stairwell up to the barn, and the barn, and—
Air.
Real air. Night air. Cold and clean and tasting like pine and wet earth and I breathed it in so deep my lungs hurt.
The bond with Thalon cracked open like a dam breaking.
Not the muffled static of the basement. Not the interference. The full, roaring, golden flood of him—his fury and his relief and his love hitting me all at once, and I staggered and caught myself on the barn doorframe and his voice was in my head, enormous, shaking.
"Little one. Little one. I am here. I have you."
I couldn't answer in words. I just opened the bond as wide as it would go and let him feel that I was alive and upright and outside and his.
He roared.
I heard it from somewhere above and to the west—a sound that shook the trees and sent birds scattering from every branch in a quarter-mile radius.
The other dragons answered. Amrion's deeper call, Rundel's resonant rumble, the sharp crack of Talven's storm-charged voice.
They were all up there, holding perimeter, and they'd been holding it the whole time we were underground where they couldn't reach us.
Thalon's warmth settled into the bond and stayed. A steady golden heat against the cold night air. He didn't try to come to me—the area was too crowded, too chaotic for a dragon to land—but his presence in my chest was steady and constant.
The clearing around the barn had become a staging area.
Portable lights set up on the grass. Two medical stations—one for the team, one for the victims. The victims were being brought out and laid on emergency cots and the healer Rider was already moving between them, her restoration magic a steady warm glow in the portable light.
Someone guided me to the team medical station. I sat on a cot because my legs made the decision for me. The healer—a different one, a male Rider with close-cropped hair and calm hands—started working on my burned arm without asking permission.
His magic was cool where it touched the burns. Not healing—stabilizing. Taking the edge off the inflammation, sealing what was open. I watched his hands and didn't feel much of anything.
Around me, the team was getting the same treatment.
Lunessa was on the next cot, conscious now, her vine tattoos dark against her forearms. She was letting someone examine the back of her head where she'd hit the wall.
Raze was sitting on the ground beside her cot, because apparently there weren't enough cots, and a medic was wrapping the claw marks on his forearms. He was watching the victim area where the werewolf girl had been taken.
Of course Mason was standing. He'd refused to sit until everyone else was being treated. The healer had gotten to him last and Mason was letting the man work on a gash across his ribs with the patient stillness of someone who'd had worse and knew it.
Ten feet past him, Theron was on his feet too. He'd let the healer look at a cut on his temple for about thirty seconds before stepping away to survey the scene. His magic was dim—he'd burned through most of it tonight—but his posture hadn't changed. He was still the commander.
I looked for Draven and found him in the victim area.
I could see him from where I sat—moving between the cots, kneeling beside each person, his hands hovering as he read their bonds and their damage with his psychic magic.
His face was composed. Steady. But I could see the cost of it in the set of his shoulders, the deliberate way he breathed between each patient.
He was choosing to stay present. He was choosing not to go cold.
I watched him for a moment longer than I should have and then the healer touched the burn on my collarbone and everything went white.
"Sorry." He pulled back. "That one's deep. The initial treatment held but it needs real work. You'll want a full session with a restoration specialist when you're back at the Guild."
"Okay."
"You also need fluids, sleep, and about forty-eight hours of not using magic."
"Okay."
He looked at me like he knew what my okays were worth.
Movement at the edge of the staging area. Two figures crossing the grass toward the team's medical station. One in flowing jewel tones—Councilor Elara Windmere, her glamoured face sharp and alert, silver hair catching the portable light. The other—
Silvius.
He moved differently than Councilor Elara.
She moved with purpose—toward the people who needed her attention.
Silvius moved with precision—toward the information he needed to acquire.
His eyes were sweeping the scene the way Burke's had, but Burke had been looking for injured people. Silvius was looking for something else.
He looked composed. Appropriate. A Lord Protector arriving at a crisis he'd been notified about, wearing the right expression of controlled concern.
He looked wrong.
I couldn't have said why. The timing was off—his concern landed a beat late, performed rather than felt. Or maybe I was exhausted and seeing things. I filed it away because I didn't have room for it right now.
Councilor Windmere reached us first. She went straight to Commander Burke—touched his shoulder, spoke to him quietly, got a report on the victims with the efficiency of someone who'd been navigating crises since before anyone in this clearing was born.
Then she turned to the victim area and I watched her eyes take in the scope of it.
Twenty-plus people on cots. Some crying. Some silent. Some not conscious.
Her face tightened. Just once.
Silvius stopped at the edge of the team's medical area. His eyes moved across us—Lunessa on the cot, Raze on the ground, Mason standing, me sitting with the healer's hands still on my arm.
"Blackwell." He addressed Theron first. "Report."
Theron stepped forward. Professional. Controlled.
"Underground facility, three levels. Concealment wards failed—that's what triggered the Wardroom alert.
We found guards and enhanced fighters on the top level, a research laboratory on the middle level, and holding cells on the lowest level.
Approximately twenty to thirty victims being held in various stages of forced bond experimentation. "
Silvius's expression did the appropriate thing. Gravity. Concern. "Bond experimentation."
"Servitude bonds. Forced grafting of abilities between subjects. Some subjects had been partially consumed." Theron's voice didn't waver. "Dominick Graves was on-site. He teleported out before we could secure him."
A silence. Silvius processed that—or performed processing it.
"How did you find this place?" Silvius asked.
The question was casual. Too casual. The kind of casual that a person manufactures when they're pretending a question just occurred to them.
Theron didn't blink. "Wardroom flagged an anomaly on the northwestern array. Concealment wards under pressure. I took my team to investigate as a field training exercise."
"The Wardroom." Silvius's mouth did something that was almost a smile. "I don't recall authorizing a field deployment."