Chapter 42 #3
“Dax was bleeding.”
Neseryn’s violet eyes sharpened. “Dax was not standing in the center of a fucking tracking sigil.”
“Neither was I in Court Three.”
Silence.
Neseryn’s jaw flexed once. “Then perhaps you should stop bleeding around Shadow wielders and expecting our magic to behave politely.”
Lyra stared at her. “That’s your explanation?”
“That is all you are getting.”
Eiryx spoke before Lyra could push any further. “He had an exit planned beyond the first support channel. I cannot tell where it joins without removing half that wall, and I would prefer not to bring the ceiling down on us a second time tonight.”
Dax gave a rough laugh that ended in a wince. “I was worried this might stay simple.”
Nobody indulged him. I looked toward the damaged sigil. “We take a section of the mark before patrol arrives.”
Lyra’s attention snapped back to me. “Why do we need to hide part of it?”
“Because I need to compare the cutwork before Halos has ward-masters crawling over every inch of this room.”
“You already know what it is.”
“I know what it does.”
“And you know where it came from.”
I said nothing.
Her anger returned immediately. “Kieran.”
I could keep refusing. I could give her another partial answer and tell myself it was safer. The operative had called me Prince of Shadows in front of everyone. There was no point insulting her intelligence. “It is Umbrael court work.”
Dax went quiet. Neseryn too.
Lyra held my gaze. “Your father.”
“I said court work.”
“You don’t react like that to generic court work.”
The patrol bell sounded somewhere beyond the outer chamber.
We were out of time. I forced myself to think past instinct.
“If Halos learns there was a targeted blood anchor beneath one of his receiving rooms, he seals this entire wing, opens an affinity investigation, and starts asking why the operative used methods associated with Umbrael. He will question every person standing here.”
Dax pressed two fingers to the bruise darkening around his throat. “Then what exactly are we telling him?”
“The truth he needs. Unknown intruder. Attempted theft. Hostile Shadow usage. Escape through a prepared service passage. Nothing about the blood anchor until we know whether revealing it compromises Lyra further.”
Lyra’s mouth tightened. “And the mark?”
“We remove enough to identify it.”
“And I see whatever you find.”
Everything in me wanted to refuse. Eiryx was watching. So was Neseryn. Dax, leaning painfully against the wall, looked as though he had no intention of surviving another argument between Lyra and me tonight. “You see what we find.”
She studied my face as if searching for the condition hidden inside the sentence. “That was almost reasonable.”
“Do not ruin it.”
Eiryx took out a narrow blade and crouched beside the broken sigil. “I’ll cut along the dead edge. If the ward-master asks, the collapse took it.”
“Take enough to preserve the outer channel.”
“I know how evidence works, Kieran.”
“Your confidence continues to be inspiring.”
“Your personality continues to be exhausting.”
He started working. The rest of us moved before patrol reached the room.
We ended up in an unused cataloging chamber two corridors above the vault.
Dax sat on the edge of a desk while Lyra cleaned the blood from her hand properly.
The room smelled of linen dust and preservation oil.
Shelves lined one wall, empty except for old tags and a cracked weighing scale.
Neseryn remained near the door. Dax tried to swallow and winced.
Lyra noticed. “You should have a healer look at your throat.”
“It’s bruising.”
“You were thrown into a wall with Shadow wrapped around your neck. That is slightly more than bruising.”
Dax rubbed carefully at the marks beneath his jaw. “Believe me, I am intimately acquainted with what happened.”
Neseryn’s attention flicked toward the bruising before returning to the corridor. Dax caught it. He was quiet for a moment. That alone was unusual. Then he said, “You crossed half the room.”
Neseryn did not look at him. “I was after the operative.”
“He was standing in the other direction.”
Her violet eyes cut to him. “Would you prefer I put the Shadow back around your throat?”
Dax held her gaze for a second. Normally this was where he pushed, smiled, and found the exact words most likely to make her want to stab him.
This time he only shook his head. “No.” For once, Neseryn had no immediate answer.
Dax lowered his hand from his throat. “And I’m not going to pretend it meant more than it did.
You saved my life. That does not mean you owe me anything. ”
She stared at him as though that answer had been considerably more inconvenient than flirting would have been. “Good.”
“But thank you.”
Her jaw tightened. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t asking for anything.”
That silenced her. Dax looked away first, giving her the escape she clearly wanted. Neseryn stood there another heartbeat before opening the door.
Lyra watched her. “You can leave, but I’m still going to remember what happened downstairs.”
Neseryn paused without looking back. “Then perhaps one day you will finally learn that seeing a reaction does not mean you understand its cause.”
She left. The door shut behind her.
Lyra looked at me. “You saw it.”
“I saw her Shadow.”
“It went for my blood. Just like it did in Court Three.”
“There was a blood construct active in the room.”
She let the answer sit between us for a beat. “How many people were bleeding?”
“You were the only person standing on the sigil.”
“Dax had blood in his mouth.”
“And the construct was not anchored to Dax.”
“The Court Three floor did not have a blood anchor.”
“No.”
“So stop pretending this explains both times.”
I said nothing.
Her eyes sharpened. “You know more than you’re telling me.”
“I know Neseryn’s magic behaves unpredictably around intense Shadow interference.”
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It sounded like something you’ve been telling yourself.”
Before I could answer, the door opened.
Eiryx entered with the carved fragment wrapped in dark cloth. “Patrol bought the attempted-theft explanation for now. Halos wants statements in the morning, which gives us several hours before someone decides asking the same question twelve different ways is an effective investigative technique.”
Dax pushed carefully to his feet. “Wonderful. I have always wanted to spend my morning explaining why I ignored a direct warning and almost got strangled by a fake archivist.”
“You could leave out the part where I threatened your legs.”
Dax looked at me. “I absolutely will not.”
Eiryx set the fragment on the desk.
Lyra stood immediately. “You said I would see it.”
“I remember.” I unwrapped the stone. The damaged sigil was incomplete where my Shadow had burned through it. Fine black channels radiated from the shallow depression where her blood had fallen.
Eiryx bent over the pattern. “This section is retrieval. The lines pull the anchor toward a paired construct once the blood has completed the center.”
Lyra’s mouth tightened at the word. “And these?”
I pointed to the smaller series of cuts near the outer edge. “Handler identification. Not a name exactly. More like a signature built into the construction.”
“Can you read it?”
“Not completely. The style is older than the outer network marks I remember seeing publicly.”
Eiryx understood what I had not said. “But you’ve seen this kind of cutwork before.”
“Yes.”
“Inside the palace?”
I looked at him.
Lyra’s gaze moved between us. “His work.”
I exhaled. There was no point evading it now. “It traces back to Kaelros.”
Lyra went very still. “Your father sent someone into the Sanctum.”
“I cannot prove he personally gave the order.”
“Kieran.”
“The operative belonged to one of his outer networks. I recognized the old intake scar behind his ear. That much is clear.”
“You recognized the mark on the notice too.”
“The seal method.”
“And the archive interference?”
“Parts of it.”
Her injured hand curled carefully against her stomach. “So while you were threatening to take my access away, you suspected your father’s people were involved.”
“I suspected his methods.”
“That is not the same answer.”
The room grew quieter. Eiryx moved to the far side of the chamber, giving us distance without pretending he was not listening. Dax sat again and had the good sense to remain silent.
Lyra’s anger did not come out loudly this time. That made it worse. “You were willing to threaten my access before you were willing to tell me Kaelros might be involved.”
I held her gaze. “Yes.”
“Why?”
I could have given her an easier answer. Because I wanted to protect you. Because I was not sure. Because the evidence was not enough. All of it would have been partly true. None of it was the reason. “The more you know about him, the more likely you are to go looking for him.”
She stared at me. “You really think that little of me.”
“No. I think I know what answers mean to you.”
“You think I would walk into Umbrael because you told me your father might be involved?”
“If you believed he had answers about Aurenya, Maerox, the missing records, or why someone has spent twenty years erasing your history, you would consider it.”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. I leaned both palms against the desk.
“That is the part you hate because you know I’m right.
You would not march into his palace tomorrow without a plan, Lyra.
I know you better than that. But you would start calculating how close you could get.
Which border. Which archive. Which person might know more.
You would tell yourself you were only gathering information until the moment information became a road. ”
Her shoulders tensed. “And you know what he does to people who go looking.”