Chapter 9
We moved deeper and deeper through the passageways.
I was no longer certain we were even inside the fortress of Dheren. The walls had given way to packed earth, sloping downward at an angle that made my stomach clench. Dirt pressed in on all sides, held back only by rough-hewn struts.
The silence was broken only by the faint scratching within the walls, and the occasional muffled sob or low moan. Prisoners.
We were forced into single file. The males, too tall for the space, dipped their heads as they moved, shoulders brushing dirt on either side.
Other passages branched off into darkness as we passed them, a sprawling maze beneath the ground.
The thought came unbidden that we were no better than vermin, tunneling beneath the world.
Panic gripped me. A thin, broken sound slipped from my throat, and my feet locked in place.
I couldn’t do this. The thought of being buried alive, trapped so far beneath the earth, pressed down on my chest. A steady, reassuring hand settled against my upper back, urging gently. Hamish.
It didn’t help. My legs wouldn’t move.
The line ahead of me stopped. Aedric shifted carefully in the narrow space and reached back, his hand finding mine.
“Not much farther,” he said. “I promise.”
I grabbed hold of him, fingers threading tightly with his, and forced myself forward. Hamish’s touch withdrew.
Finally, we stopped short.
The passage simply ended, dirt pressed flat and final before us.
I peered around Aedric to see. The flames the guards carried threw light across a wall of dirt.
Symbols had been etched into it, the grooves filled with a glistening redness that made my stomach twist uncomfortably.
I prayed it wasn’t blood, even though I already suspected it was. And it was fresh.
From ahead, Sairus spoke without turning.
“Hold on to her tightly, my Lord. We wouldn’t want the wards to flay the pretty flesh from her Eidra bones.”
Then he stepped forward and passed straight through the earthen wall, as though it offered no resistance at all.
Aedric’s hold on my hand tightened, and he drew me forward with him without hesitation.
The wall gave way.
The sensation was brief and disorienting, like walking through a sheet of cold water. Then my shoes struck stone, solid beneath me.
We were inside a cell.
It was larger than I'd imagined, torchlight flickering across bare stone walls slick with moisture.
At the center of the chamber, a seamless oval of wards rose from the floor, translucent and faintly luminous, humming with contained power.
Inside them, shadows churned, a twisting vortex of black chaos, like a storm trapped in a bottle.
The shadows whipped and folded in on themselves, a constant, furious motion, as though seeking escape.
And at the heart of it—
Veylan.
He sat on the stone floor, back straight, unnaturally still amid the violence around him. The shadows surged and recoiled, circling his body in frantic arcs, like a flock of birds battering against invisible walls. They obscured him again and again, revealing only parts of him at a time.
Even so, I saw it—the grotesque sag to one side of his face.
The iron ash I'd slipped into his wine had done its work, leaving behind damage that Fae healing should have erased.
One eye was swollen nearly shut, his nose crusted with dried blood that had spilled over his split lip, and angry bruises mottled his pale skin.
His once immaculate white-blond hair was in disarray, standing in uneven peaks, stripped of its usual slicked-back precision.
His tattoos writhed freely across his skin like worms.
The shadows surged again, swallowing him from view.
Calantha stood against the far wall, one shoulder resting lazily against the stone. Her circlet sat perfectly in place, her uncovered eye fixed on Veylan, bright with the hungry fascination of a cat watching a wounded mouse.
"Have you learned anything?" Aedric glanced her way.
Calantha pushed herself from the wall with unhurried grace, her gaze finally tearing itself from Veylan.
"Nothing useful," she said. "He refuses to speak."
Hamish and the two remaining guards slipped through the wall behind us, soundless as smoke.
“Have you tried to… persuade him?”
Calantha smiled—a slow, unsettling thing. “Not to my satisfaction.”
“The Shaedr-Kyn is proving surprisingly resilient,” Sairus said with a smirk, folding his arms. “Though my daughter will break him soon enough.”
The word was unfamiliar to me.
“Shaedr-Kyn?” I leaned closer to Aedric, lowering my voice.
Sairus heard me anyway, his amber gaze settling on me. “Soul-Eater.”
Something inside me lurched.
Aedric moved closer, drawing me with him toward the warded cell. The shifting light caught the curve of his mouth, and for a moment the expression there looked wrong. Pleased. Cruel.
“Hello, dog.”
At that, the storm inside the ward shifted. The shadows parted just enough to reveal Veylan at the center. His stormy eyes opened and found me first, lingering just a moment before sliding to Aedric.
He said nothing.
Aedric placed both hands against the barrier, leaning into it as casually as if it were glass. The gesture was deliberate. Taunting. I knew what that ward would do if Veylan so much as brushed it. The memory of my own time in a similar cell in Solmire rose without warning.
“You’re far from Levinica, Veylan,” Aedric said lightly. “I suppose you’re seeking your master? Surely he’s called for you by now.”
Veylan just stared.
“This is rich.” Aedric laughed, a short, sharp bark. “You bartered yourself to him. Surrendered the full reach of your power. And after all that waiting… has he not even summoned you yet?”
“The irony,” Veylan said evenly, “is not lost on me.”
Aedric tilted his head. “Have you been a bad little dog, Veylan?”
“Aedric.” I couldn’t help myself. Something was making me uneasy—both with Aedric’s taunts and Veylan’s calm demeanor. I put my hand on his arm stopping him.
At that, Veylan’s colorless gaze slid to me again, something unfathomable in the depths of his eyes. “Hello, girl.”
My throat went dry at once. I parted my lips to answer, but no sound came. We stood there instead, suspended in silence, staring at one another through the wall of wards that caged him.
“Why were you caught in the Flamelands?” Aedric demanded.
Veylan didn't answer. He didn't so much as glance in Aedric's direction. Only a crooked hint of a smile ghosted across the good side of his face.
“I will ask you one more time,” Aedric warned, his voice dropping lower, “and then I will invite Calantha to try her hand at loosening your lips.”
That, at last, drew Veylan’s attention.
“No need for torture, Flame Lord,” he said calmly. “I will talk—”
“Then answer the question,” Aedric cut in sharply. “What were you doing in the Flamelands?”
“Let me clarify.” The slack side of Veylan’s face twitched faintly as he inclined his head toward me. “I will talk to her. Not you—traitor of Elantis. I will speak to her alone, or not at all.”
Aedric went very still. The air around him seemed to tighten, sparks flickering briefly along his fingers before he crushed them into nothing.
“The only traitor here is you,” he rumbled, each word edged with restrained fury.
“You—who chose to support a Dark Prince who would see this continent reduced to rubble. We spared you when he was sealed beyond the Veil. We accepted your oath. Levinica herself pleaded for your redemption before the Full Circle—and in return, you conspired with Hyperia to break him free.”
Veylan just smiled.
Aedric’s jaw tightened. “You defected from Levinica’s Court and appeared here. Why?”
“I told you already.” Veylan leaned back on his hands, his shadows flitting around him. “I will only speak with the human.”
“Kill him and be done with it,” Sairus said from behind us, his tone almost bored. “Calantha will extract what’s necessary.”
Aedric inclined his head once. “Calantha.”
She stepped forward, a slow, eager smile spreading across her lips. “With pleasure, my Lord.”
“No—” The word barely left me before she lifted the lens from her ember eye and fixed it on Veylan.
His scream shattered the chamber. Shadows lashed wildly around him, writhing like living things—then, one by one, they slammed back into his body, vanishing beneath his skin until nothing remained outside him at all.
Without them, he looked wrong, diminished somehow, the sharp edge of him dulled into something pale and vulnerable.
He collapsed onto his side. His tattoos writhed feverishly across his skin as his body seized, a wet, choking sound dragging from his throat while pink foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. His eyes remained open, wide and unseeing, as Calantha’s invisible force tore through him from within.
“Anything?” Aedric pressed a hand against the wards, already impatient.
Calantha frowned. “No. His shadows are interfering.”
“Push through them.”
She stepped closer to the cell, her focus sharpening, and Veylan’s back arced violently off the ground.
“They’re bound tightly to him.” Irritation edged her voice. “He’s drawn them inward for protection. It will take time to reach his core.”
Veylan dragged in a breath and didn’t release it. A thin line of blood slipped from his nose as his skin darkened, mottling into something sickly and wrong.
“Aedric… stop this,” I pleaded, my eyes fixed on the way his bare toes curled helplessly against the stone.
“No.”
“Aedric, you'll kill him!” My hand shot out, closing around his sleeve.
He didn’t look at me. “So be it.”
“He saved me,” I tried again, the memory rising with a clarity that burned. “When Hyperia attacked—he saved me.”
That made him turn. For a heartbeat, I thought—hoped—something might shift.
Instead, he pulled his arm free of my grasp, nothing soft remaining in his expression.