Chapter 12 Rurik
TWELVE
RURIK
The mountain is wrong.
I’ve flown over battlefields soaked in centuries of blood. I’ve descended into caverns where ancient magic pooled thick enough to taste. I’ve faced rogues driven mad by isolation, their minds shattered by forces they couldn’t comprehend.
None of it prepared me for this.
The fortress rises from volcanic rock like a wound in the earth—black stone that swallows light, jagged spires reaching toward a sky gone bruised and heavy.
Wards shimmer in my peripheral vision, layers upon layers of protective magic woven so dense, they make my scales itch.
And beneath it all, beneath the wards and the stone and the wrongness pressing against my mind, something breathes.
Ancient. Hungry. Waiting.
My dragon recoils with a snarl that vibrates through my chest. Every instinct screams at me to turn around, to grab Aisling and fly until this place is nothing but a bad memory.
The magic here is old—older than the Brotherhood, older than anything I’ve faced in three and a half centuries of fighting.
Aisling’s grip tightens on my neck. Her thighs press harder against my scales.
I land on a ridge overlooking the fortress, the other dragons settling around us in a protective formation. Drayke touches down beside me, and I catch the look he exchanges with Selene.
The grim set of his jaw says everything.
This is worse than we expected.
I shift the moment Aisling slides from my back, bones cracking and reforming as I take human shape. The cold mountain air hits my bare chest, but I barely notice. My attention is fixed on her face—on the way her skin has gone pale, her breathing shallow, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
She’s remembering. I can see it in the way her gaze unfocuses, tracking something that isn’t here. Something that lives in nightmares.
“Hey.” I move into her line of sight, blocking her view of the fortress. “Still with me?”
Her gaze snaps to mine. For a moment, I see the terror lurking beneath her careful control—raw and bleeding and too close to the surface. Then she breathes out, and the walls slam back into place.
“Still here.” Her voice is steady. Steady enough.
Drayke approaches, Selene a step behind him. The Guardian King’s face is carved from granite, every line radiating the kind of tension that means he’s about to give orders no one will enjoy.
“Assessment?”
I glance at the fortress. At the shadows moving along the ramparts—guards, at least a dozen that I can count. At the way the wards pulse with a sickly rhythm, feeding on something I don’t want to identify.
“Heavily guarded. Multiple ward layers. And something underneath that’s making my dragon want to turn tail and run.” I flash a grin that feels more forced than usual. “So, typical Tuesday.”
Drayke doesn’t smile. “Selene and I will create a distraction. Draw the guards to the eastern approach. Rurik, you take Aisling in through the old drainage channels on the west side. Get inside, find what we need, get out.”
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“Anything that tells us how close Valdris is to breaking free. Structural integrity of the prison. Evidence of recent rituals. Whatever her forces have been planning.” His gaze shifts to Aisling. “And anything she remembers that might help us understand the layout.”
Aisling nods. Her jaw is set, her shoulders squared. She looks like a woman walking into battle, not a victim returning to the place where she was tortured.
Brave. So fucking brave.
“No heroics.” Drayke’s attention returns to me. “In and out. If something goes wrong—“
“I grab her and run. Yeah, I got it.”
“I’m serious, Rurik. If you have to choose between gathering intelligence and getting her out safely—“
“There’s no choice.” The words come out harder than I intend. “She’s the priority. She’s always the priority.”
Something flickers in Drayke’s expression. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.
He claps my shoulder once, a gesture that carries three centuries of brotherhood behind it. “Let’s move.”
The drainage channels stink.
Centuries of volcanic runoff have coated the stone walls with residue that makes my boots slip and my stomach clench.
The passage is narrow—too narrow for my dragon form, which is probably why Drayke chose this route.
Wards flicker overhead, but they’re weaker here, neglected.
Whoever built this place didn’t expect anyone to willingly crawl through ancient sewage to gain entry.
They didn’t expect Fire-Bringers, either.
Aisling walks ahead of me, her hand tracing the wall for balance. She hasn’t spoken since we entered the tunnels. Hasn’t looked back. Just moves forward with the kind of single-minded focus that tells me she’s holding herself in check through sheer force of will.
The passage opens into a wider corridor. Black stone walls. Iron doors every few feet, rusted hinges suggesting they haven’t been opened in years. And carved into the floor—
Blood channels.
The grooves run the length of the corridor, converging toward the mountain’s heart. They’re dry now, but the staining tells me everything I need to know about what used to flow through them.
This is where they drained her. Where they cut her open and collected her blood for their fucking ritual.
My dragon roars against my control, scales threatening to erupt across my shoulders. I force it down, force the shift back, force myself to keep moving instead of burning this entire place to ash.
Aisling stops.
Her hand hovers over one of the channels, trembling visibly. I can see her throat working as she swallows.
“I remember this.” Her voice comes out flat. Clinical. The voice she uses when she’s too close to breaking. “They would—“ She stops. Starts again. “Twice a day. Morning and evening. Someone would come with a knife and—“
“You don’t have to.”
Her head turns. Those green eyes find mine, and for a moment, the mask slips. Underneath is grief and rage, and a terror so deep, it makes my chest ache.
“I do. You need to understand what we’re walking into.” She straightens her spine, pulls her shoulders back. “The cells are ahead. Then the ritual chamber. Then...” a shuddering breath, “then her.”
I close the distance between us. Don’t touch her—she hasn’t invited it, and right now, she needs control more than comfort. But I stand close enough that my body blocks the corridor behind us. Close enough that she knows I’m here.
“We do this at your pace. You want to stop, we stop. You want to leave, we leave. Whatever you need.”
“I need this over.” Her chin lifts. “I need to see that she’s still trapped. That she can’t reach me out there.” Her voice cracks on the last word, just barely. “I need to know.”
“Then let’s find out.”
We move deeper.
The corridor branches, and Aisling chooses the left path without hesitation. She knows this place. Every turn, every junction, every iron door with its horror waiting behind. Her body moves on autopilot while her mind is somewhere else entirely.
The cells appear around the next bend.
Rows of them. Dozens. Iron bars thick as my wrist, stone floors stained with patterns I don’t want to identify. Some still have manacles attached to the walls—magic-suppressing chains that would have devoured any fire she tried to summon.
Empty now. But the residue of suffering clings to every surface. My dragon can taste it in the air—pain and despair and the slow, grinding cruelty of systematic torture.
Aisling stops in front of one cell. Her hand rises, fingers curling around the bars.
“This one.” The words are barely a whisper. “This was mine.”
I look inside. Stone bench for a bed. Bucket in the corner. Chains bolted to the wall at exactly the right height to hold a woman’s arms above her head. And on the floor, dark stains that form a pattern leading toward the door—toward the channels that would have carried her blood away.
Three weeks. She spent three weeks in this hole while they bled her dry.
“Aisling.”
She doesn’t respond. Her knuckles have gone white around the bars.
I reach out. Slowly. Carefully. My hand covers hers, and for a moment, I feel her flinch—a tiny recoil that breaks something in my chest. But she doesn’t pull away. Her fingers shift beneath mine, and then she’s holding on. Gripping tight enough that I can feel her pulse racing against my palm.
“I’m here.” The words feel inadequate. Everything feels inadequate in the face of this. “Whatever you’re remembering, you’re not there anymore. You’re here. With me.”
Her breathing steadies. One count. Two. Three.
“You’re right.” She releases the bars. Her hand stays in mine. “I’m here. And I’m not leaving until I get what I came for.”
We move on.