28
Ilinca
The shouting reached my cell before the sounds of actual fighting did, distant at first, then closer, then unmistakable — steel against steel, voices raised in the specific urgent chaos of a compound under active assault.
I understood, sitting up fast on my straw pallet with my heart hammering hard against my ribs, that whatever was happening outside my cell door had arrived considerably sooner than even my most hopeful calculations had allowed for.
I did not know who was attacking. I understood only that chaos, whatever its source, offered the first genuine opportunity six weeks of careful, patient carving had been waiting for.
I worked the loosened stone free from beneath my pallet with hands that shook despite my best efforts to steady them, and pressed the warding pattern I'd spent six weeks perfecting against the cell door's lock mechanism, murmuring the activation words Katra had taught me a lifetime ago in a room above a dye-shop that felt, in this moment, impossibly distant from the stone and torchlight currently surrounding me.
The lock gave way with a soft, satisfying click that I felt more than heard beneath the growing chaos outside.
I pressed my ear to Sela's cell wall before I moved further, unwilling to leave without at least attempting to warn her of what I intended.
"Sela. The lock's given way. If you have any way to break your own door, now's the time — whatever's happening outside, I don't think it's going to wait for either of us to move carefully. "
"Go," she whispered back, urgent. "Don't wait for me. I'll find my own way out if I can, but you're the one they'll be hunting hardest once they realize you're loose. Every minute you spend waiting for me is a minute that costs you the head start you need."
I hated leaving her. I understood, moving away from her cell with a grief I didn't have time to properly feel, that hating it changed nothing about the practical reality of six weeks' captivity finally offering its first genuine chance at freedom, and that wasting it on guilt served neither of us.
The compound's corridors offered chaos in every direction, guards running toward the sounds of fighting, the particular acrid smell of torch-smoke and something sharper beneath it that my wardsmith's senses read, with a cold certainty, as active combat wolfsbane.
I moved through it as carefully as six weeks of captivity allowed, staying close to the walls, following instinct rather than any clear knowledge of the compound's layout.
A guard rounded a corner ahead of me before I'd found proper cover, his eyes widening with recognition the instant they landed on my face, and I felt six weeks of careful, patient carving prove its worth in the space of a single desperate heartbeat — the small charm I'd concealed in my palm, activated with a whispered word Katra had taught me a lifetime ago, a burst of disorienting light that bought me exactly the three seconds I needed to slip past him into the shadowed corridor beyond before his vision cleared enough to give proper chase.
I did not look back to confirm whether he'd recovered fast enough to follow.
I ran instead, deeper into the compound's older sections, following some instinct I couldn't fully name toward stonework that grew progressively more ancient the further I traveled from my cell, until I found myself, after several tense minutes of careful navigation, in a wide chamber that stopped me entirely in my tracks.
Ancient stonework, noticeably older than the crude fortifications I'd glimpsed during my capture, covered every surface — carved lines running floor to ceiling in patterns I recognized immediately, the same warding script Katra had taught me as the oldest, most powerful craft the Frostmark line had ever practiced.
A circle had been carved into the chamber's center floor, fresh cuts standing out pale against stone worn dark with age, surrounded by symbols I understood, with a horror that settled cold through my entire body, as preparation for exactly the ritual Varak Ossendrei had spent our conversation describing in careful, patient terms.
He intended to use this place. Whatever ancient power still lingered in these stones, connected somehow to the Wardstone protecting Vardain itself, Varak had chosen this valley specifically because it offered him a foothold into that same old magic, close enough to attempt his ritual without needing to breach Castle Ironmoor's own defenses at all.
I crossed closer to the circle despite every instinct telling me to flee the chamber entirely, my wardsmith's training overriding fear the way it always had, and read the carved lines with the focused attention Katra had drilled into me since I was old enough to hold a knife properly.
The pattern was incomplete — powerful, unmistakably ancient, but missing the final closing lines that would have made it fully functional.
Whatever Varak intended, he hadn't yet finished the preparation required to attempt it, which meant, I understood with a fierce, sudden hope, that the assault currently tearing through the compound's outer defenses had arrived at precisely the moment it could still matter most.
"Six weeks," I murmured, tracing the pattern's edge without touching it, cataloguing every line the way I'd catalogued a hundred strangers' craft before trusting my own hands to repair or unmake it.
"Six weeks of preparation, and he still hasn't finished it.
That has to mean something, doesn't it? That whatever this requires, it's not simple, and not fast."
I did not have time to fully answer my own question.
Footsteps approached from the corridor behind me, too fast and too purposeful to be simple chaos, and I turned to find Kason himself standing in the chamber's entrance, wolf-bright eyes finding mine across the ritual circle's fresh-carved lines with an expression I would carry with me, whatever happened next, for the rest of my life.
"Ilinca." My name, broken and disbelieving, and then he was crossing the chamber fast enough that the distance between us dissolved in seconds, his arms closing around me with a fierceness that spoke considerably more clearly than any words could have of six weeks spent refusing to let himself grieve me fully.
"You came." I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing in a scent I'd spent six weeks afraid I'd never catch again, wolfsbane and old blood and, underneath both, something warm and familiar and entirely his own. "I felt the bond, these last few days. I hoped, but I didn't let myself believe—"
"I felt it too. Six weeks of searching, and I never once stopped believing you were alive out there, whatever the Council's patience suggested I should accept instead.
" He pulled back just enough to study my face, his hands cradling my jaw with a gentleness that undid something tight and frightened in my chest. "Are you hurt? Truly hurt, not simply exhausted?"
"I'm alive. I'm frightened, and exhausted, and substantially more determined than I've felt in six weeks, but I'm alive.
" I gestured toward the ritual circle behind me, urgency cutting through the relief of finally, finally being found.
"Kason. This place — it's tied to the original binding, somehow.
Varak intends to use it, and I don't think whatever he's planning waits for a convenient hour. "
His expression shifted, the relief giving way fast to the distinct focused calculation I recognized from every crisis I'd watched him navigate since a market wind first carried his scent to me. "Then we—"
The chamber's far door slammed open before he could finish, and Costin Drell stepped through it with a blade already drawn, flanked by four of Ossendrei's inner circle, his eyes finding mine across the ritual circle with the particular cold satisfaction of a man who'd just recovered exactly what he'd spent six weeks guarding.
"Well," he said, almost pleasant, though nothing in his voice carried actual warmth. "This does simplify matters considerably. I was beginning to worry the Prince's rescue might actually succeed before we'd finished our preparations."
I felt Kason's whole body shift beside me, his wolf surging fully to the surface with a violence that had nothing careful left in it, and understood, in the half-second before the chamber erupted into chaos, that whatever reunion we'd just managed had already run entirely out of time.