Chapter 4 Alerie
FOUR
ALERIE
Silence. He’s turning it over, fitting my information into whatever strategic framework he’s building. I can almost see the pieces clicking into place behind those intent eyes.
“And you can?” His voice has dropped to barely above a whisper. “Sever the oaths without killing them?”
“I did it on the altar. You watched me do it.”
“One man. In somewhat stable conditions. While a riot raged as distraction.”
“It’s a start.” I don’t let frustration creep into my voice. “Give me access to your intelligence on the network. Let me study the binding patterns properly instead of working from stolen glimpses. I can do more.”
He takes a step closer. Close enough that I feel his breath stir the air near my face.
“Why should I trust anything you’ve told me?”
The question lands heavily between us. I could give him reasons—logical arguments, evidence, appeals to mutual interest. But instinct tells me that’s not what he’s really asking.
“You shouldn’t.” The admission escapes before I can check it. Honest. Too honest. “Trust gets people killed. I’m asking you to use me, not trust me. There’s a difference.”
His inhale is sharp. Audible in the cell’s suffocating quiet. For a moment—a single moment—I see his expression fracture. A glimpse of the pressure building behind his walls.
He’s not as steady as he wants me to think. The realization hits me with the force of revelation. All that precision, all that authority—it’s effort.
Where’s the fear? A dragon on the edge of losing restraint in a confined space with a captive witch?
But terror isn’t what floods through me as I watch that fracture in his composure.
Interesting. The thought surfaces unbidden, dangerous. He’s not what he pretends to be.
The interrogation continues. Hours, maybe. The questions come relentlessly—probing my knowledge of the network, testing my claims, searching for inconsistencies. I answer carefully, offering truth in measured doses, revealing enough to prove my value without exposing everything.
He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t threaten violence. Doesn’t use any of the standard interrogation techniques I’ve endured before. Only that voice, those questions, that unnerving intensity that makes the cell feel too small and too hot and too charged with awareness I refuse to name.
I notice things as we talk. The way his hands flex at his sides when I mention my grandmother’s death.
The slight hitch in his breathing when I describe the binding marks on my skin.
The way his gaze keeps dropping to my wrists, tracing the silver lines, before snapping back to my face with visible effort.
He’s not interrogating me. He’s cataloging me. Learning me the way I’m learning him.
Mutual reconnaissance. The phrase surfaces from some long-ago lesson. When predators meet, they assess each other before deciding whether to fight or to cooperate.
I’m not sure which one this is.
“The network’s central node.” His voice has gone rough with fatigue or frustration—I can’t tell which. “You said there’s a weakness in the cascade system. Something the Regent hasn’t anticipated.”
“The cascade works because each node connects to three others. But someone has to activate those links manually. There’s a coordination point—a place where the Regent or his lieutenants can trigger the entire network at once.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet.” I hold up a hand before he can press. “But I know how to find it. The activation signatures leave traces. My bloodline can sense those traces if I’m close enough to a working node.”
“You want me to take you into the field.”
“I want to be useful enough that you don’t leave me in this cell to rot.” An edge sharpens my voice before I can smooth it. “I’ve been useful before. I know what it costs. But I also know what happens to Vireth witches who can’t convince their captors to keep them breathing.”
His expression shutters. For a long moment, he looks at me—not with the cold appraisal of an interrogator, but with an intensity that goes deeper. Darker.
“Who else has caged you?” The question comes out low. Dangerous. “Before this.”
Answering is dangerous. It’s personal, irrelevant to the intelligence he’s gathering. But fury builds behind his eyes—fury that isn’t directed at me.
“Does it matter?”
“Answer the question.”
The command carries weight. Actual weight, pressing against my awareness with a force that borders on magical. Dragon authority, bleeding through his restraint despite his best efforts.
“A merchant coalition, when I was twelve. They needed someone to break contracts their competitors had locked with blood magic.” I keep my voice flat.
Clinical. “A minor lord in the eastern territories, when I was sixteen. He was collecting Vireth witches for his personal guard—useful tools to have on hand. The Blood Regent’s predecessor, when I was nineteen.
He tried to breed the bloodline for his own purposes. ”
The air in the cell changes.
“The Regent’s predecessor.”
“Dead now. I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. One of his other experiments backfired.” I meet his gaze steadily, refusing to flinch from the heat or the anger.
He takes a step back. The distance doesn’t help—the cell is too small, and he fills every inch of it. But it’s telling. He’s retreating from his own reaction, trying to regain the restraint that keeps slipping.
“Why tell me this?” Rough. Scraped raw. “I didn’t ask for your history.”
“You asked who caged me. I answered.” I tilt my head, studying him the way he’s been studying me. “You’re not what I expected.”
“And what did you expect?”
“A monster.” The word lands in the space between us. “I watched you execute a man this morning. Watched him turn to ash while three hundred people looked on. I expected the same cold precision in here.”
“And instead?”
Instead, you’re barely holding yourself in check.
Instead, every time I mention my scars, you look like you want to burn the world down.
Instead, you’re standing in this cell interrogating me personally when you could have delegated to any of a dozen subordinates, and we both know it’s not because you care about the intelligence.
I don’t say any of that. Can’t say it. Saying it would be suicide.
“Instead, you haven’t hurt me.” I offer a safer truth. “I’ve been interrogated before. This isn’t how it usually goes.”
The silence that follows stretches long enough to become unbearable. He’s looking at me with an expression I can’t read—anger and confusion and something darker, something that makes my pulse race and my magic press harder against its dampening walls.
Then he turns and leaves without another word.
The door slams behind him. The lock engages with a heavy clunk. I’m alone again in the cell, the heat from him fading slowly from the air, my heart pounding against my ribs for reasons I refuse to examine.
Hours pass. Or maybe minutes. Time means nothing in the Ash Cells.
I lie on the stone bench and stare at the ceiling and try to make sense of what happened.
The interrogation should have been simple. Answer questions, prove value, survive another day. I’ve done it a hundred times before. The script is familiar—captor asks, captive responds, both parties weigh their positions and adjust accordingly.
But nothing about Izan Sulien fits the script.
My grandmother might have known—she knew things about our bloodline that she never had time to teach me before she died. Secrets passed down through generations of Vireth witches, lost when the cells claimed us one by one.
I’m the last. The only Vireth witch left in Pyraeth, maybe in the realm. Whatever knowledge my bloodline held about dragons and fire and the way power bends around certain kinds of resonance—it died with the others.
All I have left is instinct. And my instincts are screaming contradictions.
But—
That’s the problem. The but. The fracture in the logic that I can’t seem to seal.
I should be mapping escape routes, reading guard rotations, preparing to run the moment an opportunity presents itself.
Instead, I’m lying in the dark replaying the sound of his voice when he asked who had caged me.
Replaying the heat that flooded the cell when I answered.
Replaying the expression on his face when he looked at my scars—not disgust, not cold assessment, but something that looked disturbingly close to protectiveness.
He’s the Enforcer of the Cinder Flight. He doesn’t protect prisoners. He uses them or he kills them.
But he looked at my scars and asked who made them.
But his composure fractured when I told him.
But he left abruptly, slamming the door, as if staying another moment would break him in ways he couldn’t afford.
I press my palms against my face and breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way my grandmother taught me when the cells got too small and the dampening got too heavy.
You’re tired. You’re scared. You’re reading things into his behavior that aren’t there.
Maybe. Probably.
I sleep eventually. Fitful, shallow, full of dreams I don’t remember upon waking. The suffocating half-silence pressing against my blood.
Food appears through the slot at some point. I eat it without tasting it, my mind still working through scenarios and possibilities.
He’ll come back. I’m certain of it. Whatever shifted between us during that interrogation—whatever door cracked open that he didn’t expect—he won’t be able to leave it alone. He’ll need to understand. To categorize. To fit me into a framework that makes sense.
I need to be ready.
I spend the hours—or days, I still can’t tell—preparing. Running through everything I know about the Blood Regent’s network, organizing the information into offerings I can present strategically. Practicing the balance between useful and threatening. Not threatening enough to eliminate.
It’s a delicate dance. I’ve danced it before. But never with someone this dangerous.
The viewing slot scrapes open. Different guard this time—I can tell by the cadence of footsteps outside. This one doesn’t speak. Watches through the slot for a long moment, then closes it again.
Checking on me. Confirming I’m still here, still contained, still waiting.
Where else would I go?
I laugh at the absurdity of it. The sound echoes off depressing walls and fades into the half-silence. My magic pulses behind its dampening walls.
I trace my finger along the silver marks on my wrists. Old bindings. Old cells. Old pain that never quite fades.
This cell is different. I don’t know how yet. I don’t know why. But the way he looked at these scars—not as evidence, not as leverage, but as if they hurt him—
Different.