Lord of the Forsaken

I.

brYNN

Brynn pressed her ear against cold metal, blocking out her own breathing and the creak of the manor settling into the night. She listened for the pins shifting inside, each click telling her what to do next.

Fifth pin catching. Seventh needed pressure from below. The third had been filed down. Sloppy work from whoever had serviced it last.

Listen to the lock, Brynn. Every lock has a voice. Learn to hear it, and no door in the kingdom can keep you out.

Two years since they'd strung Gareth up in the square, and his voice still lived in her head. Kept her fed. Kept her one step ahead of the noose.

Barely.

She adjusted her grip on the tension wrench and slid her rake deeper into the lock. Her picks were works of art, each one shaped and filed to specifications that had taken months to perfect. In the darkness of this cellar, they were extensions of her fingertips.

Sixth pin. Stubborn little bastard.

The kingdom's laws were clear about thieves: the first offense cost you a hand, the second cost you your head. Those who survived the first punishment had two choices: starve in the streets or take the king's coin to die on some foreign battlefield.

She'd seen too many of Gareth's students take that coin. The lucky ones came back with more missing limbs. The unlucky ones didn't come back at all.

Better to be very, very good at not getting caught.

The seventh pin surrendered with a satisfying click. Too easy.

She froze, tension wrench halfway through its final turn.

In ten years of this work, easy meant trapped.

Behind her, the corridor was silent. No footsteps, no hushed conversations, no jingle of weapons announcing guards. Just the manor settling and her own pulse hammering in her ears.

But she was already inside the mechanism, and backing out empty-handed meant another week of watered-down stew that tasted like dishwater and regret.

The merchant who'd hired her had been specific: Roderick's private vault, third level down, behind the wine cellar.

Take the small strongbox, leave everything else, and then disappear.

Twenty silver pieces. A month of real food and a bed that didn't smell like horses.

Worth it.

She finished the turn. The lock clicked open. She eased the door back on well-oiled hinges, and the silence sent ice flooding her veins.

She pushed the door open slowly, every instinct screaming that she should be running in the opposite direction.

The vault should have reeked of metal and coin. Instead, this place smelled like stone and age. Her breath misted in the darkness, which made no sense three levels underground in late spring.

She fumbled for the oil lamp at her belt, hands steady despite the growing certainty that she was somewhere she absolutely should not be.

The flame caught, casting shadows across the walls of black stone. Carvings covered every surface. Skulls with empty eye sockets. Ribs like ladder rungs. Bones arranged in patterns she didn't recognize.

Get out. The voice in her head sounded like Gareth. Get out now.

She took a step backward toward the door.

It slammed shut.

She spun, grabbed the handle, and pulled.

Locked. From the outside.

She cursed the merchant who'd hired her. The suspiciously detailed intelligence about Roderick's vault. The conveniently easy locks that led her down to this exact spot.

She'd walked right into it because the pay was good, and she'd thought she was clever.

Gareth would've smacked the back of her head for missing the signs. "There's no such thing as an easy score, girl. Just traps you haven't spotted yet."

Her lamp revealed a circular chamber stretching upward into darkness, the domed ceiling lost beyond the light's reach. The floor beneath her boots was so smooth she almost slipped.

And there, in the exact center of the room, sat a chest.

Even from across the chamber, she could tell it didn't belong to this place. Where the stonework spoke of ages long dead and buried, the chest looked maintained. Cared for. Fresh footprints in the dust around it. Recent visitors, multiple sets, all leading to and from that single point.

Whatever was in that chest, someone valued it enough to keep returning.

Why?

Voices echoed down the stairwell outside. Multiple people. Moving fast, not bothering with stealth now that the door was sealed.

She crossed to the chest. If she was trapped, if this was all a setup, she needed to know what she'd been set up for.

The chest was dark wood, bound with silver, its surface covered in symbols that matched the walls. Five keyholes were arranged around a central mechanism. The most sophisticated lock she'd ever seen.

And it was already open. Lid raised just enough to show darkness within.

Her jaw clenched. Of course it was open.

The voices grew louder outside, words becoming clearer.

"—been down here long enough. Move faster, you idiots."

No time to think, no time to plan. She lifted the lid.

Twelve tools lay nestled in black silk. Dark metal that seemed to drink her lamplight, edges that shifted when she tried to focus on them. Each one was engraved with words:

Ward-singer. Soul-binder. Death-reader.

Names that meant nothing and everything.

She reached for what looked like a delicate pick, fingers closing around cold metal.

The world shifted.

Heat flooded up her arm, shocking in its intensity. The tool recognized her. She could feel it responding to her touch, humming with a frequency that resonated in her bones.

She gasped and nearly dropped it, but the tool wouldn't let her. It had warmed to match her skin, fitting her grip like it had been made for her hand.

Whispers filled the chamber. The echo of voices speaking in a language that felt familiar, even though she couldn't understand it. They came from the tools themselves, and they sounded... welcoming?

What are you?

The shadows around her lamp deepened, stretching toward her fingers like they were curious. Like they recognized something in her they'd been waiting for.

She grabbed a second tool, shaped like a key but with edges that refused to stay still. That same warmth spread through her hand.

Boots thundered on the stairs outside.

She couldn't make sense of it. Couldn't understand what was happening. She shoved both tools into the hidden pockets of her vest, the warmth pressing against her ribs like a second heartbeat.

Whatever these things were, she wasn't leaving them for whoever had set this trap.

If someone wanted them badly enough to lure a thief down here, they were valuable.

And if they were valuable, she could use them.

Figure out what they were, sell them if possible, or at least bargain for her life with them.

Assuming they didn’t kill her first.

The iron door crashed open, and the first guard rounded the corner, sword drawn and torch held high. Behind him came three more in House Greymont colors, and finally Lord Edmund Greymont himself, younger son of a duke who was hungry for recognition and willing to do questionable things to get it.

His dark eyes swept the chamber, landing on her standing beside the open chest. His smile widened into something that made her skin crawl.

"Well, well. The infamous lockbreaker, finally caught in the act." He stepped closer, studying her face. "Though I must say, your reputation for choosing targets doesn't quite match your performance tonight."

She kept her face blank. "I was hired to steal from Roderick's vault. Wrong room. Just bad intelligence."

"Oh, I don't think there's anything wrong about tonight at all." His eyes gleamed. "In fact, I think it's going exactly as planned."

One of the guards moved toward the open chest, reaching for the remaining tools.

"Don't—"

The guard's scream cut off Edmund's warning as the tool seared his palm. He stumbled backward, clutching his hand, and the smell of burned flesh filled the chamber.

"Death magic," another guard whispered, making a warding sign that wouldn't do him a damn bit of good. "She's cursed."

"I'm not cursed!" The words came out sharper than she intended, defensive in a way that made her sound guilty. "I don't even know what's happening!"

But even as she said it, she felt the lie. The tools weren't hurting her. They felt protective. Like they recognized something in her touch that made her safe from whatever had just burned a man's hand to the bone.

Which meant she was special. Lucky her.

Lord Edmund stepped closer.

"Fascinating," he said softly. "Very fascinating indeed."

He gestured to his guards. "Take her upstairs."

The guards moved in, spreading out to cut off any escape routes.

Brynn moved.

She faked left toward the widest gap between guards, then pivoted right at the last second. The first guard lunged to grab her arm. She twisted and drove her fist into his throat. He staggered back, gagging.

"Don't hurt her!" Edmund's voice cracked through the chamber.

The hesitation was all she needed. She ducked under another guard's outstretched arms and made for the door.

Almost there. Almost—

Something slammed into her from behind. The guard she'd hit tackled her to the stone floor, driving the air from her lungs. She bucked and thrashed, got an elbow into someone's face, and heard a satisfying crunch of cartilage.

"Damn it, hold her still!"

Hands grabbed her arms, her legs, her hair. She kicked hard and connected with something soft—a grunt of pain. But there were too many of them, and they were too strong.

They hauled her upright, pinning her arms behind her back with enough force that her shoulders screamed in protest.

She was breathing hard, heart hammering. One guard had a bloody nose from her elbow. Another was clutching his ribs from her kick. The one who'd tackled her was still wheezing, and he looked furious.

She fought down a smile.

"Spirited," Edmund observed, brushing dust from his fine coat. "Good. You'll need that."

He nodded to the guards. "Bind her hands. And don't try to take those tools from her. They've clearly chosen their keeper."

The guards wrapped rough rope around her wrists, tight enough to bite. One of them patted her vest pockets, felt the tools inside, but didn't try to remove them.

Edmund turned toward the door, already losing interest. "Bring her."

The guards dragged her toward the stairs. She fought every step, but it was useless now. They had her, and they knew it.

The tools pressed warm against her ribs, humming softly, almost like they were trying to comfort her.

Or maybe claiming her, piece by piece, as she was dragged toward whatever fate Edmund had planned.