Chapter 40
Rell
Hugging the shadows near the stairwell, Rell surveyed the vacant third-floor corridor of the communication tower. Violette’s platinum braid disappeared into the dimness beside him as she crouched low, with Florence and Mathias taking defensive positions at their backs.
Rell touched the hilt of his dagger, its weight reassuring against his palm. The extraction was going smoothly—too smoothly. In his experience, that usually meant the universe was about to kick him in the teeth.
“Clear,” he whispered, voice barely disturbing the air. “Let’s move to level two.”
Just as he shifted his weight to stand, boots scraped against stone further down the corridor. Rell froze, pressing back against the wall, the others instantly melding into the surrounding shadows.
Two Empire soldiers appeared at the corridor’s end, their crisp uniforms lacking the bulky armor worn by standard patrols. They strolled casually, voices carrying through the still air, oblivious to the team concealed in shadow.
“—telling you, Gerard has completely deviated us from the mission,” the taller one said, frustration evident in his clipped tone. “Get the damn girl, not play torture master to some half-dead apprentice.”
Rell’s stomach clenched. The shorter soldier snorted, fingers hooking under his weapon belt to hitch it higher on his hips.
“Where is Gerard, anyway?”
“Where do you think? He went back up to have more ‘fun’ with that boy.” The soldier’s lip curled back, his voice dropping to a guttural whisper as he spat the words like something rotten on his tongue.
“Someone needs to neuter that bastard,” the shorter one replied, and they both laughed as they continued down the corridor, voices fading into nothing.
The silence that followed felt heavier than before, charged with implications that made Rell’s blood run cold. He met Violette’s eyes in the darkness, finding his own dread mirrored there.
“There must be a way higher,” she rasped. He’d rarely heard Violette sound like that before—only when he was about to do something stupid in a way that would certainly end in death.
Rell nodded, his mind already racing through the possibilities. If Symond was being held somewhere above them, they needed to find access fast. But his thoughts kept circling back to another problem entirely—the girl they mentioned. The one Gerard was truly after.
“Elora” escaped his lips in a whisper as the pieces locked into place.
His lungs constricted, making each breath shallow.
Elora was the target all along. A cold realization washed over him—Symond’s capture could be deliberate misdirection.
Draw them here while Elora remained vulnerable, alone.
The perfect strategy to seize their true target.
He forced himself to breathe, reminding himself that Elora had a fierce spirit and the skills to protect herself.
But with every beat of his heart, the urgency to complete the mission and return to her swelled within him, quickening his pulse and sharpening his focus.
He needed to get back to her before it was too late.
Florence appeared at his shoulder. “We need to move,” she murmured, pointing toward a narrow hatch almost hidden in the shadows against the far wall. “Service ladder. Goes straight to the top floor.”
Rell grabbed the ladder’s first rung and began climbing, each motion carefully controlled to minimize noise.
The metal was cool beneath his fingers; the shaft narrow enough that his shoulders nearly brushed both sides.
Darkness pressed in around him as he ascended, the shadowmeld potion making his edges blend with the surrounding blackness.
His fingers found the metal latch. It gave way without resistance—no lock, not even the slightest security measure. Another red flag. Rell hesitated, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
He paused, holding his breath until his lungs burned. His ears strained in the darkness, catching only the rhythmic whirr-click of machinery overhead, unbroken by even the faintest scrape of a boot or whisper of conversation.
He pushed against the hatch with his shoulder. It swung open. Copper flooded his nostrils, sharp and immediate, followed by something fouler—like spoiled meat left in summer heat. His throat closed. Bile rose.
Rell hauled himself up onto the floor that leached warmth from his palms. His knees landed in something wet.
In the center of the circular chamber lay a crumpled uniform.
Dark liquid spread outward from where a head should be, instead revealing a mass of hair matted with fragments of white bone.
Pink matter oozed between splinters of skull.
A single leather eye patch hung from a strip of skin, swaying slightly with each draft from the open hatch.
He’d seen death before—hell, he’d caused it more times than he cared to count. But this wasn’t rage. It was personal. It was judgment.
Rell tore his eyes from the wet chunks of skull and followed the trail of blood spatter across the chamber floor. The signal apparatus above pulsed in rhythmic blue flashes, each one revealing another detail he wished he couldn’t see.
Symond sat slumped against a metal pole, chains binding his wrists. Even from here, Rell could see the blood caked on his face, the burns marking his exposed chest. But it was the figure beside Symond that made Rell’s breath catch in his throat.
Elora.
She knelt beside Symond, wearing only her Al’teran getup—intricate patterns of leaves and vines that emphasized rather than concealed the pallor of her skin. Every time her heart beat, the golden markings across her back pulsed with faint luminescence.
Violette slipped past him while the others were still climbing up, her usual sharp movements replaced by something gentler as she hurried to Symond and knelt beside him.
Rell stepped closer, his boots breaking the surface tension of the blood pooled across the floor. He braced himself to meet a feral gaze, to see the aftermath of violence still burning behind her eyes.
Elora turned her head slowly, her eyes finding him across the chamber. The blood—gods, there was so much of it. Under the pulsing blue light, the blood covering her looked like oil—a slick darkness painted across her mouth, trailing down her chin, splashed over her chest in a macabre constellation.
Despite the evidence of what she’d done, her eyes didn’t show what he expected. Instead, he found clarity. Her pupils didn’t dilate; her chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm. No trembling hands, no thousand-yard stare. She’d somehow gathered up the horror of her actions and sealed it away.
He looked once more at the bloody remains that had been Gerard, teeth clenching until his jaw ached.
Heat rose through his chest, a familiar burn that had nothing to do with Elora and everything to do with the circumstances that had driven her here.
Gerard deserved this end. So did The Institute.
So did every part of the system that had backed her into this corner.
The why behind her actions wasn’t a question worth asking.
He pulled off his black leather jacket and gently draped it over her shoulders, concealing the golden scars that marked her skin, even though he knew Florence had likely caught sight of them already.
He lowered himself beside her, deliberately maintaining a respectful distance, allowing her to decide if she wanted to close the distance.
She didn’t move. Something gold glinted on her finger—a ring he’d never seen before.
She followed his gaze, her bloodied hand turning slightly.
“It’s Tehvan’s,” she said, her voice eerily calm. “Gerard had it.”
Violette’s hands hovered over Symond’s wounds as if afraid to make them worse. “Symond, are you alright?” She asked gently, her whisper almost lost amid the hum of the signal apparatus.
Rell watched Symond’s face, looking for any response.
The question was absurd given the state he was in—blood-crusted curls, burns marking his chest, chains digging into raw wrists.
But he understood why Violette asked. She needed to hear his voice, needed confirmation that some part of him was still present behind those hollow eyes.
Symond didn’t speak. He barely moved, just a slight shift of his gaze toward Violette, a glimmer of acknowledgment that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“He can’t speak,” Elora said, her eyes softening as she studied Symond. “Gerard cut out his tongue.”
The blood drained from Violette’s face. Her hands, suspended in the space between them, trembled once before falling limp at her sides.
Rell tasted bile at the back of his throat. In The Hive, he’d witnessed men flayed alive; he'd seen poisons that liquefied organs from the inside out. But this—taking someone’s voice, their ability to speak their own story—struck him as a violation beyond physical torture.
“We need to move,” Florence’s tone broke the heavy silence. She appeared at the edge of the hatch, her expression tightening as she observed the scene. “The patrol schedule changes in twenty minutes. We can’t linger here.”
She tossed a small vial of green liquid toward Rell. He snatched it from mid-air, recognizing the contents immediately. A corrosive potion, powerful enough to eat through metal but specially formulated to spare flesh.
Elora stood up and retreated from Symond, clearing space for the others. When Violette broke the vial’s seal, a caustic odor stung Rell’s senses as she headed for the restraints.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Elora. She cast one brief glance toward what remained of Gerard before averting her gaze.
Her face betrayed nothing—neither revulsion nor triumph registered there.
She might have been observing rain clouds gathering on the horizon.
Whatever had transpired in this chamber had altered her in ways that transcended the bloodshed surrounding them.
∞∞∞