Chapter 50 Cage Your Problems
(Before They Cage You)
Kazimir
The portal snapped shut behind us, and we deposited our final batch of unconscious charges near the guest quarters.
Five more heroic bloodlines from Valmont sprawled across the stone, their gentle snoring a stark contrast to the chaos of their collection.
Thorne lifted the sack with Viktor Moorhazi—a bastard with the right bloodline and wrong luck—over his shoulder.
I scanned the courtyard, searching for a particular flash of golden hair.
The scrying crystal was silent in my pocket. Arabella hadn’t contacted me again since her warning about Zaraiah, and I hadn’t reached out either. Better to wait until she was here. Until I could touch her and remember why I was fighting so hard to stay myself.
“Lady Blackrose is on her way.” Vex materialized from the shadows near the guest quarters, her black hair catching the afternoon light. “Should arrive within the hour. Lord Sebastian is with her.”
My jaw tightened. “Why aren’t you with her?”
“Because someone needed to handle the twenty-two families currently trying to murder each other in the guest quarters.” She stepped over an unconscious juggler. “Did you know the Shellfords and Moonbays have a three-generation blood feud over fishing rights?”
“I don’t care if they have a thousand-year war over who invented the wheel.” Shadows coiled at my feet. “Zaraiah attacked Arabella. The Chair of Whispers ambushed my wife while you were here playing referee.”
Vex’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know—”
“She’s fine.” I forced my voice level. “But you should have—”
A surge of power rippled through the air, dark and familiar. A single magical signature pulsed from the forest below, just beyond the swamp’s edge. The wards chimed—not the bone-deep shriek of an attack, but the insistent warning of someone deliberately triggering them.
Someone powerful wanted to be noticed.
As one, the lightning bridges all shut down as a precaution. The new wards might overreact to a squirrel’s sneeze, but I’d rather that than miss a genuine threat.
Vex grimaced. “I hope no one important was on the bridges. Who would be dumb enough to trigger the defenses after what we did to the Hero’s Guild?”
“It’s the Alchemist.” I flexed my fingers, feeling the runes beneath my skin pulse with interest. “This should be enlightening.”
Vex’s expression tightened. “The Alchemist doesn’t make social calls.”
“No, they don’t.” I was already drawing the portal sigils in the air. Whatever they wanted, it was important enough to risk approaching Skyspire alone. “Have Griffin prepare that doppelganger kit of his. And Vex? We’re not finished discussing this.”
Before she could ask any questions, I ripped open a portal to the forest edge.
I stepped through darkness onto soft forest loam, the portal snapping shut silently behind me.
Twenty feet away, the Alchemist stood with their hands raised in a gesture of peace, their robes shifting through hypnotic shades of green and violet.
No army. No backup. Just them and the humid air of the swamp.
“Let me guess,” I said conversationally. “You’re here to tell me the Syndicate is tired of me.”
“So you know, then.” The Alchemist lowered their hands slowly.
I let shadows pool at my feet, a casual display. “Zaraiah attacked my wife.”
The Alchemist’s visible features beneath the mask shifted—eyes widening, mouth parting slightly. Their fingers twitched in that nervous pattern. “Is she harmed?”
“She survived.” I let ice creep into my tone. “No thanks to the task you set her on. Zaraiah got away, though.”
Their hands fluttered upward, then dropped.
The robes flickered through a rapid sequence of colors—gold to crimson to deep purple—before settling on an uneasy amber.
They made an irritated huff. “That explains why Zaraiah didn’t contact me directly.
But she’s voting with the others—Revek, Gilt, Vespera, and Garrick are invoking Protocol Nine.
” Their voice held none of its usual musical quality.
“They want you removed from the Syndicate. Permanently.”
“And you came all this way to warn me?” I tilted my head. “What do you want in return?”
“Nothing.” They paused. “Consider this an investment in future cooperation.”
The air between us crackled with unspoken tension. The Alchemist had always been the most pragmatic of the chairs, the one most likely to see beyond immediate gain to long-term advantage. But there was something else in their posture now. Something careful. Calculated.
“There’s more,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
The Alchemist’s masked face tilted, studying me with an intensity that made the runes beneath my skin itch. “Yes. Though this next part is… delicate.”
They took a step closer, and I felt their magic probe at mine—not attacking, but analyzing. Reading. “Your magical signature is layered,” they said quietly. “Two consciousnesses occupying one vessel.”
Every muscle in my body tensed. “Careful.”
“The Shadow King.” They said it like a diagnosis, clinical and certain. “You have a piece of him inside you.”
“How long have you known?” My voice was deadly quiet.
“I suspected after the restaurant incident, and then again during our ritual at the God Spire. When you and Lady Blackrose redirected the ley lines, I felt two distinct magical signatures flowing through you—one was your dominion magic, but the other…” They paused.
“The other was the same corrupted resonance I’ve been tracking through Solandris’s ley lines. ”
Shadows erupted around us, a cage forming before I’d consciously commanded it. The Alchemist didn’t even flinch.
“And then there’s the Heirloom itself,” they continued calmly.
“The artifact was designed to contain the Shadow King’s power—forged from his essence, bound by Soriven’s magic.
It resists you because it recognizes what’s inside you.
It’s trying to protect itself from being corrupted by the very entity it was created to imprison. ”
“How do you know it’s been resisting me?”
The Alchemist tsked. “Would you have made such a conventional move against Solandris’s northern outpost if you had the full might of the Heirloom at your disposal?
” They spread their hands. “I came here to give you a chance to explain. To tell me I’m wrong.
Or to confirm what I already know and discuss what happens next. ”
“And if I don’t feel like explaining myself?”
“Then you’ll do exactly what you’re doing now.
” The Alchemist gestured to the cage surrounding them, but their tone held a note of approval.
“I expected you to be pragmatic. You can’t afford to let this information spread.
Not yet. Not until you’ve consolidated your power base and dealt with whatever’s happening inside your head. ”
The Shadow King’s essence stirred within me. Interesting. They know what we are and came anyway.
I shoved the thought aside. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to be my guest for a while. A very comfortable, very secure guest.”
“I assumed as much.” The Alchemist’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “I have conditions.”
“You’re in no position to negotiate.”
“On the contrary. I’m in the perfect position.
” They nodded to the forest around us. “I came alone, yes. But I’m not foolish.
My creations are extensions of my magic, Kazimir.
There’s a vial sitting in every chair’s quarters right now, and in the courts of a dozen kingdoms besides—a vial that is perfectly invisible and inert, so long as I remain comfortable and connected to my craft.
Sever that connection—kill me, suppress my magic, or neglect me long enough for my focus to slip—and those vials open themselves.
” Their half smile sharpened. “You can imagine what a detailed account of your condition would do in the wrong hands.”
Another threat for the collection.
“What conditions?”
“You hold up your end of our agreement regarding the ley lines. We finish what we started at the God Spire—stop the Shadow King from spreading. And when you’re ready to deal with your situation, you allow me to help.
” They paused. “I’m one of the Weavers, Kazimir.
If anyone can help you separate yourself from the Shadow King without destroying you, it’s me. ”
“Why help me at all?”
“Because the alternative is watching the Shadow King fully possess you and destroy everything I’ve worked to build.
” Their voice held genuine concern. “And because despite everything, you’re the most interesting thing to happen to the Western Realms in centuries.
It would be a shame to waste that potential. ”
I stared at them for a long moment, weighing options, calculating risks. The Alchemist knew too much. But they were also offering something I desperately needed—expertise in the very magic that bound me to this ancient evil.
“Fine.” The shadows around them darkened and compressed until the Alchemist was bound with their hands at their sides. “But you’ll forgive me if I take precautions.”
“Of course. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t. Though I should warn you,” they continued, “the other chairs are coming. When they move against you, it won’t be just a vote. It’ll be an execution.”
“I look forward to watching them try. Now then.” I conjured a portal back to Skyspire, and for good measure, gagged the Alchemist in case they decided to blurt out any inconvenient truths. “Let’s get you settled. I’m thinking one of our well-appointed dungeon suites.”
We emerged on the platform outside the Dungeons Complex just as Arabella appeared at the far end of the lightning bridge, which had just been restored.
Everything else ceased to matter.