Chapter 34 – Azaria
AZARIA
“P-please…” The man choked on his own blood, sputtering against the gag of my blade beneath his chin. “I don’t know anything else, I swear.”
The alley stank of rot and smoke. Rats skittered through broken crates, the walls slick with damp. His back scraped against the stone where I’d pinned him, wrists bound with rough cord. Tears and blood streaked his filthy face.
“Funny thing about swearing,” I said, leaning harder until he gasped. “It loses weight when you’ve already lied.”
He tried to shake his head, but the steel kissed his throat and he froze. His pulse jumped against the blade, fast and frantic.
“Names,” I pressed. “Every contact Torven ever used. Every rat that crawled into the shadows when the council dragged him down.”
“I told you!” His voice cracked high. “I gave you everything. Gods above, I don’t?—”
I twisted the blade just enough to break his skin. Blood slipped hot against my fingers. His scream echoed off the stone. “Try again.”
A low chuckle slid out of the shadows behind me.
“Stars, Princess,” Darann drawled, stepping into the lamplight. “You've always had a talent for persuasion.”
His scent, cedar and bergamot, hit me before his words did.
“This one’s running out of time,” I said. “Make yourself useful or stay quiet.”
He crouched beside us, black leathers catching faint light. His hand fisted in the man’s hair, jerking his head back to bare more throat. “She’s not bluffing,” Darann murmured. “If you’ve got anything left rattling in that skull, I’d spill it now.”
The man sobbed, trembling so hard the cords cut deeper into his wrists.
I pressed closer, mask damp against my skin. “Five nights. Five bodies. You’ll be the sixth unless you give me something worth sparing.”
The man convulsed, stammering through wet gasps. Nothing came. I didn’t hesitate. The blade slid cleanly across his throat. A spray, a gasp, silence. His body twitched, then sagged at my boots.
I waited for something. Guilt, horror, regret. The same check I’d run after Merrik. After the second. After the third. Nothing. Again. The check itself was becoming routine. That should have worried me. It didn’t.
Darann let him fall, wiping his hand on his tunic. “Five corpses in a week. And not a trail the council can follow.”
“The palace guard is investigating,” I said, sheathing the blade.
“Let them.” He straightened, rolling his neck. “They’ve got nothing. No witnesses, no magical signatures, no pattern they can read. Every body looks different—different method, different district. They’re chasing ghosts.” He paused, mouth curving. “Literally.”
I yanked the dead man’s satchel free and tossed it to Darann. He caught it, rifled through it. Letters and ledgers—the currency of betrayal.
“Word’s spreading, though,” he added, tucking the satchel under his arm. “Taverns, markets. There are whispers everywhere. People going missing. No arrests, no patrol work. Just gone.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ve only started.”
We stood over the corpse in the quiet. I steadied my breath while he catalogued the take. Then we disappeared into the in-between and left the body for whoever found it first.
The common room was loud when I stepped in the next day: Kael sprawled across the arm of a chair, Zeph sharpened a dagger against the table despite Reyna’s complaints, Lyra curled in the corner with a book.
Elias stretched in the doorway, rolling his shoulders like he’d just left the training ring.
The moment they saw me, the noise dipped.
Not gone, but muted. Watching without watching.
“You’ve been scarce, Captain,” Kael said first, bold as always. He flicked his mist-slicked dagger upright, balancing it on a fingertip, condensation trailing from the blade like breath in winter. “Thought maybe you’d run off and joined the council. Would explain all the mysterious late nights.”
I arched a brow and crossed to the desk where Dain sat.
Reports scattered in a messy pile. I stripped off my gloves and slid the top page closer, letting the scratch of parchment cover the edge in my voice.
“After they locked me in a cell for six days? If I’m spending extra hours in their halls, it’s to make sure it doesn’t happen again. ”
That landed. Kael leaned back, lips quirking, but his eyes flicked toward Dain, just for a beat.
“I haven’t sparred with you in a week,” Elias said, quiet but direct. No accusation. Just the fact. “You never miss that long.”
“I’ve had other matters,” I answered, shifting a page aside. “The council left a mess. Someone has to clean it.”
Zeph snorted. “What a shock! Azaria, chained to her desk. Next you’ll say you’ve started enjoying meetings.”
Reyna rolled her eyes, but the smile tugging at her mouth betrayed her. “Don’t tempt her.”
The banter eased the tension a fraction, but it still clung like damp air.
“Speaking of messes,” Kael added, tone a shade too casual, “heard something down at the tavern last night. Folk say people are going missing. Not arrested or relocated, simply vanished.”
Lyra looked up from her book, brows pinched. “That’s gossip.”
“Mm.” Kael twirled his dagger. “Funny how loud gossip gets when nobody knows the truth.”
I kept my face blank, scanning words I didn’t absorb. “Rumors spread fastest when people are afraid. Best not to lend them weight.”
The conversation shifted back into teasing: Zeph making a crack about Kael’s drinking, Reyna swatting him for gouging the tabletop. Laughter rose, warm and familiar. But I caught the silence from the ones who mattered.
Thorne, watchful and unreadable, weight settled against the far wall like he’d grown out of the stone itself.
His dark eyes tracked me the way the earth reads a tremor: not looking for the surface crack, but for what shifted underneath.
I’d suspected for a long time that his magic let him sense more than he should.
Thalor blood. Earth-reader instincts. Whatever it was, he always heard what I didn’t say.
Dain was at the desk, arms folded, gaze fixed on me.
And Quinton, leaning against the wall, watched me like he was counting the lies.
They didn’t need to say anything. I knew they saw through me.
I let the squad’s laughter wash over me, expression neutral as I stacked the reports. “I’ve got work to finish. Don’t wait on me for supper.”
Kael groaned. “Captain, you’ll die buried under parchment before any mage gets you.”
“Less talking, more sharpening,” Reyna shot back, cuffing him on the shoulder.
Their banter picked up, but the weight at my back stayed—Dain’s patience, Thorne’s stillness, Quinton’s focus. I ignored them all, clutched the stack tighter, and walked to my office.
The door shut with a heavy click; the wards humming into place. Silence pressed in. I dropped the reports on the desk and braced my hands against the wood, breath ragged. Ink and parchment blurred before I forced them into focus.
Names. The man gave me names last night. Some I already knew, some new; threads woven into Torven’s web. I scribbled in the margins, crossing out the dead. Darann would be hunting the next by now. He never waited long.
My chest tightened, not with guilt, but with something hungrier. A need to keep going. They thought isolation would break me. Instead, they forged me into something worse. I wasn’t their captain inside these walls, not when the wards sealed out the noise. I was a weapon they’d made.
A knock. Soft but firm.
“Azaria,” Dain’s voice.
I shoved the darker notes aside, pulled a fresh report to the front, quill poised in ink. “Come in.”
The door opened. He filled the frame: broad shoulders, that gaze that missed nothing.
His eyes flicked from the council papers to me.
To my hands. I saw the moment he noticed.
The bloodied knuckles. The half-healed scabs no healer had touched.
He closed the door behind him. Then he locked it. That told me everything.
“Your knuckles,” he said.
My hand stilled on the quill. I flexed my fingers like it meant nothing. “They’ll mend.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Then don’t ask.”
He moved into the room. Not closer to me, but to the chair across from the desk. Sat. Folded his arms. The posture that meant he could stay all night.
“I’m giving you a chance, Az.” His voice was quiet. Level. “Tell me yourself.”
My stomach dropped, but my face stayed blank. “Tell you what?”
He held my gaze for a long beat. I watched something shift behind his eyes: not anger, not yet. Disappointment.
“Quinton came to my office the day you visited him. He knows you’re planning something. He doesn’t know what,” Dain paused. “I do.”
The room went cold.
“So I’m not asking if something’s going on.” His voice stayed even, but the edges were steel. “I’m asking why you didn’t tell me.”
I set the quill down and looked at him. No point in pretending now.
“Because you’d try to stop me.”
“No,” he leaned forward. “I’d try to help. And you know that. Which means you shut me out on purpose.”
“If you’re involved?—”
“I’m already involved. I’ve been involved since the moment Quinton walked into my office.” He held my gaze. “The question is whether you let me in or I keep following you in the dark.”
My jaw tightened.
“I’ve seen this before, Azaria. I was there last time.”
The words landed like a blade between the ribs. Last time. The spiral after Eris. Mission after mission, bounty after bounty. Fights I didn’t bother stopping. Coming back drunk, wounded, thinner every day until Dain dragged me out of a safehouse covered in someone else’s blood.
“This isn’t like last time,” I said.
“It’s exactly like last time. Except now you’re better at hiding it.”
My hands curled against the desk until the wood bit into my palms. “What do you want me to say, Dain? That I’ll stop? That I’ll sit behind this desk and write reports while the people who tried to kill me walk free?”
“I want you to stop lying to me.”
The words hit cleanly. There was no anger or accusation. Just Dain, stripped to the bone.
“I will not let them get away with this,” I said. “Not this time.”
“I’m not asking you to.” He held my gaze. “But you walked this path before. And I was the one who pulled you out. I don’t know if I can do that twice.”
“You won’t have to.”
“You said that last time too.”
Silence. The kind that pressed against your chest.
“Whatever line you’ve decided to cross,” he said, “don’t walk it alone. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Careful what you’re offering,” I muttered. “I don’t plan to turn back.”
“I know.” He didn’t look away. “I’m still offering.”
Something cracked in my chest, just for a moment. My throat tightened. I shoved it down and looked back at the reports, fingers curling against the parchment until they left creases.
When I risked a glance up, his gaze hadn’t moved. No judgement, no horror. Just that worry he wore like armor: the kind that said he’d follow me into whatever I was building, not because he approved, but because he refused to let me build it alone.
“Go home, Dain,” I said quietly. “I’ll be fine.”
He stood. Paused at the door. “No, you won’t,” he said. “But I’ll be here anyway.”
Then he left. And the silence closed back in.