Chapter 99 – Dain #3
It settled something in the room. Barely.
“Does anyone recognize the place from the memory crystal?” Veshar asked.
Silence, thick as blood. Nobody spoke. Kareth was littered with clusters of old stones like that.
Tywin’s voice drifted, command and panic bleeding together. “Everyone—enough. We need to be rational. This could be an illusion, a projection. Torven used every trick before. We don’t know what’s real yet.”
Hope moved through the room in uneven flashes—Lirael clutching at it, Reyna searching for something to hold onto, even Quin standing there with his jaw locked and that last shred of possibility clenched in both hands.
But Azaria’s absence burned through my chest with a certainty logic could not touch. The ache beneath my ribs was horribly familiar. I had felt it before when she was imprisoned. This was worse. Hotter. Hollower.
Orders spilled from Tywin—scouts, scryers, urgent plans. The others moved; their hope mingling with fear. I stayed where I was, trapped beneath the weight of it.
Lyra sobbed. Elias caught her, strong arms pulling her close.
If I stayed in this feeling, I’d break.
Voices faded around me, blurred into nothing. Part of me wanted to believe it was all a trick. But deeper down—some old, stubborn place—I knew the tether hadn’t gone silent.
Magic might lie. Crystals could be tampered with.
But pain like this didn’t come from nowhere.
Not for her. Not for me.
Then Quin broke. The scream ripped out of him, something animal and raw. He lunged forward and punched the stone wall so hard the impact echoed through the chamber. Dust rained down. Stone cracked. Blood smeared across the surface where his knuckles split open.
“NO—NO—NO—NO?—“
Reyna jumped. Kael grabbed her before she could move. Veshar jolted, eyes widening.
Quin slammed his fist again. And again. Each hit was more desperate than the last.
“I’LL KILL HIM—“ Another punch. “I’LL FUCKING KILL HIM—“ Another. “I’LL TEAR HIM APART?—“
His legs gave out, and he hit his knees hard, palms braced against the stone as his shoulders shook and ragged breaths tore out of him. The sound of him crying—soft, broken, barely there—was somehow worse than the screaming.
No one knew what to do.
Because Quin never broke.
The chaos around him intensified. Reyna screamed, clinging to Kael. Thorne froze in shock. Tywin was pale and shaking. Even Veshar looked lost. Voices overlapped—shouts, sobs, the scrape of chairs against stone.
I didn’t move. Not a tremor. Not a sound. Inside me, something old stirred—that invisible tether, the one I never spoke of. It should have been gone. Snapped clean. Torn out like a root from the earth. But it wasn’t.
I closed my eyes and forced myself inward, searching the way Kalias had once shown me. Beneath the panic, beneath the chaos clawing through my head, I found it at last—a faint warmth, little more than a flickering thread.
Wrong.
If she were dead, there would be nothing. No tether. No pulse. Only cold and silence. But this was not silence. The bond was still there, weak and twisted under whatever was smothering it, but still there.
I opened my eyes. Tywin was giving orders. Veshar was shouting at the officers. Reyna was sobbing into Kael’s shoulder. Quin was struggling to breathe, still on his knees. Elias held Lyra upright. No one noticed the way I inhaled slowly, steadying my hands. I stepped forward.
“I don’t think she’s dead.”
The room froze.
Tywin’s head snapped up. “Dain—what are you basing that on?”
The lie formed cleanly, instinctively. “A feeling.”
Quin stared at me like I’d said something obscene. “A feeling? You saw her?—“
“I know what I saw.” My voice stayed even, controlled. “And the cut was too shallow. Sloppy. He’s a politician with a knife, not an executioner.”
Rylen narrowed his eyes, analyzing me. “And?”
“And Torven is predictable,” I said simply. “He reuses places. Rituals. Patterns.”
Tywin folded his arms. “Where do you think he took her?”
“Thalor.”
Veshar scowled. “Why Thalor?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Because it matters to her. It’s familiar ground. She used it as a meeting point more than once. Torven ambushed her there before. And it’s one of the few ruin clusters with ward fissures large enough to hide a magic surge.”
Kael blinked. “You’re saying he chose it because it’s sentimental to her?”
“Yes.”
Rylen swore under his breath. “Stars above… that actually makes sense.”
Tywin looked around at the sudden shift of expressions—realization and panic sharpening into purpose.
“Search parties,” he ordered. “All captains available. Comb every ruin in Thalor. Every stone, every crevice, every trace of magic.”
Veshar snapped his fingers at his lieutenants. “NOW!”
The chamber exploded into motion.
Quin lifted his head slowly. His eyes were red-rimmed and hollow. Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the stone. “I’m coming.” His voice was flat. Dead.
I nodded. “We all are.”
He stood, movements mechanical. His hands were still shaking, but his voice had gone cold.
“And when I find him,” he said quietly, “I’m going to make it last.”