Chapter 100 – Darann
DARANN
The rug muffled Ren’s footsteps as he slipped into my office—steady, unhurried, the way a man who’s survived Solmarin for thirty-odd years learns to move.
He wasn’t some green recruit; he’d lived through enough godsdamned chaos to earn every scar on his face and every silver thread in his hair.
Loyal as hells. Reliable. Never balked at a job, even when the job involved mopping up the aftermath of a godsdamned distillery explosion caused by three drunk idiots trying to “improve” the brewing process.
The one man I trusted to keep the place running when everything else went to shit.
Still, I didn’t look up.
“Well?” I muttered around the quill between my teeth, flipping a page. “Tell me the idiots didn’t set my favorite distillery on fire again.”
Ren exhaled through his nose, the closest he ever came to laughing. “We resolved it. Payment’s in the lockbox. And the widow’s boy agreed to move.”
Of fucking course. I wouldn’t even be surprised if this became a weekly chore.
I scrawled a signature with a flourish and shoved the page aside. “Good. Remind me to bribe the foreman into something resembling retirement before he gets us all killed. Man’s got the judgement of a stunned ox and the impulse control of a feral goat.”
Ren’s expression didn’t shift, but the corner of his mouth ticked up. Barely. He was amused, which meant he was taking liberties.
“Boss… you look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.” I threw the quill onto the desk and leaned back hard enough the chair groaned under me.
“I’ve been awake twenty-three fucking hours, my eyes feel like someone scraped them with volcanic rock, and if I don’t get a firewine soon, I’m going to set half of Solmarin on fire and blame you for it. ”
This time, Ren’s smirk almost made it to a full smile. “Noted,” he said dryly.
“Get out,” I said, waving him off. “Before your face pisses me off more.”
Ren’s salute was lazy and deliberately mocking, but still respectful somehow. He pivoted and slipped out; the door clicking shut behind him.
Silence, finally.
I rubbed my eyes, dragged the light-bend schematic back toward me, and glared at the runes like they’d personally insulted me.
I’d been fine-tuning this little bastard of a spell for weeks—weaving shadow density through a luminary distortion field, stabilizing the refractive edge with a particle-thread anchor. In theory, it should bend light enough to shroud the caster without collapsing the shadow core.
In practice?
It was a stubborn motherfucker.
“Light-bending… shadow-wrapping…” I muttered, tapping the rune with the quill. “Why don’t you do what the fuck you’re told, you fucking prick?”
The seventh iteration still flickered under pressure. Too unstable. Too volatile to scrap. I retraced the tail stroke?—
Heat lanced across my wrist.
I froze.
The ink under my skin—thin, intricate lines curling in a pattern only two people alive could read—lit with a low, simmering pulse.
Wrong.
Slow.
Growing.
My heart lurched.
“…Princess?”
Nothing.
The heat intensified, climbing from warm to scalding in seconds. The air thickened. Magic pooled, dense and heavy.
I shot to my feet so fast the chair screeched backward across the floor. The tattoo flared white. Then the world tore open.
A silent split ripped through the air above my desk. Shadows convulsed, the light warped, and a knot of dark smoke burst outward in a violent spiral.
Someone—
Azaria hit the rug hard—limp, boneless, like a broken puppet thrown from the godsdamned sky. Blood splattered across the boards in thick, wet drops.
“Fuck—AZARIA!”
I dropped to my knees beside her. Her head lolled, hair matted with blood and dirt. The gash across her throat was jagged—not deep enough to kill quickly, but enough to bleed her out slowly. Sloppy. A coward’s stroke from someone who didn’t know how to use a blade.
Her wrists were raw, rope-burned and bloody where she’d torn herself free. Bruises mottled her arms, her ribs, all over her. Her clothes were shredded, soaked through with blood and dirt.
She’d attuned to the tattoo. Reached for me through the link. Used the last of her strength to pull herself here.
Her pulse stuttered beneath my fingers. Threadbare.
Alive, but barely.
I lunged across the room and ripped open the cabinet, grabbing the best enchanted healing cloth I owned—the expensive one, woven with regrowth threads. I slammed it against her throat, pressing down hard. Her body jerked weakly at the pressure.
“Stay with me,” I hissed. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Her eyelids fluttered. Didn’t open. Her breathing hitched—wet, wrong, and rattling.
“Not again,” I whispered, my voice cracking fast. “Don’t you do this to me again.”
I turned toward the door and roared:
“REN! REN, YOU FUCKING BASTARD—GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE, NOW!”
Boots pounded down the hallway. The door crashed open. Ren skidded inside, saw the blood, and froze.
“Boss—stars above—is that?—?!”
“Yes, it’s her!” I snarled. “And she’s DYING!”
He froze—long enough for my temper to snap.
“FIND ME A FUCKING HEALER!” I bellowed. “NOW! I don’t care who you need to threaten—fucking GO!”
Ren bolted, slamming the door behind him.
I turned back to Azaria, pressing harder on the cloth as more blood seeped through. The runework glowed faintly, working to seal the wound, but the cut was messy—shallow enough to survive, deep enough to make her suffer. Her breath stuttered again.
“Stars damn you, Princess…” My voice shook with something I’d kill anyone else for noticing. “You’re supposed to be better at not dying.”
Her fingers twitched, dragging across the rug until they brushed my knee. Instinct reaching for something familiar. I caught her hand.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured, lowering my forehead to hers. “I’ll fix this. I promise.”
Her lips parted, but no words came, just a wet gurgle. Searing rage flooded me. I looked up slowly.
The shadows in the room shifted. Thickened. Reached toward me like they recognized something hungry. I smiled back at them, slow and dark.
“Oh, Princess,” I breathed, lethal.
“When I find out who did this, I’m going to hunt him down and kill him for you.”
Where the fuck was Ren?
The enchanted cloth pulsed weakly under my hand, the glow fading from gold to sputtering amber. I peeled back one edge to check.
The bleeding had slowed, but the wound was still split in two places—ragged edges refusing to knit fully. Too much damage. Too much blood lost. A few more minutes and the cloth would burn out.
Azaria’s breath, at least, wasn’t gurgling anymore. Small mercy. I’d take it. I pressed harder, feeling the cloth’s magic gutter like a candle in the wind.
As if summoned by the threat alone, pounding footsteps thundered down the hallway. The door burst open and Ren rushed in, dragging a man by the arm.
“Here!” Ren snapped. “This is the best healer I could?—“
I didn’t let him finish. I grabbed the front of the healer’s robes with one bloody hand and slammed him against the wall, hard enough to rattle his teeth. The man made a strangled sound.
“You see her?” I snarled in his face. “She’s dying. If you don’t fix her, I’ll put you in the ground next to whoever did this. Understood?”
His head bobbed frantically.
“Y-yes—yes, sir?—“
“Get to fucking work.”
I shoved him toward Azaria.
He dropped to his knees beside her, hands hovering, assessing, muttering incantations under his breath. His magic flared over her throat as it threaded through the torn flesh, meeting the last of the cloth’s fading enchantment.
The cloth hissed, dimmed, then disintegrated into ash. Azaria’s breathing steadied; still shallow, but steady. The healer exhaled in relief. I did not.
Ren hovered near the door, tense. The room stayed silent except for the healer’s muttering and the faint hum of magic knitting torn flesh.
Minutes dragged. I counted her breaths. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Finally, the healer sagged back, sweating. “She’s—she’s stable. Bleeding stopped. The wound is closing, but she needs rest. Water. She’s lost a lot of blood, but—but she’ll live.”
Stable.
Barely.
Good enough.
The healer stood.
“One more thing,” I said quietly.
He froze.
“You don’t speak of what you saw. Not to anyone. Understood?”
He nodded so fast his hair flopped into his face. Ren escorted him out. Returned. Locked the door.
I sat back on my heels beside Azaria, breath shaking out of me in one long exhale. She was pale—too pale—but alive.
After a moment, her eyes opened. A sliver. Cloudy, unfocused, but aware.
Her lips moved, barely audible: “…I bled… all over your fancy rug.”
I barked a laugh. “Princess, if you think I give a shit about the rug right now, you’ve lost more blood than I thought.”
Her mouth twitched before her eyes closed again.
I leaned close, brushing a blood-matted strand of hair from her face. Voice low and razor-sharp. “Now, Princess…”
A beat.
“…tell me what the fuck happened.”
Azaria’s eyes opened again—dazed, unfocused—and she rasped:
“…help me up.”
“No,” I snapped automatically.
She gave me that stubborn, murderous look that meant she was conscious enough to be a pain in my ass.
I exhaled through my teeth. “Fine. But slowly.”
Ren and I moved together without needing to speak—him taking her right side, me her left. We lifted her carefully, setting her against the edge of the desk. Her legs trembled, so I kept a hand braced against her back.
Ren grabbed a cup from the sideboard and filled it. He brought it over and placed it in her hands.
“Slow,” he said gruffly. “You’ll choke otherwise.”
She drank in tiny sips, breath shuddering. When she finished, she handed it back with a faint smile.
“Thanks, Ren.”
Ren gave a curt nod, ears turning a suspicious shade of red before he stepped back to hover near the door again.
She drew a breath. It rattled, thin and pained. “Torven Kaelor got me. He took me to some ruins. Thalor… I think.”
I growled. “I’m going to skin that bastard alive. Slowly.”
She flinched, not at me, but at the memory. Her hand shook as she brushed dried blood from her throat.