Chapter 10
Elira
I was jerked awake by a sudden shove to my shoulder. My eyes flew open, heart already thudding, lungs dragging in air like I’d surfaced from deep water.
Phoenix stood over me, his face unreadable in the low light.
“Get up,” he said quietly, but firmly. “Come on.”
I scrambled upright, instinct pushing me to the far side of the bed as I tried to shake the fog of sleep from my mind. The room, sterile and dim, suddenly felt smaller with him inside it.
“Where are we going?” I asked, slipping my feet into the white cotton slippers they'd left me. My voice came out tighter than I meant it to.
Phoenix didn’t answer right away. He waited until I was standing before turning toward the door.
“We have a couple of questions for you,” he said, calm as ever. “That’s all.”
I narrowed my eyes, suspicion crawling up my spine. “Why can’t you ask them here?”
He turned back slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching—not a smile, more like a flicker of something harder. “Because he wants to be the one to ask.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who’s he?”
Phoenix didn’t answer.
Instead, he opened the door.
And waited.
I followed, my feet silent against the cold stone floor, but my heart thundered in my chest like it wanted out.
So this is it. My interrogation.
“Where’s Finn?” I asked, voice low, forced calm.
“He’s fine. I told you that already.”
“When will you release him?”
Phoenix didn’t break stride, but something in his posture tensed. “I’m not at liberty to say that.”
I frowned. “Then what are you at liberty to say? Are you planning to torture me? Hurt me?”
That stopped him. He turned on a dime, eyes suddenly blazing with a flash of anger I hadn’t seen before.
“Do you really think we’d bother feeding you if we planned to hurt you?” he snapped.
I tilted my head, unfazed. “A good torturer likes a healthy canvas. Where’s the fun in someone already broken?”
His jaw clenched, a muscle feathering in his cheek, but he didn’t speak. I could feel the shift—like I’d touched a nerve.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to get from me,” I added, voice softer now, almost weary. “But you’re going to be disappointed. I’m nobody.”
Phoenix’s expression flickered for just a second—something unreadable in his eyes. Pity? Regret?
“I guess we’ll find out then,” Phoenix replied, his voice clipped and calm.
We walked down a long, echoing corridor—the kind that made every footstep feel like a warning. At the far end stood a small, boxy room with smooth metal walls and no windows. I hesitated on the threshold.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, frowning. “A cage?”
The doors slid open with a low hiss, revealing a tight, sterile chamber that wasn’t even big enough to lie down in. A panel of buttons glowed faintly on one wall like a mechanical constellation.
Phoenix gave me a sidelong glance. “You’ve never seen an elevator before?”
“A what?”
“An elevator. A travel chamber. It takes us where we need to go.”
I took a step back, my eyes narrowing. “Is this magic?”
“No. Mechanics,” he said, and then added, as if that would soothe me, “You’re perfectly safe.”
I didn’t like the way he reached for me—didn’t like the steel in his fingers as he caught my arm.
“Stop saying that,” I snapped, yanking free. “And don’t touch me.”
I glanced around, heart speeding up as I searched the room for any crack or shadow I could phase into—any escape route at all. But Phoenix was already watching me too closely.
“Don’t bother,” he said, reading me like a book. “Your powers won’t work here. This entire tower is warded. You’re locked out.”
I didn’t believe him—until I tried. The moment I reached for my power, it recoiled like it’d slammed into an invisible wall. Pain lanced up my spine. I flinched, breath caught.
Phoenix arched a brow and gave me a smug, almost pitying smile. “Told you.”
Just before the doors began to slide shut, a voice rang down the hallway.
“Wait!”
We both turned.
Leo loped toward us, all swagger and irreverence, a grin splitting his face. “Don’t go without me, darling.”
He slid in beside me just as the doors sealed shut, his presence both maddening and—strangely—less terrifying than the silence Phoenix had brought.
“Always room for one more,” Leo added with a wink.
As the doors hissed shut behind us, the chamber shuddered to life. I felt it lurch—then drop. Down, down, down. My stomach twisted with the motion, and I gripped the railing, knuckles white. It felt like we were sinking into the bowels of the earth.
I shut my eyes, forcing myself to breathe through the rising panic.
Every second trapped in that tiny space with two beings who radiated power like heat off a forge was a second too long.
Their magic pressed against my skin, thick in the air, like I was standing between two thunderstorms just waiting to break.
Please, just let this be over soon.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity carved into moments, the chamber slowed. The motion stopped. The doors slid open with a soft mechanical sigh.
I released a shaky breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“Not a fan of tight spaces, huh?” Leo asked, his voice soft for once as he watched me carefully, his grin tempered with something else—concern, maybe, or curiosity.
Before I could answer, Phoenix gave me a none-too-gentle nudge and I stumbled forward into a new space.
The corridor was long and narrow, the air cold enough to bite. Shadows pooled in the corners, thick and watchful. The stone walls pressed in on either side like the teeth of something ancient.
Ah. This was more like it.
The dungeons.
I straightened slowly, swallowing the fear that rose in my throat like bile. My slippers slapped on the stone as we walked. Above me, the ceiling loomed low and oppressive, and I cast a quick glance up at it, as if some divine force might reach down and offer mercy.
The space felt heavy. It weighed me down.
For the briefest second, I imagined Finn beside me—his hand in mine, his steady presence like a shield. But then I pushed the thought away. I was glad he wasn’t here. This was my punishment for my failure. Whatever this was… I deserved to face it alone.
They brought me here to break me.
And maybe—just maybe—they would.
The corridor ended at a reinforced steel door, and I saw the massive figure of Slade waiting outside. The door surface was etched with strange runes that shimmered faintly in the torchlight. Phoenix stepped aside as it creaked open, the sound too loud in the tense silence.
I stepped through on my own.
The room was bare—stone walls, a metal table bolted to the floor, two chairs. One was empty.
The other was not.
Thorne sat in it like he owned the world.
Elbows braced on the table, fingers steepled beneath his chin, his sharp gaze slicing right through me the moment I entered.
His presence filled the space, cold and crushing.
His magic slithered out in thin, invisible tendrils that brushed against my skin like cold fingers.
I stopped dead.
Slade followed us in, silent as a shadow, and took up position by the closed door. He crossed his arms and leaned back, blocking the only exit like a stone wall with a pulse.
“Sit,” Thorne said.
Just that. One word. Flat, empty.
I considered staying on my feet just to spite him—but the look in his eyes told me this wasn’t the moment to pick a fight. So, I sat, spine straight, chin lifted, pretending I had more courage than I did.
“I want to make something very clear,” Thorne said, his voice smooth and sharp as a knife’s edge. “I don’t care about your lies. I don’t care about your sob stories. I’m not here to be your friend, or your enemy. I’m here for the truth. And I will get it.”
“I already told Phoenix,” I said, my voice shaky, “I’m nobody. I have nothing to offer.”
“Then this will be very quick,” Thorne replied, almost pleasantly.
“But I don’t think you’re nobody. See…” He leaned forward, and the air in the room grew heavy.
“Shadowmancers don’t just appear in my city.
They don’t live like rats in hovels, then explode into smoke within the warded walls of the keep. ”
I kept my mouth shut. My fingers clenched in my lap.
“Tell me where you came from,” he said softly.
My lips parted, but nothing came out. A pressure was building in my skull, gentle at first, then sharper, like the scraping of fingernails behind my eyes.
I winced.
Oh gods. He was in my head.
“Stop,” I hissed, recoiling.
“I said I’d get the truth,” he murmured. “You can tell me. Or I can take it.”
A bead of sweat slipped down my temple. I closed my eyes, tried to push back, to block him out—but whatever wards he’d set on this place, they weren’t just holding my magic hostage. They were amplifying his.
Behind him, Slade didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He was there if I tried to run, or fight, or scream.
Thorne tilted his head. “There’s something in you. Locked up tight. Who did that to you, girl? Who taught you to seal your own mind like a vault?”
I gritted my teeth. “Get. Out.”
He smiled, thin and cruel, but there was a reluctant darkness in his eyes. “You really think you’re strong enough to keep me out forever?”
The pain started as a whisper—then became a scream. I gritted my teeth, trying not to cry out. Thorne didn’t speak, didn’t move. He just watched me, one hand pressed to the side of his temple like he was listening to a voice only he could hear.
But it was my mind he was tuning into.
“You’re blocking me,” he murmured.
I let out a bitter laugh. “I wish I was.”
His brows furrowed. He pressed harder. I could feel him slipping through the last six years—junkyards and shelters, hunger and cold, Finn’s hand in mine. Over and over, like a record stuck on repeat.
“Where is it?” he muttered. “Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know!” I gasped, slamming my hand on the table. “You think I like not knowing who I am?”
He didn’t answer, but I saw it—the twitch in his jaw. The flicker of frustration in his usually unreadable eyes. This wasn’t going the way he’d planned.
He backed off slightly, breath shallow now. His focus drifted, searching deeper. Past the alley. Past the slums. Deeper—
—and hit something.
A wall. Smooth. Impossibly dense. Cold like stone. A mind-forged barrier I hadn’t even known was there.
He swore under his breath and stumbled back a step, eyes wide.
“What did you do?” he hissed.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, still shaking. “I don’t remember anything before I was sixteen. It’s just… gone.”
He looked at me like I was lying. Like I was hiding something.
“I can’t get past it,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Who put it there?”
I swallowed hard, voice cracking. “You think I’d choose this?”
Thorne turned abruptly, pacing. Slade stiffened by the door, watching us both like a coiled spring.
Thorne stopped. His back to me now.
“She’s a blank slate,” he muttered. “A shell with shadows stitched on top.”
“Maybe I’m exactly what I said I was,” I whispered. “Nobody.”
He turned back toward me, that cold edge returning. But now it was tinted with something else—curiosity. Calculation.
“You’re not nobody,” he said. “You’re a mystery. And I hate mysteries.”
Then he strode out the door without another word.
Slade waited a beat, then jerked his chin. “Up.”
My legs protested, but I pushed myself to standing, swaying slightly. The corridor blurred at the edges as I followed him, each step scraping through the ache in my skull from Thorne’s failed invasion.
But beneath the pain… there was something else. A flicker. A spark.
Hope.
If Thorne couldn’t see who I was—then maybe they couldn’t use it. Not yet. Not in the way they wanted.
Outside the interrogation chamber, Phoenix and Leo were waiting, standing with Thorne. They were talking in low voices, and I didn’t need to hear the words to know they were about me.
Their conversation halted the moment Slade and I emerged. All three of them turned to look at me, their gazes sharp and unreadable.
I felt like prey stepping into the open.
Slade shoved me forward without pause, ignoring the others as we passed. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t need to see their expressions to feel the weight of their curiosity. Their suspicion.
The walk back to my room was a blur—grey walls, humming lights, the ever-present hum of something deep beneath the surface. Then the door slid open.
Slade gave no warning, no parting words.
He shoved me inside, and the door hissed shut behind me.
The door sealed shut behind me with a hiss, leaving me alone in silence so thick it pressed against my chest. I stood there, unmoving, for a long breath. Two. Three.
Then I collapsed.
Not onto the bed. I didn’t trust it. I slid down the wall instead, my body folding like paper until I was curled in on myself on the cold floor.
My head ached. Not in the way a headache settled behind your eyes—this was deeper, like something had clawed through my mind and left splinters behind. Thorne had dug as far as he could. But the past wasn't there to find.
He’d tried to tear through the fog, and when he came up empty, his frustration had crackled through the air like lightning. But I hadn’t faked the blankness. I didn’t even know who I was before the alley. Before the shadows.
Just six years of memories. Just scraps.
I was tired. Not just bone-tired—soul-tired. The kind of tired that seeps into you when you’ve been hunted, dragged, questioned, violated. When even your thoughts aren’t your own anymore.
My hands trembled, so I tucked them under my arms, trying to make myself smaller. I pressed my forehead to my knees and just breathed.
In.
Out.
In.
They didn’t break me.
Not yet.
But gods, I could feel the cracks forming.
And I wasn’t sure how long I had left before something inside me shattered.