Chapter 6 #2
“Surviving without becoming what they want us to be,” I blurt almost without thinking, but I realize it’s the truth. If they think our crimes make us pliable, make us theirs to shape, that our desperation can be manipulated into a weapon, I’ll be damned if I let it happen the way they want.
For a moment, something shifts in her expression—a flicker of something I can't identify. Again, not quite approval—perhaps recognition?
“An interesting theory,” she says finally. “I look forward to watching it fail.”
“Is that what you write in your little book?” I ask, nodding toward the ledger tucked under her arm. “Predictions about who breaks first?”
“I record potential,” she replies, her voice dropping slightly. “Those worth watching. Those worth training.” She leans in, close enough that I can smell the faint scent of something clean and herbal beneath the omnipresent dragon musk. “Those worth saving.”
Before I can respond, she turns sharply and calls to a nearby handler. “This one needs additional conditioning. Mark her for extended training tomorrow.”
The handler nods, making a note in his own ledger. Selen gives me one last inscrutable look before striding away, her posture rigid and authoritative.
“What was that about?” Lira asks, appearing at my side. She supports Ellis with one arm, the scholar's face pale beneath his bruises.
“I'm not sure,” I admit. “Either special attention or special punishment.”
“With a handler, probably both,” Lira mutters.
We're herded back through the cavernous, dimly-lit corridors toward our cells. My stomach cramps painfully with every step, desperate for more nourishment. Around me, other recruits look equally haggard, their faces drawn with hunger and exhaustion.
At a junction in the corridor, guards begin separating us again, shoving men to the right, women to the left. Ellis's eyes widen with panic as he's forced away from us.
“I'll find you later,” I call to him, though I have no idea if that's even possible. “Stay small, stay smart.”
He nods once before disappearing into the crowd of male recruits. The brief alliance we'd formed in the training yard feels suddenly fragile, fractured by the Ironhold's rigid segregation.
“He won't last a week,” comes a voice behind me.
I turn to find the muscular tavern keeper, her face barely marked despite the morning's violence. A thin cut above Nyx’s eyebrow is her only visible injury.
“You underestimate him,” I say, though doubt gnaws at me.
Nyx falls into step beside me as we're herded back toward the women's cells. “I saw you in the combat session. You move like someone who's had to fight for everything.”
“Haven't we all?” I gesture around at our fellow recruits.
“Not all like you.” Her eyes are shrewd, evaluating. “You could have taken Krall down permanently if you'd wanted to. Why didn't you?”
I shrug, wincing as the movement aggravates bruised ribs. “He might have friends here. No need to make more enemies than necessary.”
“Smart,” she concedes. “I watched you during the food scramble too. You went around instead of through. Used your head.” She taps her temple. “Most don't. They think brute force is the answer.”
“Is this conversation going somewhere?”
“Maybe.” Nyx's voice drops lower. “It seems alliances form quickly here, then dissolve just as fast when they're no longer useful. The smart ones will understand when to join forces and when to stand alone.”
I study her, noting the calm efficiency in her movements, the way her eyes constantly track the guards' positions. During the combat session, she had dispatched three opponents with methodical precision, never wasting energy on unnecessary movement.
“You did well yourself today,” I observe. “Barely a scratch.”
A ghost of a smile touches her lips. “Running a tavern in the Sink teaches you how to handle yourself. Drunken soldiers aren't so different from desperate recruits.”
We reach the women's holding area, and the massive iron door clangs shut behind us. The remainder of the day looms before us with nothing but hunger and uncertainty to fill it.
The cells feel smaller after experiencing the vastness of the training chamber.
As the morning wears on, the temperature rises steadily, the air growing thick with heat radiating from the floors and ceilings.
Sweat beads on my skin, but there's no relief to be found. Small flasks of water have been hung in our cells, but I have to pace my liquid intake. I don’t know when they’ll be refilled.
Some women collapse onto their cots, exhausted from the morning's exertions.
Others pace like caged animals, muttering to themselves.
A few attempt to tend their wounds with torn strips of clothing.
I sink onto my own cot, taking inventory of my injuries—bruised ribs, split knuckles, a throbbing ache in my shoulder where Krall grabbed me.
Nothing broken, at least. Nothing that will slow me down tomorrow.
A deep vibration shakes dust from the ceiling. The sound travels through stone, through metal bars, through flesh and bone until it seems to rattle my very teeth. A dragon's roar—not the controlled bellow of the transport beasts, but something wilder, angrier.
“Training sessions,” Lira murmurs from her cell. She sits cross-legged on her cot, stretching muscles that must ache as badly as mine.
I press my palm against the wall, feeling the stone tremble. “How many dragons do they keep here?” I wonder.
“Hundreds,” says a woman several cells down—Sariah, the one from the outer territories. Her voice carries the musical lilt of the desert provinces. “Most never see the arena. They're kept for breeding or labor.”
Another roar shakes the cavern, followed by a scream that's unmistakably fae. The sound cuts off abruptly.
“That's one less competitor,” Nyx mutters from her cell.
“I’d rather not count people out,” Lira says darkly, leaning back against the wall. “Besides, I’ve seen people survive things they shouldn’t. Par for the course when you work the quarry lines…”
“Meaning?” I ask.
Lira sighs. “I saw collapses—stone caving in like the sky itself had fallen. Broken bones, crushed lungs, and still they crawled out.” Her gaze flicks toward the ceiling as dust sifts down with the tremor. “Pain doesn’t always finish the job. Not when desperation’s stronger.”
Nyx scoffs. “Yeah, but we’re talking dragons here.”
Lira stretches her legs out, wincing as her knees pop. “Guess I don’t flinch as much as I should at this place. You get used to cages when you’ve already lived in one.”
I raise an eyebrow at Lira. “How did you get here?”
She grimaces. “Joined a worker rebellion. Guess I finally had enough.”
I lie back on my cot with an exhale, arm thrown over my eyes to block the light from the torches. Life in the quarries. Brutal, backbreaking, soul-crushing. No wonder Lira seems to treat pain like it’s nothing more than weather.
I consider what that does to a person, being ground down day after day and still waking to more of the same. Maybe that’s her strength. Maybe that’s why she sits a little straighter than the rest of us, like she’s already endured worse.
Me? I never had the chance at something as steady as quarry work.
Street rats don’t get contracts. We take scraps where we find them—running errands no one else wanted, lifting coin from the careless, pretending not to hear the propositions whispered in the alleys.
Work, if you can call it that. It kept me alive. And isn’t that the point?
Yet I can’t help but feel we weren’t made for this. Not to toil and scrape like animals, but to stand as our ancestors once did—the Undying, the Starborne. They were called by many names, all of them speaking of a life worth living. And still, rulers I will never meet chose to throw it all away.
I picture the night it began: they say a border dispute turned to war, old grudges reignited, and soon every court was dragged into the spiral.
The Hollow Wars bled the land white—spells that cracked mountains, rivers poisoned with blood, skies blackened with dragon flame.
With immortality, the same lords nursed the same grudges for centuries, their armies returning again and again, each war more ruinous than the last. None could win, yet none would yield.
In the end, it wasn’t mercy that ended it, but dread.
Too proud to kneel to one another, too afraid to let a rival rise stronger, the last lords of the old fae turned their blades inward.
They carved runes into their own flesh, damaging the bond to magic not only for themselves, but for every descendant yet unborn.
Immortality, too, was cast aside, for as long as the fae could not die, the war would never end.
Under moon and flame they swore the Sundering Oath, binding us all to mortality and silence.
Since that time, it’s been rare for any fae to possess magic. Much rarer to admit to it. For, from those ashes, they say, came a man with no gift but hunger. A mortal who turned fae ruin into empire. His line still sits the throne.
At the time, the fae courts called it sacrifice. But it was fear that drove them. Fear dressed in pride, wrapped in ritual. And it is we who live with the ruin they left behind.
Yet I wonder, if our ancestors could see what their beloved land has become, would they regret it? Or would they call this peace?
“What about you, Sariah?” Nyx wonders aloud, cutting through my thoughts.
I crack an eyelid to see Sariah’s expression lift, sharp with pride.
The torchlight gilds her ochre skin, marking her as one of the desert fae tribes, the kind whose bloodlines are said to carry the heat of the dunes themselves.
“Rebel, sure. I staked a claim on our ancestral land. The empire called it theft, called it treason. But they’ll never erase the right of my people to the sand and stone that made us. ”