"She’ll show." The High General’s boots struck marble as he descended the dais. "We’ll start with this one."
He ca to a halt before Fin.
Fin was kneeling, wrists bound in silver chains, and his breathing was labored. Blood dripped from a fresh wound on his temple.
The High General kicked him in the ribs.
He doubled over with a grunt of pain, hitting the floor. He didn’t scream. He hadn’t scread in weeks. The screaming had been beaten out of him sowhere around day four, replaced by a silence that was worse.
Two guards pulled him back upright, but his head lolled forward.
From the side, Hyran and Aeron glanced at one another, both cuffed and unable to help.
In the hall, Serena’s vision went white at the edges and her body went rigid. Pain cracked across her ribs so hard her knees nearly buckled. For a terrifying second she thought she’d been stabbed. Then she understood. This wasn’t her pain. It was Fin’s, bleeding through the matebond like a signal fire.
Spine straight and chin lifted, she pushed open the double doors. Her insides were made entirely of ice water and adrenaline. If she survived this, she was going to sit down sowhere quiet and shake for an hour.
Elara followed a step behind, carrying the box under her arm with the grim determination of a woman who had been asked to do sothing disgusting and had agreed only because the alternative was worse.
The High General raised his foot to kick again.
"That won’t be necessary."
Her words rang out across the throne room, clear and steady.
Every head turned towards the entrance.
Serena felt the weight of it, thirty ard soldiers, a High General, and a kingdom’s worth of hatred pressing against her chest like a tide.
She did not stop walking. She had learned that from her father. You do not falter. You do not hesitate. You enter a room like you’ve already won it, and you let them catch up.
The guards reached for their weapons, but the High General raised a hand, and they froze.
He studied Serena with poisonous green eyes, curiosity cutting through the hostility. Serena preferred curious to murderous. It was a low bar, but she’d take it.
"They said you would look like a Fae," he said in High Orosian. "They were right."
Serena didn’t hesitate. She answered him in the sa tongue, her pronunciation flawless.
"I am no Fae, if that is what you are."
The High General’s smile flickered with surprise. He hadn’t expected her to understand him, let alone respond.
He switched languages to High Morbian and issued rapid commands to his guards.
"Lock the doors. No one enters or leaves."
Serena’s response ca in the sa tongue, equally fluent.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" It was not a question. It was the verbal equivalent of laying a card face-down on the table and watching soone decide whether to fold or hold.
He went still.
His guards exchanged uncertain glances. They had understood the order but not her response, and their confusion was evident.
He regarded Serena for a long mont, his eyes narrowing. Then he began to laugh.
It was not a pleasant sound. It echoed off the marble walls like grinding stone, the kind of laugh that had never once preceded good news for the person it was aid at.
He switched to common tongue, apparently deciding that gas were no longer necessary.
"A Fae lookalike who is trilingual. Interesting." He took a step towards her. "I’ve heard of your magic, little wolf. And you should know that it doesn’t work in here."
"Are you sure about that?"
Serena tilted her head.
She could feel Elara’s heartbeat behind her through proximity alone. Or maybe that was hers. Either way, soone in this partnership was about to pass out, and Serena had silently decided it wouldn’t be her.
"Yes, I am sure." He spat the words like venom. "The wards on this fortress have stood for five hundred years. No external magic has ever breached them."
He paused at the base of the dais, looming over her despite the distance between them.
"The real question is, how did you get past Commander Varek? He guards the middle levels personally. No one passes him. No one."
Serena smiled.
"Oh," she said lightly. "You an this one?"
Without looking away from the High General, she lifted her right hand, the way Tiberon would in the war room. Lazy, like she’d done it a million tis.
Elara understood the signal. Serena knew she was probably fighting the urge to roll her eyes. But she played the part. She heard Elara open the box behind her, and the sound of her gagging.
Commander Varek’s head rolled across the stone with a wet, aty sound that echoed through the silent throne room.
The head ca to a stop next to her, and Serena broke eye contact with the High General before she could stop herself.
She looked down at it.
Its eyes looked right back at her.
Pure, primal terror shot through her chest, and she kicked it before she could stop herself.
The kick was hard and instinctive, born entirely of fear, but it sent the head sailing across the floor directly towards the High General.
It looked deliberate and threatening. Like a statent of dominance from soone who decapitated commanders for sport.
The High General caught the head reflexively, his massive hands closing around Varek’s hair. For three absurd seconds, the most dangerous man in Velanthor was holding his dead commander’s head with the sa energy of a man whose wife had just handed him her purse.
His face cycled through bewildernt, irritation, and fury before landing on a cold, tactical reassessnt.
During this, she felt a welco heat stir in her chest, one she hadn’t felt since entering this fortress. Velkaris’s energy had found her in the dark, pushing past the wards. And with him, familiar threads began to hum between her and mbers of the Hidden Fla. To her surprise, Fin was among them.
He wasn’t a mber, but she felt him as clearly as if he were, and her blood oath stayed silent. She didn’t question it.
She pushed fla into all of them. In the dungeons below Gav’s cuffs lted from his wrists. He gave an, I told you so smirk to Archibald across from him.
In the throne room, Fin’s head snapped up.
His eyes t hers and sothing passed between them. Understanding. Recognition. Trust.
And, beneath all of it, the very specific expression of a man who had just watched his mate kick a severed head across a throne room floor and was processing it in real ti.
He let the power flow through him without resistance.
The silver cuffs on Fin’s wrists began to glow. The tal lted, running down his hands like water, and pooled on the stone floor.
The High General either didn’t notice or chose to not pay attention to it. Serena wasn’t sure.
"Frostborne Princess." His voice was low and dangerous. "You surprise ."
That made two of them. Serena had been surprising herself every five minutes since entering this throne room.
Then he moved.
His hand blurred, and a blade flew from his fingers faster than Serena’s eyes could track.
It was wreathed in dark magic and aid directly at her heart.
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