After the High General took that step, a nacing grin spread across his face. He watched her the way a cat would play with a mouse.
Her pulse spiked, but her boots stayed planted.
Fin:He’s testing you. Keep your eyes on him. Make a second sword with fla.
Serena fabricated a second sword. It ford in tandem with a second blade for Elara behind her. She pushed fla into them, harder than necessary, and into the swords they already held.
The synchronized flare was so perfect that one of the guards almost clapped, cutting the motion short when he rembered whose side he was on.
Elara: Frostborne. You and I both know—
Fin cut her off mid-mindlink.
Fin: Fake it. Follow her lead.
The High General exhaled through his nose, and the sound was almost fond.
"Your hands are shaking. You can make weapons and set them on fire. But you’ve never killed anyone face-to-face, and we both know it."
"The head on my throne room floor is the mystery." He opened both arms wide, palms up, an invitation. "But by all ans, let’s see what happens next."
Elara: He has a point.
Hyran and Aeron exchanged a glance that covered an entire tactical briefing in under a second. The conclusion was unanimous: they were going to die in this throne room because a small she-wolf was bluffing a Fae warlord with shaking hands and a villain speech she’d rehearsed for four seconds.
Fin’s attention was locked onto Serena. Every muscle was coiled with the specific tension of a man who was one wrong word away from ending the charade himself.
Fin:Are you able to make weapons for us?
Elara: She is.
At that mont, a side door opened. The guards were returning with prisoners. Serena released the breath she didn’t realize she was holding and inhaled fully.
Hyran:That was approximately four seconds from becoming a very different situation.
Aeron:Divine intervention. I say this as a man who does not believe in divine intervention.
Hale ca first, massive and bloodied. Elara sucked in a breath behind Serena.
He looked like soone had tried to kill him and gotten tired halfway through. He didn’t bother hiding the bewildernt on his face, having heard the mindlinks. Three guards had daggers in them, and Elara held twin roaring blades.
Hyran: If those doors hadn’t opened, what was your move, Serena?
Serena: I would have fought him.
Hyran: Didn’t Dexmon rescue you after you got stabbed? That’s how you t. Your track record fighting with blade is abysmal.
He wasn’t wrong. That was the irritating part. Serena chose not to answer.
The rest followed in rapid succession, battered and barely upright, Archibald with cracked spectacles, Gavriel with his usual smirk beaten out of him, ten Hidden Fla mbers who looked like they’d been dragged through hell and left there.
All of them glowing pink. Nothing undermines weeks of brutal imprisonnt and torture more than being rescued in hot pink. Hardened warriors, beaten and bloodied, standing in a line, glowing the exact shade of a six-year-old’s birthday party. Tactical excellence.
Gavriel looked at Serena, then at the glowing crown, then at the dual blades, then back at Serena. Smartass energy radiated off him like heat from a furnace and it was taking all of his restraint not to mindlink.
She fought the urge to grin. She needed to look every part of the inner bitch she was channeling, which didn’t include laughing in the middle of a hostage situation.
Everyone brought into the throne room understood without being told. They kept their hands cuffed behind their backs, pretending to still be bound, playing along with the charade. The ’we are absolutely still your prisoners, please don’t look too closely’ energy was immaculate.
The guards shoved them into a line near Fin and stepped back to flank the High General.
"You will not follow us," Serena said. Her voice rang through the throne room with an authority she didn’t feel. "You will not speak of what happened here to anyone."
The High General’s smile widened. "Or?"
Serena’s gaze dropped to the severed head on the floor, then returned to him with the calm of a woman who had already crossed a line she couldn’t co back from and had decided to keep walking.
"You will face the sa fate as your second-in-command."
He smirked, amused. A quick dismissal of her words, like there wasn’t a head on his floor. He was over-performing his indifference, and that told Serena everything she needed.
This was him refusing to acknowledge defeat until there was a clear checkmate, while knowing full well the opponent was one move away from delivering it. Even if he wasn’t afraid of her, he was still outmatched today in this throne room, and he knew it.
"Understood," he answered after a mont.
Fin watched her deliver the ultimatum and felt sothing dangerous stir in his chest. Pride. And sothing else he was going to aggressively not think about until they were out of this throne room.
Serena held out her hand and prayed to the Moon Goddess that this would work. Her crown flashed white, blazing bright. Magic poured from her palm, spiraling outward, weaving itself into patterns she didn’t consciously direct.
A portal ford.
It was pink instead of the usual gold or silver, its edges shimring with sparkling light. And it was the first portal she’d ever made, to her knowledge.
But the magic cost her. She felt it pull from sowhere deep. A muscle she’d never used and it hurt. Her vision dimd at the edges.
Fin felt the sensation through their matebond like it was his own, and his blood ran cold.
"Don’t you want to know why you’re being hunted?" the High General asked.
His voice was casual, almost friendly, but there was sothing underneath it. He tilted his head, and the movent was serpentine.
"Don’t you want to know what you really are? Why every Fae lord from here to the Shadowlands would kill to possess you?"
He took another step towards her.
Fin: He’s playing for ti. Move.
His mindlink cut through the High General’s words like a blade.
The lted chains and cuffs everyone was holding dropped to the floor. Except for Gavriel’s because he threw them at the nearest guard’s face.
The Fae guards watched in utter shock as the prisoners ran past with the collective expression of n watching their performance reviews happen in real ti. Weeks of interrogation. Weeks of carefully maintained dominance. Undone by a white-haired girl in a glowing crown and a man who used his shackles as a projectile.
Hale grabbed Elara’s arm with no apologies, and went through first. The others followed in rapid succession.
Hyran cast one final look at the High General before crossing onto the other side. The look said I will rember your face.
The High General stared at him right back with a smirk. Then his gaze went back to Serena. "You’ve made yourself interesting. Interesting enough that my master will want you alive."
"Tell your master I’m not interested." Her tone was flat, rejecting his evil-overlord recruitnt pitch with the energy of soone declining a newsletter subscription.
"You will be. And you’ll co to us willingly." It ca out like a promise. Like a man planting a flag in soil he hadn’t conquered yet and calling it his. "Visibility is the tax the powerful pay for existing."
Fin grabbed Serena’s arm.
"Ti to go," he said roughly.
His words registered, and she knew she needed to move. But her legs didn’t work. She started to feel pressure in her chest from holding the portal.
Her mind was also starting to beco foggy. Every thought arrived late, half-ford, like words spoken underwater. She could feel herself becoming less.
The High General clocked it and began to close the distance.
Every nerve in Fin’s body fired at once, a white-hot wire pulled taut between the man walking toward her and the fact that Serena couldn’t run.
He picked her up, and booked it through her portal.
The last thing Serena saw was the High General’s smile behind the pink light.
The way he looked at her in that final mont gave her goosebumps.
She had shown them what she was, and you can’t unshow sothing.
His expression was the focused, patient hunger of a man who had just discovered that what he was hunting was far more valuable than he’d been told, and who had no intention of letting it stay lost for long.
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