The change is immediate. Pain flickers across his face, so raw it jolts through me. “Part of the same setup.” The words cut like glass.
My pulse spikes. “How?”
“She was... they used her...” The syllables are bitten off, more force than speech, as though saying them strips something out of him. He stops there, the rest lodged in his throat, his eyes fixed on a point far beyond this room.
I know I won’t get more tonight, but the shards of truth he’s given feel heavier than the pieces he’s refused to give. He turns back to the window, his tall frame casting a long silhouette, the forest’s glow tracing the hard planes of his stance. I can’t tell if he’s looking for answers out there or just somewhere to put the weight he refuses to share. And if this is only part of the story, I’m not sure I want to hear the rest.
Celisse was family, their own blood. How could the Malvrics have played a part in her demise? What kind of minds would contrive such a plot? Yet it’s either them—or Zeriel, agreeing to murder his defenseless wife. Judging by my impressions of Blaise so far, I can’t help the feeling that the former is less farfetched.
My eyes study Zeriel’s outline, the breadth of his shoulders, the quiet violence of his stillness.
I know what it is to lose someone you love so deeply it rips through the center of you, leaves you carrying an ache you can’t put down. I felt it when I lost my mother. But his loss is different. Intimate in a way mine wasn’t. A wife. A partner. Someone entwined with you so completely they become a part of your breath. I’ve never even had a lover, much less a husband.
For him, it’s not a wound he hides well. It’s there in the quiet spaces between his words, in the way his gaze sometimes fixes anywhere but on me.
After a long moment, he speaks again, his voice steadier, gruffer. “You should get some sleep. Tomorrow will be... difficult.”
I nod, though it feels like sleep will be a losing battle. He doesn’t move as I cross toward the bedroom. Just stands there, rooted, a man used to holding his ground alone.
I’m two steps from the doorway when a soft knock breaks thesilence, freezing us both in place. Zeriel’s hand goes immediately to the blade at his side, his body shifting into a defensive stance with lethal ease.
He peers through a small gap in the curtains beside the entrance, then frowns. “There's no one there.”
The knock comes again, more insistent this time.
Zeriel slowly unlocks the door, his other hand still on his weapon. He pulls it open in one swift motion, revealing nothing but the empty forest path, misty and glowing in the strange blue-green light.
“Hello?” I whisper, stepping closer.
“Close the door,” comes Selen's voice from thin air, startling us both.
Zeriel's eyes narrow, but he complies, shutting the door quickly. The moment it closes, Selen materializes as the hood of her void-drake suit falls back, revealing her sharp features and those unnerving teal eyes. In the forest's eerie light, her silver hair takes on an almost spectral quality.
“What are you—” I begin.
“Listen carefully,” she cuts me off, her voice tight. “Tomorrow at the prelims, expect a massacre.”
The word hits like a punch, reverberating in the silence. Zeriel goes rigid.
“What do you mean?” he demands.
Selen's eyes are grimmer than I've ever seen them. “I mean far more deaths than usual. It's been arranged, gameplay for maximum bloodshed.”
My stomach turns to ice. “The others?—”
“There'll be nothing you can do,” Selen says, her voice flat. “You and Zeriel will have to watch.”
Something seizes my chest and twists, wringing the air from my lungs. My eyes sting, heat rising fast, as if I’m already standing there.
“Can’t you extract them, get them out of this?” I ask, desperate. “Put them in suits and keep them with you—with Ellis.”
“I’m a trainer, not a trafficker,” Selen responds. “And running is never the answer.”
“But you’ve hidden Ellis, Byron?—”
“Ellis is an exception. He’s still a child, for gods’ sake. And I’m not hiding Byron, he’s capable of handling his own.”
She produces two carefully folded void-drake suits and several small vials of familiar black liquid.
