“But Zeriel…” Her gaze locks on him. “If the chance comes, I’d like you to take something for me.”
His head turns toward her, but I feel the spike of his attention through the link before he even speaks. “What?”
“It’s an object connected to the emperor’s… particular brand of magic,” she says. There’s a weighted pause, but to my surprise, I don’t detect that Zeriel is surprised to hear the emperor is connected to magic. I sense caution… edged with that same controlled intensity I’d felt a moment ago. “It looks like a shard of black crystal, light bleeding from the inside,” she continues. “You’ll know if you see it. Small enough to hold in your fist. It won’t exist until the emperor wills it into being, usually at the peak of bloodshed.”
I swallow hard.
“You’re going to need to give me more information than this, Selen,” Zeriel says, voice low. Through the bond I can feel the steel behind it, the refusal to bend. “What is it exactly? Why do you want it? Why should I give it to you?”
She clicks her tongue. “You’d be a fool not to ask. But answers come with weight, Zeriel, and right now you need speed.”
“Thanks, but it’s how I decide whether something’s worth my neck,” he replies dryly.
Selen tilts her head, as if debating how much to reveal now. “It will show up in the thick of the killing. The violence feeds it. It drinks in what’s around it and then… vanishes. The officials think of it as worthless. But I know it’s worth taking. In the right hands, it’s far more than it looks.”
Zeriel’s eyes narrow. “I need more, Selen.”
Her gaze grows sharper, voice dropping. “At the end of this, I give you my word I’ll give you more. When we have more time. For now what you need to know is this—yes, what I’m asking you to do is risky. Yes, it is dangerous. But so is playing death games for the empire’s entertainment. This, by comparison, is child’s play. If you take it discreetly, its disappearance won’t be immediately noticed. All I ask is that you take this item if you see it, and I’ll find a way to get it off you.”
Through the bond, his resistance is a living thing—layered suspicion and cold calculation—but it’s laced with a dangerous interest. A possibility rooting itself behind his walls. “Why should I trust anything you’re saying?”
Selen’s mouth curves, not quite a smile. “You’re a man of risk, Zeriel. You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But if you’ve learned anything about me, it’s that I don’t bow to the empire. Not ever. Our loyalties may not align, but our resentments do.”
I study her, her eyes, her silvery hair which seems at odds with the youth of her face. I feel the shift in Zeriel—wariness loosening, just enough for something colder to take hold. Selen knows his trigger points better than I’d like her to.
“What exactly is in it for me?” he asks.
“A chance to wound the emperor in a way he won’t see coming,” Selen says. “Winning only feeds his vanity. But this… this has the potential to help unsettle things.”
Her words land hard. I feel the ripple through him—tension, interest, the slow curl of resolve.
The weight of it presses against me until I almost forget to breathe.
“Fine,” he says at last. “If I see a shard as you’ve described, and I judge it safe, I’ll take it.”
Selen nods, crisp, like she never doubted.“That’s all I ask.”
Without another word, she turns and exits the lodge. I stare after her, feeling almost paralyzed by all that’s just been said. All that hasn’t just been said.
When the door clicks shut, silence settles. It should feel likerelease, but it doesn’t. If anything, the lodge seems smaller, the air denser.
Zeriel’s presence swells in that quiet, pressing against mine in a dark swirl of thought—calculating, dangerous, humming with suppressed readiness. The echo of that earlier volatile surge rides beneath it, hot and unsettling, as if he hasn’t quite pulled it all the way back behind his walls.
Whatever happens, we do this on our terms, he sends, the words taut, thrumming down the tether between us.Not hers.
The vow sears through me. It isn’t reassurance; it isn’t comfort. It’s like a line carved in steel, binding us together whether I want it or not.
I swallow, fighting the urge to flinch under the weight of it. The tether hums, alive, dangerous, and I can’t shake the sense that I’ve been caught in something I can’t step out of. Not only Selen’s snare, not only the empire’s.His. His emotions churn deeper—and burn far hotter—than I’d ever realized.
The thought drags up another vow: the verse he scrawled across his bathroom wall. A promise etched in words as stark as blood.
My name was inked in blood, not gold,
And blood will call when tales are told.
Though scattered now, we share one breath,
Our story waits beyond their death.
