For a heartbeat, Serect’s mask slipped entirely. Then he composed himself with the practiced grace of a man who had spent centuries hiding his true intentions. The recovery was too smooth and too practiced—another warning sign that made Vaelrik’s instincts howl.
Serect reached into his robes and produced a scroll marked with official seals. “Given these... developments, I believe you’ll find our emergency revised shadow-plague protocols particularly relevant.”
But as he unrolled the document, Serenya’s sharp intake of breath cut through the chamber’s tension. Her green eyes fixed on the date inscribed at the top of the parchment.
“This document,” she observed quietly, her curse scholar’s training evident in every measured word, “was written before we went to the Gloam. Before we could have confirmed Rowen Corvane’s involvement.”
Serect froze. Just for a breath. Just for a single, betraying moment.
But a breath was enough.
Vaelrik’s dragon surged to the surface. He could smell the lie on Serect’s skin now and taste the deception like ash on his tongue.
“It was a precautionary assumption from our archives,” Serect replied smoothly, but the words rang false as cracked bells. “Ancient records suggested he was behind this shadow-plague.”
Vaelrik’s eyes narrowed to slits as Serect’s explanation lingered in the air like smoke from a dying fire. The words tasted wrong—too rehearsed, too convenient.
Before he could voice his suspicions, Serect raised a dismissive hand.
“This matter requires careful attention,” the Archon declared, his golden eyes glittering with something that might have been satisfaction. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow for a public assembly in Cinderhollow’s square. The citizens deserve to understand the new protocols for handling the shadow-plague threat.”
Vaelrik’s jaw clenched hard enough to crack stone, but he forced himself to turn away. Now wasn’t the time for confrontation. Not when Serect held all the political cards and Serenya’s safety hung in the balance.
They filed out in tense silence, their footsteps echoing off obsidian walls that suddenly felt more like a prison than a seat of power.
The moment the chamber doors closed behind them, Kyr muttered under his breath, “That seemed odd.”
Serenya nodded, her green eyes sharp with the focused intensity of a curse scholar who’d caught the scent of corruption. “He knew too much. About Rowen, about what we’d find in the Gloam. Nobody prepares emergency protocols based on ancient assumptions.”
Vaelrik’s voice rumbled low, dangerous as distant thunder. “Then let’s look into our esteemed Archon and see exactly what he knows.”
The mate bond pulsed between him and Serenya—shared purpose, shared fury, shared determination to uncover whatever rot was festering at the heart of the Council. His dragon approved of her fierce intelligence, and the way she refused to accept convenient lies when truth was within reach.
Together, the three of them descended into the Citadel’s archives—a labyrinth of volcanic stone chambers where centuries of documents moldered in the heat. Dust motesdanced in shafts of light that filtered through obsidian skylights, and the air tasted of old parchment and secrets.
Serenya pulled plague reports with the methodical precision of a woman accustomed to hunting truth. Vaelrik lifted crates of Council decrees, his enhanced strength making short work of containers that would have taken lesser men hours to move. Kyr read ledger after ledger, his eyes scanning financial records with the patience of a man who understood that wars were won as often with gold as with steel.
Hours passed in concentrated silence, broken only by the rustle of turning pages and occasional muttered curses when another dead end revealed itself.
Then Serenya went still.
The change was subtle but absolute—the kind of frozen attention that preceded either revelation or catastrophe. She lifted a file from the depths of a water-stained crate, her fingers trembling slightly as she read the header.
The document was stamped with House Ember’s seal, the molten-gold sigil gleaming against aged parchment. But it was the sponsor’s name that made Vaelrik’s blood turn to ice.
ARCHON SERECT:Funding: Rowen Corvane, Sigil Research Dept.:Classification: Experimental Contagion & Curse Interaction Studies
“No,” Serenya whispered.
Vaelrik’s fury was volcanic. The half-mate mark on Serenya’s chest pulsed in response to his emotional spike, their bond amplifying the shared horror of discovery.
Kyr swore quietly.
Serenya’s voice cracked as she continued, “It was him. He funded Rowen. He created the opportunity the Shadowbinder is now using against the Ashen Realms.”
Her eyes met Vaelrik’s. “He didn’t just know Rowen was behind this. He enabled him.”
The implications crashed over them like a collapsing mountain. Serect hadn’t just failed to prevent the shadow-plague—he’d helped create it. And now he was positioning himself to control the response and to shape the crisis for his own political ends.
