Good.
Let him think that.
“Understood,” I said.
“Good.” He turned toward the tree line, clearly expecting obedience. “Stay behind me and Fenric. Cindrissian will take rear guard. If anything goes wrong, you get out. Don’t try to be a hero.”
Around us, the others were already moving, Darian’s group melting into the forest toward the northern entrance with practiced silence. Brynelle caught my eye as she passed, something fierce and worried in her expression.
Be careful,she mouthed.
I nodded once, and then they were gone.
Lincatheron started toward the southern tree line without looking back, clearly expecting us to follow. Every line of his body screamed military precision, movement that came from centuries of warfare.
I forced myself to walk behind him like I was supposed to—obedient, cautious, exactly what he expected.
And tried not to think about how much harder this was going to be if I had to keep pretending I didn’t know exactly how to kill someone seventeen different ways with nothing but a belt and poor lighting.
Cindrissian moved past me, that smirk firmly in place. “Try not to die, darling,” he murmured. “It would be terribly inconvenient.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said through gritted teeth, and followed them into the dark.
The cave swallowed us whole.
Darkness pressed in from all sides, absolute and suffocating, broken only by the faint glow of magic that flickered along Fenric’s fingertips. Just enough light to keep us from walking into walls, not enough to announce our presence to whatever waited deeper inside.
The air tasted wrong. Metallic and damp, with an underlying rot that spoke of old violence and recent blood.
The hum started three steps into the cave.
Not the subtle whisper I’d felt in the castle library or the faint vibration from the moonsilver daggers. This wasdifferent. Deeper. Like the earth itself had opened its mouth and begun to sing, the melody threading through stone and marrow with hungry insistence.
It wrapped through my ribs, settled beneath my sternum like a second heartbeat. Except this time, underground with nothing but darkness and death-scent and ancient rock pressing in from all sides, the song wasn’t asking.
It wasdemanding.
The shadows moved wrong here. Not the natural darkness of a cave but something alive, something aware. They twisted along the walls in patterns that had nothing to do with Fenric’s dim magical light, curling and uncurling like fingers beckoning me closer.
My teeth ground together hard enough to make my jaw ache.
Not here. Not now. Not with Lincatheron three feet ahead of me, every line of his body screaming control, just waiting for me to fuck up and prove him right about the helpless human liability.
But gods, thepullof it.
The darkness wanted me to answer. Wanted me to open my mouth and let the song spill out, harmonise with whatever ancient melody had been humming through these tunnels.
I bit down on my tongue until I tasted copper.
The moonsilver daggers thrummed against my thighs, their own frequency joining the chorus. They’d been humming since I’d strapped them on, but down here it had become a resonance that made my bones vibrate, that sang of violence and blood and the kind of beautiful destruction I’d spent months pretending I didn’t crave.
My fingers twitched toward the hilts before I caught myself.
Lincatheron moved like a ghost despite his size, each footfall made no sound. Fenric matched him step for step, steel-blue eyes tracking shadows that I couldn’t quite see. Behind me, Cindrissian’s presence was barely perceptible, except for the occasional whisper of fabric and the sense of something predatory at my back.
The cave descended deeper, the walls narrowing until we had to move single file. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, each drop echoing through the passages like a countdown.
Kept my breathing even and my steps measured and my face blank, even as every cell in my body screamed to stop. To turn. To open my mouth and let the song pour out until the shadows knew me, truly knew me, until they wrapped around me and showed these ancient, arrogant fae exactly what I was capable of.
