Then I saw him.
Through the chaos of combat, past the falling bodies and dancing shadows. I saw Varyth. Chained to the far wall, slumped forward with his ashen hair matted dark with blood. And behind him, a woman with a blade pressed to his throat, already dragging him backward toward another passage that led deeper into the mountain.
Something feral and possessive ripped through my chest.
I was moving before conscious thought caught up, my boots finding purchase on blood-slick stone as I tore across the cavern. Behind me, someone shouted my name—Lincatheron, maybe, or Cindrissian—but the sound was meaningless noise against the roar of fury in my ears.
The woman spotted me coming. Her mouth curved into something cruel and satisfied.
“Well, well,” she called out with the same sharp authority I’d heard echoing through the passages. “The little human who thinks she’s?—”
She didn’t finish.
She tossed Varyth aside like discarded cargo. He hit the ground hard, chains rattling, and his eyes found mine—pale silver, half-conscious, and suddenly widening with terror.
“Isara?” His voice was raw, broken, but urgent.
The woman’s boot slammed into his ribs, cutting off whatever warning he’d been trying to give. The sound of impact made my teeth ache.
She drew two short swords from her back, spinning them once in a show of skill that was probably meant to intimidate.“I’m going to enjoy killing you almost as much as I’ll enjoy tellingherabout it.”
Heragain. That mysteriousshewho’d felt magic, who these soldiers answered to.
I didn’t care.
I was already calculating distances, angles, the space between the woman and where Varyth lay gasping on the ground. The obsidian collar around his throat gleamed in the lantern light, runes pulsing with sickly energy that made my skin crawl.
Far enough apart. They were far enough apart.
The woman shifted into a fighting stance, those short swords held with a competence that suggested centuries of training. “Aren’t you going to fight, little?—”
The black fire erupted from my hands in a torrent of cold fury.
It hit her mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-smirk. The flames consumed her so fast she didn’t even have time to scream, just a brief, choked sound of surprise before the shadow fire turned her to ash and memory.
I was already moving, already dropping to my knees beside Varyth before the last embers faded.
Behind us, the sounds of combat continued. Steel on steel, screams, the wet sounds of violence. But it was distant, muffled, unimportant compared to the way Varyth was looking at me with eyes that couldn’t quite focus.
“Get the fucking collar off,” he rasped, every word seeming to cost him. “Now, Isara.”
My hands moved to the obsidian band around his throat, fingers searching for a seam, a lock, any kind of mechanism that would let me remove it. The crystal was ice beneath my touch, colder than it should be, and those runes pulsed with a rhythm that felt wrong.
Nothing. No seam. No lock. Just smooth, unbroken metal that seemed fused directly to his skin.
“I can’t—there’s no—” Panic clawed at my throat.
“The daggers.” Varyth’s hand caught my wrist, his grip weak but desperate. “Moonsilver. Nyxarian metal. They can break it. They’re made to break it.”
I looked down at the blades clutched in my hands, blood-slicked and gleaming.
“Turn your head,” I commanded, my voice steadier than I felt. “Away from me. Now.”
Varyth obeyed without argument, exposing the side of his neck and the collar that was slowly killing him.
I raised the first dagger, aimed for where the collar sat against his collarbone, and brought it down with every ounce of strength I possessed.
The impact sent shockwaves up my arm. The runes flared brighter, angry, like the collar was fighting back.
