I memorised the layout as best I could, then carefully folded the map and slipped it inside my cloak. West was definitely not the direction to run.
Another letter lay half-finished on the desk, this one written in script I could actually read.
Lord Ryleth,
Your reputation for crafting weapons precedes you. I have need of your services for a project of the utmost discretion
The letter cut off there, ink still wet on the final word.
I turned to rifle through the other papers scattered across the desk, searching for anything else that might tell me what I was truly dealing with?—
A throat cleared behind me.
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
Slowly, I turned.
Brynelle stood in the doorframe, arms crossed, those iridescent wings folded neatly behind her back. Her expression was unreadable in the moonlight.
“Looking for something specific?” she asked, voice silk-smooth and deadly calm. “Or just practicing your burglary skills?”
I straightened, forcing my shoulders back, trying to look like I belonged here. “Maybe I’m just organising.”
Brynelle’s lips twitched, not quite a smile, but close. “Maybe you’re terrible at lying.”
The bluff crumbled. I let it.
“I’m not waiting for another monster to walk through the walls,” I said flatly. “Your precious lord made promises about safety, and this morning my children nearly became wolf food in hissecuregarden.”
Brynelle’s expression shifted. “Varyth doesn’t make promises lightly,” she said quietly, stepping into the room. “When he says he’ll protect someone, he means it. He just won’t say why or how.”
“And if his silence gets my children killed?” The words came out sharper than I intended, edged with all the fear I’d been swallowing since dawn. “What then?”
For a long moment, she stared at me. As though she was looking at something she recognised.
“He keeps people’s secrets to protect them,” Brynelle said, finally meeting my eyes. “Even when it makes him look like a bastard. Even when it makes them hate him. He’d rather bear that weight than watch them burn from knowledge they’re not ready for.”
“But I heard him,” I said desperately. “Just now. He was talking about me like a weapon. Like something to be contained.”
Brynelle’s expression softened. “Because youaredangerous, Isara. You crossed the Veil. And you didn’t just survive, but emergedchanged. Stronger. There are maybe five people in recorded history who’ve done that without losing their minds or their souls.” She paused. “He’s not trying to cage you. He’s trying to keep you from becoming something that needs to be caged.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to rage against the presumption, the arrogance, the sheer audacity of these people thinking they knew what was best for me.
But all I could think about was Mireth’s laughter this morning. Eryx’s sticky fingers clutching that wooden horse. The way they’d slept, really slept, for the first time in months.
The way Varyth had pulled me from the Veil when he could have left me there.
I could feel Brynelle weighing my every breath, every micro-expression that might betray what I was thinking.
What I was thinking was that she made too much sense. That her words carved through my defences like they were made of paper instead of steel and spite.
And I fucking hated that.
“So what?” I said finally, voice rough with exhaustion. “I’m supposed to just... trust? Stay here and play house while he decides what kind of monster I might become?”
“I’m saying give it a chance.” Brynelle stepped closer, and her expression was almost gentle. “Before you drag your children back into the wilderness because you’re too stubborn to admit you might be wrong.”
She was right, gods-damn her, she was right. Running would mean pulling Mireth and Eryx back into that life of fear and hunger and sleeping with one eye open. It would mean watching the light fade from their eyes again, watching them learn to flinch at every shadow.
