When Amara turned toward him, his gaze flicked upward. For a moment, something raw passed between them—shame first, then defiance, and something else I couldn’t name, something buried too deep to belong to this world.
She knelt beside him. The movement was small, but in that silence it felt thunderous. Her knees touched the cold stone, her bruised hands steady as she dipped the cloth once more into the steaming basin. The water hissed when it met the herbs; the scent of mint and smoke wound through the chamber, mingling with sweat, blood, and fear.
Salvatore didn’t flinch when she reached for him. He only watched her hand move—watched the tremor that flickered across her fingers before she stilled it. The air between them seemed to hold its breath.
The cloth met his skin, dragging through grime and blood. Steam curled around them, pale and ghostlike in the torchlight. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t pull away.
Amara threaded a needle. Her hands didn’t shake, but her breath caught once as she leaned toward him. “This will sting,” she murmured.
The first puncture made him grunt through his teeth, a harsh, muffled sound. His face twisted, but he didn’t flinch. Amara drew the thread through, tugging the wound shut one stitch at a time. Blood welled, then slowed. Sweat beaded on his temple. His lips parted once, but no words escaped.
The silence in that room grew thicker with every pull of the thread.
When she finished, blood streaked her fingers, and the smell of iron thickened the air. She cleaned her hands, wiped the sweat from her brow, and looked at us both—two men she had once known, patched together by her steady hands, sitting side by side yet separated by an abyss no bridge could span.
For a moment, none of us spoke. Only the torches breathed.
Her eyes moved between us—me still trembling with rage, Salvatore sitting silent and stitched—the air between us heavy with everything broken. She tightened her grip on the bloody cloth until the knuckles whitened. When she spoke, the softness was gone.
“I know you aren’t speaking. Your friendship—your brotherhood—it’s gone, torn apart. I heard the guards whisper about your trials and the poison Severen planted in your minds. But right now, you need to set aside your hatred and listen. Only the two of you can stop what he’s doing here. You may despise each other, but if you don’t find a way to fight together, the people rotting in these cells will never be freed. They’ll die screaming, and Severen will feed on every sound.”
Her gaze hardened, a coiled flame beneath the bruises. “You do not have to forgive each other. You do not even have to speak to one another. But you must stand side by side and end this. Put them out of their misery. Save them before Severen drains the last of them.”
Her eyes darkened further. The next words came slow and edged?—
“This prison is worse than the trials. It is not only beasts or shadows. Below the throne room, he keeps wards—rooms full of people chained to his will. Men. Women. Sex slaves. Broken bodies are used until there is nothing left to take. He tortures them, he uses them, and when he has emptied everything they can give—he takes what remains. He feeds on them.”
The words froze the air in my lungs. They pressed into me heavier than any cuff. My fingers dug into the woven mat until the fibers cut my palms. Rage flared hot and white.
“How do you know this, Amara?” I snapped, harsher than I meant. “You were locked away, beaten, dragged through hell. How could you possibly know what he does in the dark?”
She looked at Salvatore, then back at me, and something wild and half-broken flickered in her eyes, terror cut through by a desperate kind of defiance.
“Because I’ve seen it, Lazarus.”
The air curdled.
The flame in the nearest oil lamp hissed, spitting sparks onto the floor. The scent of charred linen and old blood thickened between us. Amara’s hands shook as she set aside the bowl of salve and crimson-stained cloths. She swallowed, lifted her head, and her gaze drifted toward the darker corner of the chamber.
“Stand,” she said, voice tight. “Both of you.”
Something in her tone left no room for argument. I rose before I could think. Salvatore followed, slower, his breath shallow, the lamplight crawling over the welts striping his back.
Amara crossed the chamber, her feet whispering over the grit-covered limestone. She knelt by the far wall where the stone had darkened with centuries of smoke. Her fingers found a crack between the blocks and pried, muscles straining. With a dull groan, the slab shifted, and a wave of heat and corruption rose from below.
The stench was alive—rank sweat, decay, blood steeped into soil so long it had its own pulse.
“Down here,” she whispered. “Beneath this chamber… is his.”
I crouched beside her and peered into the opening.
The pit yawned beneath us, a narrow vault lit by guttering torches in clay sconces. Shadows crawled across the walls. On a low platform draped in deep-red cloth reclined Severen, the man we were never meant to see.
His hair spilled around him in long gray strands, catching the torchlight like threads of silver ash. His bare chest gleamed with sweat, the lines of muscle inked with marks I could not yet name. His eyes, as pale as a dying flame, glimmered with a hunger that had nothing to do with flesh.
A woman knelt across his lap, sobbing into her hands. Severen’s expression didn’t change. With one hand, he shoved her aside. She hit the stone and stayed there, trembling.
“Bring me another,” he said, his tone weary, not cruel. That weariness was worse. It meant he had done this so often that he felt nothing at all.
