“Together.”
“Damn right.”
TWENTY-FIVE
DRAYKE
“Guardian King.”
Rurik’s voice comes from the doorway, and something in his tone makes me release Selene, turn to face him.
His usual humor is gone. His face is pale, jaw tight, eyes dark with an emotion I can’t name.
“You need to see this.”
Selene and I follow him through the ruined fortress, past the bodies of rogues and the still-burning debris of our assault. Down a corridor. Down a flight of stairs. Into the darkness beneath the great hall.
The dungeons.
The smell hits me first—blood and fear and something darker. The kind of despair that seeps into stone walls and never comes out. Cells line both sides of a narrow passage, most of them empty but showing signs of recent occupation. Shackles. Stains. Evidence of horrors I don’t want to imagine.
But at the end, where the darkness is thickest, torchlight flickers against iron bars.
“We found her when we cleared the lower levels,” Rurik says quietly. His voice is strange—rough, uncertain, nothing like his usual cocky drawl. “She’s alive. Barely.”
Her.
Selene pushes past me, fire blooming in her palm to light the cell. And then she goes still.
A woman lies on the stone floor—young, maybe mid-twenties, with wild red hair matted with blood and dirt. Even unconscious, even battered, there’s something striking about her. Sharp features. Pale skin marred with fresh cuts that seep crimson. Her wrists are bound with the same magic-suppressing manacles Veylor used on Selene, the metal leaving angry red welts where it meets skin.
Fire-Bringer blood.
They’d been harvesting her. Draining her the way they’d tried to drain Selene.
“She’s a Fire-Bringer.” Selene’s voice is barely a whisper. “Like me.”
I tear the cell door off its hinges. Kneel beside the woman, check for pulse—weak, but present. She’s alive. Damaged, traumatized, but alive.
Behind me, Rurik makes a sound—low, pained, almost inhuman. When I glance back, he’s staring at the woman with an expression I’ve never seen on his face. Raw. Open. Shattered.
Her eyes flutter open. Green, bright as spring leaves, clouded with pain and confusion. She looks at me—at Selene—at the fire dancing in my mate’s palm. And then her gaze drifts past us, landing on Rurik.
She freezes.
He freezes.
And I scent it—the sudden spike of something in the air. Something primal. Something ancient. The same thing I scented the first time I saw Selene.
Mate.
“Who...” Her voice cracks. “Who are you?”
“Friends.” Selene kneels beside me, her fire dimming to a gentle glow. “We’re going to get you out of here. Get you somewhere safe.”
“Safe.” The woman laughs—a broken, hollow sound that makes Rurik flinch. “There’s no safe. Not anymore. They told me... they told me more were coming. That I was just the first.”
Ice slides down my spine. “The first of what?”
