She screams. The sound bounces off the alcove walls, high and terrible, the wail of a female who understood what she earned.
I give her no time to understand anything else.
One rake of my claws across her throat. Her scream cuts off in a gurgle as her windpipe collapses. She crumples. Her body hits the ground in a heap of limbs and spreading crimson, and the eyes that watched me grow from infant to heir go glassy and still.
I stand over her body breathing hard, my chest heaving, my fangs extended and my claws dripping with evidence of what I have done. The creviks have scattered to the alcove's edges, their small eyes watching from shadows, their chittering silenced by the violence they have witnessed.
Then I turn toward the cage, and everything else falls away. Her expression holds none of the horror I expected. None of the fear I deserve for the savagery she has witnessed.
She is looking at me as though she’s waited for this. As though the monster I became to reach her is what she needed me to become.
“Took you long enough.” Her words carry exhaustion and relief and an undertone that sounds almost proud.
A sound escapes my throat that belongs to no language. I grip the cage bars and pull.
Metal screams as it tears free from hinges. The bars buckle and separate, creating an opening wide enough for her to pass through, and then she is in my arms. The impact of her body against mine shatters the last fragments of control I have been clinging to. She’s warm where she should be cold, solid where my hands kept reaching for her scent and finding absence, alive when my father's cruelty should have broken her. My arms crush her against my chest, and the shaking that moves through me starts somewhere deep in my bones and spreads outward until I tremble with relief I cannot contain.
She holds me back. Her fingers thread through my hair. Her breath warms my ear. The creviks press against our legs, their small bodies proof of everything my father tried to destroy. Soft chittering rises around us, a chorus of sounds that mean nothing and everything, witnesses to a reunion that should never have been necessary.
“You found me.” She repeats the words against my throat, and the tremor in her tone tells me she was not as certain of this outcome as her posture suggested.
“I will always find you.” My response emerges rough. “You're in my blood now. You couldn't hide from me if you tried.”
A sound escapes her that might be laughter or might be a sob. “Good thing I wasn't trying to hide.”
I pull back far enough to see her face, to trace the bruises that mar her temple and her jaw, to mark every wound left by males who will touch no one again. The claiming marks on her throatpulse beneath my gaze, visible evidence of what she is to me, what we are to each other.
Her small hands clutch my clothing. “Drazex, Vezra told me the whole conspiracy. The enforcer deaths, keeping you dependent, all of it orchestrated by your father. He’s used her for years.”
“I know.” The words emerge flat, carrying none of the grief they should contain. “Samai knows too. He's helping us. Keeping Father occupied until we return.”
The truth settles. I’ve carried this blade for decades without naming it. The old files. Torvin who trained me. Kesh who took a blade for me. Rennix who left rations outside my door. Draven who slipped me food during punishment sessions.
The pattern was there in those records. Every enforcer who showed me kindness, systematically eliminated. I told myself I couldn't afford to follow that thought where it led.
Now I understand why. Some part of me already suspected. Already recognized my father's hand in every death that shaped my isolation
Maeve studies my face, reading whatever she finds there in the dim amber light. “What happens when we go back?”
I press my forehead against hers, breathing her in one more time. “I tear apart House Draven and rebuild it from the wreckage.”
Chapter Sixteen
DRAZEX
Vezra's blood has dried on my claws, crusting in the grooves where the edges meet skin. The smell of her death follows us through tunnels, and I can't do anything about that. The creviks didn't follow when we left. They understood, perhaps, that what comes next belongs to the surface world and the predators who rule it, not to small creatures who survive by staying hidden and offering empathetic comfort.
Maeve's fingers thread through mine with strength that belies the exhaustion shadowing her features. Bruises mark her temple in shades of violet and amber, evidence of hands that no longer exist attached to bodies that no longer breathe. Her sleep clothes hang loose on her frame, stained with Vezra's blood and the dust of the cage floor, and she has not complained once about bare feet on rough stone or cold air that raises marks on her exposed skin.
This female stood against my father's cruelty with nothing but her spine and her silence. She waited in that cage for me to come, and she did not break.
I chose well. The certainty of it settles into my chest and expands until breathing becomes easier than it has been since I woke to empty sheets. Whatever my father thought to accomplish by taking her, he failed. She’s not leverage, not a weakness to exploit. She’s the reason I will tear his reign apart and build a new order from the wreckage.
“What happens now?” Her words echo off the narrowing walls, steady despite everything.
“I take my House.”
She does not ask if I am certain. Does not question whether I can succeed or what the cost might be. She accepts the statement as fact and keeps climbing, her hand warm in mine, her presence an anchor against the storm building in my blood.
