The torch flame wavers as she shifts closer, shadows dancing across her tattooed face like living things. Her eyes gleam with the fervor of someone who's finally cornering their prey after a long hunt.
"You actually believed he'd come for you, didn't you? That some grand romance would save you from the reality of what you are—nothing but a warm body he used once and discarded."
My throat feels raw, but the words scrape out anyway. "Then why haven't you just killed me already?"
The question hangs in the stale air between us. Zharra tilts her head, considering, as if my death is a puzzle she's been solving piece by piece.
"Because I wanted you to understand first. To feel the weight of abandonment settle into your bones. To know that when you die down here, alone and forgotten, it won't even register as a loss to him."
She rises to her feet, torch held high, casting her shadow enormous against the stone walls. "But you're right—I have waited too long. Time to put a pathetic animal out of its misery."
Her free hand moves to her belt, fingers closing around the ornate handle of a ceremonial dagger. The blade catches the torchlight as she draws it, etched runes glowing like molten gold along its edge.
"Accept it," she whispers, voice soft as silk and twice as deadly. "Accept that these thoughts are your last."
27
VARGATH
The tunnel mouth yawns before me like the throat of some ancient beast. Broken stones jut from the walls where my axe has carved through decades of deliberate collapse. My hands are raw, knuckles split and bleeding, but the pain keeps me focused. Keeps me moving.
The air grows thicker as I descend, heavy with the scent of old death and forgotten prayers. Torch flame gutters against damp stone, casting wild shadows that dance like spirits of the buried. These are the old burial chambers—sealed when I was still a boy, after part of the ceiling came down and crushed three temple workers.
The walls tell stories in cracked carvings and faded paint. Gods with tusks and flowing hair, their hands full of grain and weapons. Shrines carved into alcoves, their offerings long since turned to dust. The Plentiful God stares down from every surface, his eyes following my passage like an accusation.
"Where are you?" I whisper to the darkness, voice echoing off stone that hasn't heard speech in decades.
The tunnel branches ahead—three passages splitting like the fingers of a corpse's hand. I pause, straining to hear anythingbeyond my own ragged breathing. The silence presses against my eardrums like water.
Then—faint as a dying ember—I catch it. Voices. Two of them, one sharp and cold, the other...
My heart slams against my ribs. Seris.
I follow the sound through a narrow passage that scrapes my shoulders, past collapsed shrines and broken funeral urns. The voices grow clearer with each step, bouncing off the stone like trapped birds.
"...pathetic animal out of its misery."
Zharra's voice. Cold satisfaction dripping from every word.
The passage opens into a circular chamber, and an icy sensation washes over me.
Seris lies crumpled on the stone floor, belly swollen beneath torn fabric, wrists raw from shackles. Her face is gaunt, eyes hollow with exhaustion and fear. But alive. Still breathing.
Zharra kneels above her like some twisted priestess, ceremonial dagger gleaming in the torchlight. The blade wavers as she raises it, runes along its edge pulsing with reflected flame.
Time fractures. Slows. The world narrows to this single moment—the curve of steel above my woman, my child, my everything.
"SERIS!"
The bellow tears from my throat like a war cry, echoing off the burial chamber walls with enough force to shake dust from the ceiling. Zharra's head snaps toward me, eyes wide with shock and fury.
The dagger begins its descent.
I launch myself across the chamber, feet pounding against stone, muscles coiled like a spring finally released. Zharra tries to adjust her grip, to complete the killing stroke before I reach her.
Too late.
My shoulder slams into her ribs with the force of a battering ram, lifting her clean off the ground. The dagger spins from her grasp, clattering across stone as we crash into the far wall in a tangle of limbs and snarled curses.
