“I’ll hold myself responsible for considerably more than that.”
Lower Pyraeth swallowsme whole the moment I descend from the middle tiers—buildings ten stories high on either side, ash thick enough to taste, the Market Wards a tangle of bodies and noise and the constant low rumble of lava channels underfoot.
I pull my hood lower and let the crowd absorb me.
Izan’s soldiers are somewhere behind me. I can’t see them—they’re good at their work—but I sense the ripple of their presence in the way certain people glance over their shoulders before quickly looking away. Dragons and their servants carry a particular weight in these districts. The locals can smell authority the way prey animals smell predators.
The textile merchant’s stall appears through the gray haze. Bolts of cloth in colors already dulled by ash exposure. A proprietor with tired eyes who doesn’t look up as I pass. The alley behind it is narrow, shadowed, exactly the kind of place where survivors meet to trade secrets.
Maelin isn’t there.
I wait. Count breaths. Watch the shadows for movement.
Nothing.
The prickling unease that started this morning intensifies. Maelin is many things—cautious, clever, ruthless in her pragmatism—but she’s never late. Being late in Lower Pyraeth gets you killed.
My magic stirs. The ash in the air responds to my bloodline, whispering warnings I can’t quite parse.
Leave.
The thought crystallizes an instant before the first attacker steps out of a doorway I’d dismissed as sealed.
Then another. And another.
Gray robes. Blank expressions. The coordinated movement of the blood-oath bound.
They’re not coming from one direction. They’re coming from three—flooding from doorways and windows and the shadows between buildings, their numbers swelling with every heartbeat until the alley feels less like a street and more like a closing fist.
Trap.
I reach for my power?—
And find it strangled.
The air itself fights me. An ash-based working woven into their formation presses against my magic like a physical weight. I feel my Vireth abilities straining toward expression, can sense the blood-oaths binding these soldiers and the weak points where I could sever them, but the space between intention and action has become thick. Resistant. Wrong.
They came prepared for me.
They know exactly what I am.
A blade whistles toward my head. I duck, roll, come up with the knife I’ve carried since I was twelve years old. The attacker’s face is empty beneath his hood—no anger, no fear, nothing but the mechanical purpose of someone whose will has been stripped away.
More of them converge. The Market Wards’ chaos provides cover for their approach; the crowd melts away with the survival instinct of people who know better than to interfere with the Blood Regent’s work.
I can’t fight this many. Can’t run—they’re blocking every visible exit. Can’t use my full power with their dampening field pressing against me.
So I do what I’ve always done when powerful forces try to cage me.
I survive.
The alley becomesa blur of violence and desperate motion.
I cut one attacker across the throat and use his falling body to block the blade meant for my ribs. Kick another in the knee, hear the joint give way, don’t stop moving long enough to watch him fall. My knife finds soft tissue—arm, belly, the gap between helmet and collar—and I carve a path toward the alley’s mouth through sheer vicious refusal to die.
They’re not trying to kill me. I realize it three heartbeats too late, when a blow meant to incapacitate catches me across the shoulder instead of stabbing through it. They want me alive. Want me contained.
The thought sends ice through my veins.
