I sit up slowly, cataloging my body. Wrists bruised from the binding cuffs, now removed. My throat is dry. My stomachempty. My magic muted but present, pressing against the dampening field with the persistence of water against stone.
The Enforcer’s face keeps surfacing in my mind. Those eyes that tracked my every movement—not calculating, butintent. The way he saidthe witch comes with meas if the alternative had never been an option.
So why am I still breathing?
Time passes.I can’t tell how much.
I use the hours—minutes? days?—to inventory my resources. My knowledge: extensive, dangerous, potentially valuable enough to keep me alive. My willingness to trade it: carefully rationed.
The viewing slot scrapes open. I don’t flinch. Don’t look up. Movement draws attention, and attention in places like this is rarely good.
“Food.” A guard’s voice, bored and distant. “Eat it or don’t.”
A tray slides through a gap at the bottom of the door. Bread, hard but not stale. A cup of water, lukewarm. A chunk of dried meat that could be anything.
I wait until the viewing slot closes before I move. Then I eat methodically, forcing myself to chew slowly despite my hunger. Survival isn’t about staying alive—it’s about staying strong enough to keep staying alive. Every calorie matters. Every drop of water.
The meal sits heavy in my stomach. I lean back against the ash-mortared wall and wait.
For interrogation. For judgment. For whatever the enforcer has planned.
Because hewillcome. I saw it in his face when they led me away—that intensity that went beyond tactical assessment, beyond professional interest. He’ll come because he can’t stay away, and he doesn’t understand why, and that lack of understanding will drive him mad until he gets answers.
I need to be ready with the right ones.
The door opens without warning.
He fills the doorway. The cell is small, designed to make prisoners feel contained, and he makes it smaller still. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Ash-black hair loose around a face carved from violence held in check. Different clothes than before—clean, dark, unremarkable—but the intensity in his gaze hasn’t changed.
Watching me with the focus of a predator who’s found an unexpected challenge.
I don’t stand. Don’t cower. Don’t give him anything to work with.
“Enforcer Sulien.” Steady—good. “I was wondering when you’d visit.”
He steps into the cell. The door closes behind him—not slammed, shut with the quiet certainty of someone who doesn’t need dramatic gestures. The space between us shrinks to nothing. Six feet. Five. He stops out of arm’s reach, looming over me on my stone bench, and I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze.
The position is deliberate. Designed to make me feel small, vulnerable, contained. Standard interrogation practice.
I let him think it’s working.
“You’re going to tell me everything.” Not a question. His voice is low, rough, carrying the weight of absolute authority. “Who you work for. How you found the ritual site. What you know about the Blood Regent’s network.”
“I work for myself.” True. “I found the site by tracking the network’s resonance.” Also true. “And I know more about the Blood Regent’s network than anyone else in this city.” Definitely true, though probably not wise to admit.
A muscle jumps in his jaw. Around us, the cell’s silence deepens.
“You expect me to believe you’re operating independently? A Vireth witch, alone, against a network that spans half the city?”
“I expect you to believe evidence.” I gesture at the space between us—a small movement, contained, nothing that could be mistaken for aggression. “You found meseveringa blood-oath. Not creating one. Not maintaining one. If I worked for the Regent, why would I be destroying his assets?”
The logic is sound. I watch him process it, watch the flicker of acknowledgment in his eyes before his expression locks down again. He doesn’t want to believe me. Belief would complicate things.
“The Vireth bloodline has been hunted for months.” He shifts his weight, the movement bringing him a half-step closer. My pulse kicks up. I force it down. “The Regent wants your kind. Needs you for something. Why aren’t you dead or captured?”
“Because I’m better at hiding than the others were.” The words taste bitter. My sisters. My aunts. The cousins I never met because they were taken before I was born. “And because I stopped running three weeks ago.”
“Stopped running.”
