The creature remained unconscious on the sublevel floor, and two of Voss’s strongest had it restrained with silver-reinforced chains that Solomon had personally inspected three times.
Lucian stood by the command monitors, his dislocated arm back in its socket thanks to a field reset that I’d heard from two corridors away and never wanted to hear again. He was speaking with Voss in the low, clipped tones of a king transitioning from battle to governance.
Mira hadn’t moved from the sublevel entrance.
She watched every lycan leave their cell. Every single one. Her face carried an expression I’d seen on her exactly once before: the night she’d told us about the sublevels, about the children and the experiments and the wolves who screamed without voices.
She’d looked gutted then. She looked gutted now, but underneath it was a resolve that held her upright when exhaustion should’ve dropped her hours ago.
“The ones who converted are free to go,” she said to Voss when the last cell opened. “The hunters who chose Thiago’s side after knowing what was down here don’t get the same mercy.”
Voss nodded. No argument. The evidence was in every empty cell and every freed wolf and the creature chained to the floor beneath us.
“And the ones who genuinely didn’t know,Your Majesty?” Voss asked. He’s now treating her with more respect and already considered her as a queen even without formalities.
Well, as he fucking should. This was all her. She rescued and saved Veyndral.
Mira paused. The question mattered because some of those hunters on their knees upstairs had joined the Order believing they were protecting people. Had trained and fought and followed orders without ever seeing the sublevels. Without knowing what their leader was manufacturing in the basement.
“Wyatt will sort them,” she said. “He’ll know who knew and who didn’t.”
That was Mira. Even after everything Thiago had done, she sticks to her morals.
She turned toward the stairwell and her first step was a wince. The second was worse. The limp she’d been hiding since the balcony had graduated into a full-bodied reminder that she’d been dragged down three flights of stairs, zip-tied, thrown on concrete, and had sprinted through a compound while pregnant with triplets.
I scooped her off her feet before the third step.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“Percival!”
“Full name. Terrifying. Still no.”
“I can walk.”
“You can limp. There’s a difference. And we’re going up four flights of stairs and you’re carrying three passengers, so the math isn’t in your favor.”
She opened her mouth to argue. Closed it and opened it again. Then her head dropped against my shoulder and her body went slack with a surrender so complete it told me exactly how much pain she’d been masking.
“Fine. But go left at the top of the stairs.”
“Why left?”
“Because right takes us past the armory and I don’t want to see any more guns today. Left goes through the east wing. Better lighting.”
“You’re giving me directions.”
“I’m optimizing the route. You’re the vehicle. I’m the navigator.”
Solomon fell into step on my right. Lucian on my left. Neither commented on the carrying arrangement because both of them had been calculating the same move and I’d simply gotten there first.
We climbed four flights. Mira directed every turn apparently enjoying giving me directions as if she was a ship captain.
The eastern service entrance opened onto morning.
Real morning. Not the gray pre-dawn we’d breached through, but full sun cutting through the tree line and painting the compound’s concrete in gold.
