Vye let the silence stretch between them. She had spent enough time around people like Symond to know that forcing an answer wouldn’t work.
Finally, he exhaled through his nose. “I don’t know how she got those abilities,” he admitted, his voice quieter than usual. “But if I had to guess… Thorn.”
He kicked a loose rock into the water. “Thorn was a lot of things, but he never wasted time on failures. That’s what a wardis—a failure. Someone who couldn’t pass their trials. Someone not worth the effort.”
“Then why turn her into that?”
Symond was quiet again, his brows furrowed. “That’s the part that doesn’t make sense,” he admitted. “Thorn didn’tcreatethings—hebrokethem. If he gave her those abilities, it wasn’t because he wanted to make her stronger. It was because he wanted to control her.”
Violette studied him as they walked. He wasn’t sneering, wasn’t mocking Elora or throwing out sharp insults like before. If anything, he seemed… thoughtful. Conflicted.
“You really hate him,” she noted.
Symond huffed a humorless laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then tell me.”
For the first time since they entered the tunnels, Symond glanced at her. There was something unreadable in his expression, something carefully guarded. But he didn’t shut her down.
“He’s the Headmaster,” Symond started. “But that’s not what heis. He didn’tteach.He didn’tguide.Heownedus.”
Violette kept quiet, letting him talk.
“If you were useful, you became one of them—an apprentice. If you weren’t… you were nothing.” His jaw tightened. “And Thorn made sure youknewit.”
His voice was steady, but there was something beneath it, something barely restrained. It almost seemed like he was going to keep talking, to finally let something real slip through.
Then—
A voice echoed through the tunnel behind them.
Both of them froze.
Violette’s hand went instinctively to the dagger at her hip, her body tensing. Symond turned his head slightly, listening.
Another voice, this time closer.
They weren’t alone.
The first attack came fast—too fast.
A glint of steel, a rush of movement in the dark.
Violette twisted, barely dodging the blade that sliced through the damp air where her throat had been a second earlier. She lashed out, catching the attacker across the face with the hilt of her dagger, sending him stumbling back into the tunnel wall.
Footsteps pounded against the wet stone. More of them.
She and Symond had barely turned to face the new threat when another figure lunged from the shadows, a crude axe swinging for Symond’s head. He ducked, but his foot slipped on the slick ground, and he barely avoided cracking his skull against the tunnel wall as he staggered back.
Shit.
Vye struck low, slashing her dagger across the back of the axe-wielder’s knee. He howled, collapsing onto the uneven ground.
There were four of them.
No, five.
Maybe more.
