"I do not know?—"
Her hand closes around his throat before the sentence finishes, lifting him just enough that his feet lose their full contact with the ground, his breath cutting off as her grip tightens.
"Do not give me information unless you have the ability to be thorough," she says, her voice even and controlled. “You imbecile."
She releases him.
He drops hard, catching himself on his hands, coughing as he pulls air back into his lungs.
"I require his location immediately," she continues, as though nothing has interrupted her. A pause. “Be careful, Larkin.” The phrase sounds more threat than warning.
Larkin nods, still bent forward, his voice rough when it returns. "Yes."
Nox turns and moves back toward the corridor, the Morraks remaining where they are, bowed and silent, as she leaves them behind.
The air changes as she ascends, the weight of the Deep Levels giving way to the controlled quiet above. By the time she reaches the corridor outside her chambers, Brinette's posture is restored, her movements measured and appropriate to the role she wears.
A servant girl rushes toward her, breathless, her face bright with urgency and something softer beneath it, more eager.
"Lady Brinette," she says quickly, "any word from the Princess?"
This princess.
The thought moves through Nox with quiet irritation. Was this Asharin born a servant, or had she simply learned to behave like one that the help here is so infatuated with her?
Nox pauses, then reaches, directing her intunar inward. The girl opens without resistance, and Nox takes all of it in: desperation, worry, a constant gnawing need to be useful, to be seen, to matter in ways she has never been allowed to define for herself.
Pathetic.
"In the kitchens," the girl continues, unaware, "they say the King will only dine alone since she left?—"
Nox's hand closes around her arm and pulls her through the doorway before she can process it, the door shutting behind them with a finality that cuts off the corridor entirely.
A brief struggle. A sound that does not fully form. Then silence. By the time Nox steps back, the girl is barely upright, her weight already giving. Nox studies her a moment. Then reaches for her throat. The change comes fast. Wrong in the way these things always are.
When it ends the thing before her goes still, waiting.
Her fingers tremble once, barely noticeable, gone before it can mean anything. "Find him," Nox says quietly.
It launches. The window shatters outward as it disappears into the dark, the echo of its shriek fading as it rises.
Nox remains where she is. He will be found. He must be.
CHAPTER 17
The Scouring
They do not take us through the upper halls again. Queen Petunis dismisses the others with a small lift of her hand, the gesture quiet but absolute. “You are not needed,” she says, her voice composed in a way that allows no misunderstanding. “I will oversee this myself.”
Venya hesitates only a moment before inclining her head. The others follow without question, dispersing as though this had been expected all along.
Nyara shifts closer to me as we begin to walk, her shoulder brushing mine just once, not by accident. Petunis leads us deeper into the palace.
The brightness fades as we descend, gold and crystal giving way to something older, something less concerned with beauty and more with purpose. The air cools, though a strange warmth lingers beneath it, as though the structure breathes in two directions at once. The corridors narrow. The silence deepens.
And then?—
a scream carries upward from somewhere below.
