"Fine." I dry my hands on a rough cloth, already moving toward the wardrobe. "I'll check on the beasts anyway."
Varek nods and withdraws, and I finish dressing in silence. Clean tunic, reinforced leather bracers, boots that can handle both heat and traction. Everything functional. Everything deliberate. I pull my hair back and secure it, then head for the descent corridors.
The estate shifts around me as I descend—architecture giving way to raw geology, refinement dissolving into necessity. The temperature climbs with each level, and the air thickens with sulfur and the faint metallic tang of binding magic under strain. I've walked this path thousands of times. I could do it blind.
The stables announce themselves before I reach them. Sound carries differently down here—amplified by the stone, distorted by heat and contained power. I can distinguish individual creatures by the quality of their movement: the low scrape of Khorvas testing his chains, the rhythmic thump of Sythrak's tailagainst reinforced stone, the near-silent stillness of Azhrael that somehow feels louder than noise.
I step onto the main walkway and pause, scanning the space with practiced efficiency. Everything appears stable. Containment barriers glow faintly at their seams, undisturbed. The glyph plates embedded in the rock pulse in steady rhythm. No alarms, no fluctuations.
I find the human halfway down the eastern walkway, crouched near the railing with a scrub brush in hand. Her back is to me, brown hair tied back but already loosening in the heat, a few strands clinging to the curve of her neck. She's working methodically, her movements efficient but not rushed, and there's something about her posture that suggests she's paying attention to more than just the stone beneath her hands.
I'm about to call out—announce my presence before I startle her into doing something stupid—when she stops working entirely.
She stands slowly, brush forgotten, and turns toward Azhrael's enclosure.
My jaw tightens.
Azhrael is watching her. I can see it from here—the way his massive form has shifted toward the barrier, the deliberate tilt of his head that suggests focused attention rather than idle curiosity. His eyes glow faintly in the darkness of his basin, luminous voids that should send any rational being scrambling in the opposite direction.
But she doesn't scramble.
She doesn't even flinch.
Instead, she steps closer to the railing, her gaze fixed on him with an expression I can't name. Not fear. Not even wariness. Something softer. Something that looks almost like... recognition?
The thought lodges in my chest like a splinter.
I watch her tilt her head, mirroring Azhrael's posture in a way that makes my skin prickle with unease. Her lips curve slightly, not quite a smile but close enough to suggest she's pleased by what she sees. And Azhrael—Azhrael, who would disembowel most beings for daring to meet his gaze—simply watches her back. Patient. Still.
Something pulls tight beneath my ribs, a sensation I don't have time to analyze because she's moving again. Not away from the barrier. Toward it.
She reaches up, fingers extending toward the railing near one of the smaller enclosures—Vexris, a feral predator half her size but fast enough to eviscerate her before she could blink if the barriers failed—and I'm moving before conscious thought catches up.
"Step back."
My voice cracks through the space like a whip, and she jerks upright, spinning toward me with wide eyes. Her hand drops immediately, but the damage is done. I saw how close she was. How little distance separated her skin from a containment field that's designed to restrain creatures, not protect humans who wander too near.
I close the distance between us in long strides, my boots ringing against the iron walkway. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I—" She swallows, and I can see the pulse jumping in her throat. "I was cleaning. Like I was told."
"Cleaning." I let the word sit there, flat and unimpressed. "You were told to clean. Not to gawk at the beasts like they're curiosities in a menagerie."
Her chin lifts slightly, and there's something in her eyes that looks dangerously close to defiance before she smooths it away. "I wasn't gawking."
"No?" I gesture toward Azhrael's enclosure, where the creature is still watching us with that unnerving focus. "Then what were you doing?"
She hesitates, and I watch her choose her words carefully. "Looking. That's all."
"Looking gets people killed down here." I step closer, crowding her space deliberately. She's tall for a human, but I still have half a foot on her, and I use it. "These aren't pets. They're not companions. They're infernal beasts, and if you give them an opening, they will take it."
"I understand."
"Do you?" I let my gaze travel over her face, cataloging details I shouldn't be noticing—the warm brown of her eyes, the slight flush across her cheeks from heat or embarrassment, the stubborn set of her jaw that suggests she's biting back words she knows better than to speak. She's... striking. More than that, if I'm being honest, which I'm not interested in being.
The realization irritates me more than it should.
I force my attention back to her eyes, narrowing my own. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you were about to touch a containment barrier without clearance. Which means you either don't understand how dangerous that is, or you don't care."
