Page 17 of Orc’s Bones

He stopped.

“Who granted you access to the Archive’s restricted section in the first place?” His voice was low. The kind of low that had nothing to do with being quiet. “Not tonight. Four years ago. When you were building the original research.”

She didn’t blink. “The senior research access key. Three copies. Lyssa holds one. You hold one. The third was assigned to the senior Archive researcher position — a role that was eliminated after the exile.”

“But the key wasn’t destroyed.”

“Keys aren’t destroyed.” A flash crossed her face — anger, and underneath the anger, a cold fury more personal than the anger itself. “They’re recalled. Logged as inactive. Archived.”

“Where are inactive keys logged?”

“In the restricted Archive. Lower stacks.” Her voice was level. “In the section I was in tonight before someone used a relay sigil to read everything I found.”

That landed between them and sat there.

Whoever had been using the third key had access to the record of the key’s existence. Had known she’d find it — had placed the relay in that section because she would work her way down to it. Had set her up to map the evidence, reading her findings through the bone trace relay while she did it.

She’d been used as a probe. Not by Thruk.

He watched her absorb the confirmation — it was already in her face, she’d had the walk from the Archive to sit with it, but having his own read of the evidence match hers was different. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away from him.

He wanted her. Blunt and immediate and not particularly convenient, standing in a destroyed Crypt chamber in the middle of the night with the evidence of what his ancestral bones had been built into scattered around their feet.

Everything about her made him want to move forward and she was already standing close and his hands were right there.

“Lower Crypt access.” His voice came out lower than he intended. “Tonight. I take you down now.”

Her exhale was steady. But her eyes moved across his face with more attention than the words required. She’d read the weight in his voice — he could see it in the breath she took before she answered, the way her chin had lifted a fraction.

She knew exactly what she was looking at.

“I need my instruments.” She stepped back to give herself room to move. “Twenty minutes.”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen,” she agreed.

She turned and walked out.

He watched her go. He let himself do it without managing the impulse, because she wasn’t there to see it and managing it had a cost he was done paying.

When the chamber door closed behind her, Varek stepped through it from the passage outside. He’d been there the whole time. Of course he had.

“You’re taking her into the lower levels tonight.”

“Yes.”

Varek looked at the construct pieces on the floor, at the sealed alcoves, at Thruk. The methodical assessment that never missed anything it decided to look at directly. “The construct targeted your bloodline.”

“Yes.”

“The relay in the Archive was reading her while she worked. She walked in knowing the Archive might be compromised.”

“She didn’t know about the relay until she found it.” He pushed off the wall. “She found it.”

A shift moved through Varek’s posture — the small recalibration of a man accepting a revision he disliked. “Get Korven to seal this chamber and post his two best on the passage junction. Nobody enters until I bring her back through.”

Varek moved. No further argument — the decision was made and the order was given, which were the conditions under which Varek stopped having opinions and started executing. Good man.