Tavrok's hand lingered against Nivara's cheek until iron jammed hard into her temple. A guard in soot-stained brigandine leaned over them, knuckle white around the twin triggers of a scattergun. "The real Valda didn't have a conscience," the man rasped, spitting gray phlegm onto the flagstones. His eyes, usually clouded with suspicion, were now sharp, glinting with a desperate, almost frantic resolve. “She saw the Vorga as specimens, not patients. She experimented, cut them open while they still lived. Thought their curses held the key to a new kind of power, not a disease to be cured.” Nivara tried to push away, but the Blight had sunk its teeth deep. Her limbs felt like lead, her vision blurred at the edges, and a cough ripped through her, a dry, rattling sound that tasted of ash. Myco, curled tightly against her side, let out a distressed whine, her bioluminescent fur pulsing faintly. "She deserved what she got," the guard growled, digging the iron muzzle into her hairline. “I snapped her neck myself, the night she started vivisecting the younglings. Buried her in the same pauper’s plot she’d condemned so many of the innocent to.” Nivara gasped, a harsh, painful sound. The audacity, the raw confession, even as he held a weapon to her head. It was madness. And yet, a strange, terrible clarity settled over her. This wasn’t just about her identity. It was a test. "And you," the warden spat, "you walk in her skin. You talk about healing, but you’re just as wild, just as reckless. You yell at the beasts. You throw yourself into danger. Are you another one of her kind? Another monster in a medic’s cloak?” Before Nivara could even formulate a retort, Tavrok moved. Not with the crushing force she’d grown accustomed to, but with a fluid grace that belied his monstrous size. Tavrok angled his heavy brow between her skin and the weapon, crowding the twin barrels against his own matted hair. His burning yellow irises fixed on the warden without a blink. He would take the shot for her. The guard hesitated, his finger trembling over the dual triggers. "Get that beast away from me," the warden ordered, gravel scraping his tone. Nivara drew on pure bile. This man, this murderer, daring to question her compassion, her very oath as a medic? It was an insult she couldn’t tolerate, even on the brink of death. Her temper, her reckless temper, flared into a roaring inferno. With a furious snarl, Nivara slapped the gun away from Tavrok’s head. The crack of metal against her palm wrenched the weapon loose, sending it clattering across the slate floor. “Don’t you dare,” Nivara snarled, her voice hoarse, but laced with an unyielding steel. Her chest burned, each word a torment, yet she pressed on. “Don’t you dare call me ‘her kind.’ Don’t you dare accuse me of being a torturer. I am a medic. I save lives. I stitched up Krell after he tried to tear out my throat. I cleaned the rot from the younglings' fur before Valda even looked their way. I do the work." Her gaze, despite the fog of her sickness, was sharper than any blade, cutting through his defenses. “You killed Valda because she was cruel. And you thought I was the same. Well, look at me. Look at *him*.” She gestured wildly at Tavrok, who remained still, his massive form a wall behind her. “He just took a gun to his head for me. Does that look like a monster-in-a-cloak to you?” The guard stared, his mouth tight. His eyes drifted from Nivara’s blazing fury to Tavrok’s unwavering vigilance, then to the scattergun lying innocently on the floor. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, punctuated only by Nivara’s ragged breathing. He finally dropped his hands, shoulders slumping as he picked up the scattergun and thumbed both cartridges free. “No,” he conceded, his voice barely a whisper. “It doesn’t. You’re… different. Maddening, but different.” He met her gaze, a flicker of something almost akin to respect in his eyes. “The catacombs. Where the first curse-drops fell. It’s forbidden, sealed. But if Valda’s journal holds a clue, then the answers are there. I’ll help you. For the Vorga.” Nivara coughed up wet black grit. Her knees gave out, but Tavrok caught her mid-fall, thick arms locking her against his ribs. Joints popped and spine plates lengthened under his pelt as the Vorga curse snapped back into shape. He set her down against the wall, snout resting beside her cheek. His pelt shielded her ribs from the frigid stone. The Blight-fever was spiking, her body convulsing with shivers that racked her from head to toe. Tavrok, now fully a hulking beast, let out a low, guttural rumble of concern. He curled his frame around her, drawing a broad tail over her lap like a wool blanket. A low rumble rattled through his ribcage, soaking into her sore lungs. "The catacombs sit beneath the chapel nave," the guard muttered, unclipping an iron ring of keys. "Wards block the door—blood seals. A high-physician's glyphs might bypass them." Nivara leaned her forehead into Tavrok's chest. The tail wrapped around her tightened almost imperceptibly, a protective embrace. She nodded weakly, her mind already racing with the implications, even as her body screamed for rest. The heart of the rot. The first drop of blood. It had to be in the catacombs. Before the guard could explain further, timber ruptured at the hall's far end. Then another, louder this time, followed by a sickening splintering sound, and the distant, guttural growls of something immense and enraged. The floorboards directly beneath the sealed exit to the infirmary began to buckle and warp, splintering inwards with a violent tearing noise as a pack of Blight-crazed rogue Vorga breached the Manse.

The Warden's Secret