“Three seconds, Luthea,” the intruder rumbled, his voice devoid of inflection yet echoing with undeniable menace. “Explain the sudden, uncontrolled surge of ancient magic pouring from you, or be executed as an assassin.”
Mazari didn’t flinch. The label was absurd. She was a cast-out pack loyalist, not a hired knife. Heat gathered along the bridge of her nose—the same prickle that usually preceded a shattered jaw or cracked pottery. This hulking rogue sovereign, bearing down with his glassy weapon, echoed Galdos in his prime: all booming edicts and brittle authority.
She wouldn't cower. Not again. Not ever.
“Murderer?” Mazari scoffed, the syllables scraping her borrowed throat. “You assume that because I refused to perish quietly?” Her left fist hooked outward in a sudden, violent strike. Knuckles connected with the flat of the black dagger with a sharp crack, knocking it aside. The weapon ripped from his fingers, embedding itself with a dull crunch into the wall panel beside the mattress. A splintered runnel branched through the grain.
Just as her knuckles recoiled, a flare of verdant sparks burst from her palm, searing the gloom. The flash branded her retinas, flooding this frail host body with a prickling, fevered heat. The air crackled, thick with raw power. She heard a sharp, almost choked gasp from Zorath, then Grix’s cynical voice, distant and muffled, saying something about “another entry.”
The glow contracted, sinking back under her cuticles. When the spots cleared from her vision, lingering jade motes drifted in the drafts. Zorath stood rooted against the fading luminescence. The flint of his irises caught the dying sparks, pupils contracted. The corner of his mouth twitched upward—the dry amusement of a trapper checking a snare.
He reached out, working the vitrified blade from the cedar paneling with a scrape. He slid the edge into its scabbard without looking down, his stare fixed squarely on her face.
“Uncontrolled, yes,” Zorath rumbled, a grating hum rumbling in his chest. “Hardly an executioner, however. A solitary noble who suddenly wields forgotten sorcery makes for a volatile blend.” He closed the distance between them by two slow strides. “Welcome to Vexxar. Here, defiance buys breathing room, and temper carries value.”
Grix straightened from the doorway, thumbing through a pocket notebook. “A crisp cross, if I may,” he drawled, scratching a charcoal stub across a blank page. “Disarming our monarch goes directly into the record. Most guests default to groveling or hysterics.” He cast a flat glance toward Zorath. “You owe five silver pieces for the carpentry, Your Majesty.”
Zorath merely grunted, his gaze still fixed on Mazari, a silent challenge in his depths. “Grix speaks truth. Your… method of engagement is unusual. And effective.” He gestured vaguely around the chamber. “This surge… this ancient magic. It's potent. It’s also attracting attention. The kind of attention Vexxar can ill afford right now.”
Mazari crossed her arms, a familiar defiance settling in her posture. “So you’re not going to execute me?”
“Not today,” Zorath said. “Today, you adapt. The subterranean fortress is a tangle of snares and opportunists eager to bleed your new gift. Grix will escort you. He has matters to present.”
Grix snapped the register closed. “Indeed. My registry covers more than your knuckles; it catalogs treason. We harbor a rat peddling intelligence to the Sun-Peak border guards. With your fresh sight, you may spot what our sentries miss.” He tilted his chin. “Besides, you draw attention like grease to a flame. We might as well direct it.”
Mazari’s mind whirred. A mole. Secrets. This was far more interesting than recovering from a magic-induced coma. And a chance to use her fists for something other than just her own vindication. This was a *mission*. A purpose. “An informant?” Mazari’s lips drew thin. “Lead the way, Grix. This sounds productive.”
Over the next several days, under Grix’s dry instruction, Mazari traced the halls of the underground stronghold. Cavernous passageways cut through basalt, draped with dull silver banners and lined with black carvings. Scarred sentries held the crossings. Factionaries drifted in silk shifts, their murmurs carrying sharp appraisal across the stone.
Her allocated quarters offered velvet bedding, flagstones, and a sulfur spring fed from deep fissures. The narrow frame she wore proved deceptively tough; knicks and scrapes sealed over in moments under a quiet, simmering radiance.
Her dominance signature shifted as well. Where she had once projected the blunt strength of a frontier wolf, her presence now cast a heavy, green-tinted pressure. Aristocrats stepped aside when she walked down gallery corridors, their chins tilting down in caution.
Zorath appeared at irregular hours, leaning against colonnades to track her progress. When their sights locked, static skittered across her knuckles. His dense, soot-heavy pressure surged in return whenever her temper broke, snapping back at her defiance like flint on steel.
She remained the forsaken wolf inside, but this stolen vitality reshaped the terms. Grasping this restoration craft and securing her seat in the underworld meant her eventual reckoning with Galdos would hit with crushing finality.
By the fourth afternoon, while Mazari knit together the fractures of an earthenware jug using faint green threads, an iron gong reverberated through the vaults. Grix dropped his tally book onto a side table, the dry sarcasm draining from his posture.
“Sun-Peak envoys,” Grix muttered, snatching the book back up. “Crawling underground on their knees. No highland nobility stoops this low unless ruin is knocking on their door.” He paused, chin raised toward the entry stairs. “They demand audience with the rumored mender.”
Mazari felt a sudden chill, a premonition that prickled her skin. Then, from the Keep’s echoing depths, a distinct voice, strained and laced with a pathetic whine, carried through the stone. A voice she knew, a voice that made her teeth ache with remembered rage. A voice accompanied by the unmistakable sight of a rapidly balding Galdos, heavily cloaked, stumbling into the main receiving hall.