"Subject 001. You're coming with us."
The hand around her throat tightened, pinning her to the cold stone. Over his shoulder, a second man held Dan by the scruff like a sleeping cat. The boy's arms swung limp toward the floor.
"I don't know how you got this deep into the royal facility," she said, flat as ice. Her eyes stayed on the glowing blue slits behind his dark mask. "But there's no escaping now."
"You're defying the Brass, Number 001?"
'Yeah.Right.' Her heartbeat didn't change. She looked at Dan. "What did you do to the boy?"
"Sedation spell," the second man said. "No commotion. We'll leave him on the floor when we go."
"So he won't wake up soon."
"Out cold until—"
Her heel hit the first man's chest.
It wasn't a flail. It was a point-blank detonation, and it threw him backward into his partner. Both men crashed through the neighboring cell, and the iron bars folded around them like wet paper. Dan dropped from the second man's slack hand.
She was already moving. She slid under him and caught him before he touched the stone.
She carried him to the back corner of her cell and set him down against the wall, out of the line of fire.
'Stay asleep.'
Rubble shifted. The first man rose, lightning crackling between his raised palms. "You little—" He spun. She wasn't where she'd been.
"Looking for someone?"
Her voice came from beside his left ear.
An open palm struck his solar plexus. The shockwave tore through his armor and launched him across the hall like a skipped stone. He hit the stone griffin in the center of the room, and the monument burst into a cloud of fine dust.
The second man scrambled up, coughing. Through the haze, a small hand closed around his ankle.
She slammed him into the floor. And again. And again. Each impact rang off the dungeon walls, and dark red splattered across the flags.
"So you dare rebel against your masters."
The voice came through the stone itself, deep and distorted.
Shadows pooled along the edges of the room. Dozens of black-clad assassins rose out of the floor and walls, blades gleaming.
'I could cut through all of them.' Her eyes flicked to the corner where Dan lay sleeping. 'Not with him here.'
They came at once. The first blade she slipped by a hair. The second she met with the iron cuff on her wrist, sparks flying. She vaulted a sweep of spears with a cat's grace and landed in the cell mouth, her body between the shadows and Dan.
She snapped her fingers into a draconic seal. Pale violet light bloomed in her eyes. Mana ran hot in her chest. If this was where it ended, she would take the whole dungeon with her.
"All right, all right. That's plenty."
The voice came from the rubble where the statue had been. It sounded calm, amused, and strangely familiar.
The shadows dissolved like smoke.
A hand rose from the dust and pulled off the dark mask. Long black hair spilled to the shoulders. Golden eyes, sharp and entertained.
"You can stop playing dead now, Flynn."
She turned. The man she'd been slamming into the floor sat up, groaning, and wiped a smear of fake blood off his jaw. He pulled off his own mask and shook out his blond hair.
"We're excellent actors," Flynn said dryly. "I'd like that on record."
"You're complaining?" Arthur coughed out a laugh and shook dust from his hair. "I went face-first through a centuries-old marble griffin."
Her hands dropped from the seal. Her eyes darted between the King and his knight, and for the first time her face showed something. 'What is this?'
Arthur stepped toward her. She dropped into a low fighting stance.
"Easy." He raised open hands, voice warm and steady. "I could be a lot of things in your eyes right now. Closer to your executioner than anything you were guessing earlier, honestly. I'm also the father of that chatty little brat."
'He could be lying.' Her muscles coiled. 'But if he belongs to this kingdom, Dan is safe. And I get my sentence.'
"We've been watching since your chains broke," Arthur said with a tired sigh, nodding at the bent bars. "Flynn thought you'd go for the boy the second your hands were free. You'd have been dead the moment you showed real hostility."
'Hostility.' She tested the word.'It isn't that I don't feel it. I was never taught to show anything.'
"So why did you protect Dan?" He took another step. "If we'd really been your masters, and they weren't going to hurt him, you could have gone quietly. Why not?"
Silence. Her face was a frozen mask.
Arthur glanced at Flynn. Flynn shrugged.
"Take Dan upstairs," Flynn said, stepping forward and adjusting his vambraces. "A damp cell's no place for a young prince. Leave her to me."
"Flynn, wait—"
"I won't make the mistake I made with Lizzy when we met." His blue eyes narrowed as he closed the distance. "And honestly? I find her situation relatable."
'Liars.' The faint glow in her pupils sharpened. 'They were hostile from the start. Their real target must be—'
Her breath caught.
Dan wasn't in the corner.
She whipped around. The King stood by the cell entrance with his sleeping son against his shoulder. He gave Flynn one quiet nod.
Golden light flashed, and they were gone.
–---
Flynn unbuckled his longsword and let it fall. The clang rolled through the dungeon.
"I'll be frank." His voice had gone cold and thin. "This whole business smells wrong. You're supposed to be their prize weapon, and they moved you like it was a joke. Almost like they wanted you caught. Or maybe they were just sloppy." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. You've killed dozens of our knights. You carry a lot of bad blood in this kingdom."
His blue eyes found her.
"You're also a child, so I'll go easy. It's still unfair however I look at it." He lowered his hands. "But this is for the best."
She felt it before she saw it. She crossed her arms over her head.
His fist hit her forearm.
BOOM.
The force went through her like a battering ram. She flew backward and hit the cell wall, and the reinforced stone cracked into a spray of gravel and gray dust.
She coughed blood, dropped to all fours, and bolted. The dust hid her. She reappeared behind Flynn, coiled, and drove a hand-blade at the back of his neck.
He caught her wrist without turning around.
His grip was a rusted clamp. She used the hold as a pivot and whipped both feet toward his face in a double kick. Flynn tipped his head back an inch. Her boots whistled through empty air.
His other fist sank into her stomach.
The air left her. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks, and her body went slack.
"Maybe it's the days without food," Flynn said. "Maybe it's fighting without your artifact. You're weaker than I expected." He lifted her by the wrist with one hand.
'Move. MOVE.'
She forced her free hand into a seal, spent the last of her mana, and breathed.
A wave of amber flame roared out of her mouth.
Flynn's palm covered her face. The fire died where it was born, pressed back down her throat. She choked on her own smoke.
"Were you sent to infiltrate the capital?" His grip tightened until her skull creaked. "Answer me, child."
She knew fear. She'd lived in it her whole manufactured life: the masters, Haki, the knights who'd chained her. An hour ago she had even been afraid of Dan and his golden-eyed father.
None of it compared to this.
She had never felt truly powerless before. Even in chains, she'd had odds to calculate. Now there was nothing to calculate. She was a mouse in the jaws of something that wasn't even trying.
'It's absurd,'she thought, staring into his cold eyes.'A passing feeling. But he's more terrifying than the Master.'
Something in her broke.
Every year of cold training dissolved. She screamed, raw and high. She kicked his chest, clawed his face, punched his arms, and every blow bounced off him like fists on iron. Her whole body shook so hard her teeth rattled.She bit his palm in desperation, her punches slid off his chest uselessly.
"Still silent," Flynn said. "No matter. I have plenty of slow ways to get answers out of..."
He stopped.
The cold left his face.
The weapon of an underground empire hung from his hand, clutching her bruised stomach and sobbing. Tears cut clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks and dripped onto his sleeve.
Flynn exhaled and lowered her to the floor. He let go of her wrist.
She folded into a small, shaking ball at his boots, arms over her head, weeping into the dirt.
'Necessary.' He watched her shoulders heave. 'Nothing wakes a buried feeling faster than real fear.'
He knelt beside her in the dark and waited for the tears to wash away the weapon they'd made her into.