The air in the oubliette, once a void, was now thick with the scent of the girl's fear. It was a sharp, acrid thing that cut through the lingering meditation on control. 'Kaelen. Dead.' The words didn't seem real. The nervous scribe, the keeper of discreet truths, reduced to a message written in his own blood.
Cyrus didn't hesitate. He was a blur of motion, snatching the lamp from the floor and striding out of the chamber. The door groaned shut behind him, but not before he issued a terse command over his shoulder. "Stay here. Lock the door behind me. Do not open it for anyone but me."
The heavy iron door clicked shut, plunging Elara back into absolute darkness. But the stillness was gone. It was now filled with the phantom echoes of the girl's terror and the cold finality of Cyrus's order.
'Stay here.' Like a child. Like a weapon to be stored safely away while its wielder dealt with the mess.
She stood in the center of the blackness, her newfound control fraying at the edges. Kaelen was dead. Murdered. And the message... 'Silence has a price.' It could only mean one thing. Their conversation. Her questions about her family. Someone had heard. Someone had decided the scribe's discretion was a liability.
Vorlan's warning echoed in her mind. 'Even the walls have ears.' He had said it just hours ago. Was it a genuine warning? Or a boast?
She couldn't stay here. She couldn't just wait in the dark while the boy who had brought her the truth was lying in a pool of his own blood. The hunger and rage she had just learned to bank flared anew, fed by a fresh wave of fear and fury.
Cyrus had told her to lock the door. The key was still in the outside lock. She was a prisoner in the silence.
No. She wasn't.
She moved to the door, her hands skimming the cold, rune-etched iron until she found the heavy key still protruding from the mechanism on the other side. She couldn't turn it from the inside. But she could feel it. A solid, cold presence.
She focused, pushing past the panic, reaching for the calm center Cyrus had shown her. The power was there, the hum of stolen blood from the duel. She pulled on it, focusing it, imagining it flowing down her arm, into her fingertips. She pressed her fingers against the cold metal around the keyhole, not to force it, but to feel it. To understand its shape, its structure.
She remembered the weight of Cyrus's sword in her hand, the precise balance of it. She imagined the key as an extension of that balance. A tool.
With a gentle, focused push of her will—a silent, mental command—she nudged the key. On the other side of the door, she heard a faint, metallic click.
She held her breath. Slowly, carefully, she pushed the door. It swung open without a sound.
She slipped out into the cold corridor, the lamp Cyrus had left behind guttering on the floor. She left it. Her eyes adjusted swiftly to the deeper darkness of the passageway. She could hear distant, frantic sounds now—raised voices, the clash of armored feet on stone—all funneling down from the levels above. The castle was awakening to the news.
She moved not towards the noise, but away from it, deeper into the silent, lower levels. The servant girl had said the lower archives. Kaelen's domain.
The corridors down here were narrow, unused, layered in dust. Her soft-soled shoes made no sound. She relied on her senses, following the faint, fading scent of Kaelen's anxiety that still clung to the path he must have taken, mixed with the newer, horrifyingly familiar scent of spilled blood.
It led her to a doorway hidden behind a moth-eaten tapestry. The door was ajar. A sliver of faint, magical light spilled out.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She pressed herself against the cold stone wall beside the door and peered inside.
The room was a catastrophe. It was a small, cluttered scriptorium, filled with tilted writing desks and shelves overflowing with scrolls and loose parchment. And in the center of it all, lying in a grotesque parody of his usual nervous posture, was Kaelen.
The girl's description had been horrifyingly accurate. His throat was a ruin of torn flesh. His life's blood had pooled around him, dark and viscous, soaking into precious parchments. And on the bare stone wall above him, scrawled in a shaking, desperate hand using a finger dipped in his own blood, were the words:
'SILENCE HAS A PRICE'
Elara's hand flew to her mouth, a wave of nausea and grief threatening to overwhelm her. He had been trying to write something, to name his killer, perhaps. But he hadn't had the strength. He had only had enough for a warning.
A warning for her.
This was because of her. Her questions. Her existence.
A soft sound from the far corner of the room snapped her head up.
A figure was hunched over one of the desks, its back to her. It was frantically rifling through a stack of papers, its movements hurried, desperate. It was the servant girl. The one who had fetched them.
"What are you doing?" Elara's voice was a hoarse whisper, but it echoed in the deathly quiet room.
The girl jumped, spinning around. Her face was a mask of tear-streaked panic. In her hands, she clutched a handful of loose papers. Elara's enhanced eyes could see the familiar, precise script—Cyrus's script—on them. They were reports. Logs.
"My lady!" the girl gasped, clutching the papers to her chest like a life raft. "You... you shouldn't be here!"
"What are you doing?" Elara repeated, stepping into the room, her eyes fixed on the papers. "Those are his. The Enforcer's."
"I have to... I have to protect him," the girl whispered, her eyes darting towards Kaelen's body and flinching away. "They'll blame him. They'll say he did this because Kaelen knew... knew his secrets."
"What secrets?" Elara asked, her blood running cold.
The girl shook her head wildly. "I can't! He'll... he'll..." Her words dissolved into sobs. "He owns my blood oath! My family!"
Elara took another step closer, her voice softening despite the horror around them. "He's not here. It's just me. Please. Kaelen is dead. Someone did this. Help me understand."
The girl looked at her, truly looked at her, and Elara saw the same trapped animal fear she saw in her own reflection. "He... he keeps records," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Not just the Queen's decrees. Private ones. About the old families. About the... the children. The ones who went missing after the fall. He was looking for you for years, but he was looking for others, too. He... he finds them sometimes. Before the Queen's hunters do."
The revelation landed like a thunderclap. Cyrus. The Queen's ruthless enforcer. Secretly tracking down the lost children of the families he had destroyed. Spiriting them away before Lysandra could finish the job.
"He saves them?" Elara breathed, unable to process it.
The girl nodded, fresh tears falling. "A few. He finds them homes. Far away from here. It's his... his penance." She looked at the blood on the wall. "If the Queen finds these logs, she'll kill him. She'll kill my family. I have to hide them."
Elara's mind reeled. The pieces were crashing together in a new, terrifying configuration. Cyrus's cold duty. His bitter lessons. His talk of balance and broken narratives. It wasn't just about political stability. It was about atonement. A silent, secret war waged from the heart of the enemy's court.
The weight of the secret felt immense, a crushing burden.
"Give them to me," Elara said, her voice suddenly steady.
The girl stared at her, confused. "My lady?"
"If they find you with them, you're dead. If they find them on me..." She met the girl's terrified gaze. "I am a threat they are still figuring out how to handle. I am harder to kill than you are. Give them to me."
Hesitantly, trembling, the girl held out the sheaf of papers. Elara took them. The pages felt like live coals in her hands. She folded them quickly and tucked them into the inner fold of her gown, against her skin. They felt like a second heartbeat, a dangerous, terrible truth.
"What is your name?" Elara asked softly.
"Liana," the girl whispered.
"Go, Liana," Elara said. "Go back to your duties. You were never here. You saw nothing."
Liana nodded, relief and fear warring on her face. She scurried from the room, leaving Elara alone with the murdered scribe and his bloody warning.
Elara took one last, grim look at Kaelen. His sightless eyes seemed to accuse her. 'Your curiosity killed me.' She vowed, silently, to him and to herself, that his price would not be paid in vain.
She turned to leave, but as she did, her foot brushed against something under a fallen parchment. She bent down. It was a small, leather-bound journal. Kaelen's personal journal, not an official record. It must have fallen from his desk during the struggle.
Without thinking, she snatched it up and tucked it away with the other papers. Then she slipped out of the scriptorium and into the dark hall.
She had only taken a few steps when the sound of heavy, rapid footsteps echoed from the way she had come. Torchlight flared at the end of the corridor.
She pressed herself into a deep alcove, shrouded in shadow, just as Cyrus rounded the corner. He wasn't alone. Two of his black-clad enforcers were with him, their faces grim.
They didn't see her. They moved with lethal purpose straight to the scriptorium door and disappeared inside.
Elara didn't wait. She turned and fled in the opposite direction, her hand pressed against her chest, feeling the damning papers and the secret journal hidden there. The Enforcer's secret was now hers. And she had stolen a dead man's last thoughts.
She had wanted the truth. Now, she was drowning in it. And it was far more dangerous than she had ever imagined.