Chapter 90 The Laugh

Chapter 90 The Laugh
The laughter did not stop. It rolled up from beneath the city in slow, terrible waves, slipping through the cracks in the stone and climbing the silver roots like smoke through a dying forest. Rowan felt it in her teeth before she heard it with her ears, a deep and ancient amusement that did not belong to anything living, and for one breathless moment nobody moved. Even Fenrir stood utterly still, his massive shoulders rigid beneath the shifting glow of the silver tree. The silver leaves above them shivered violently, though there was no wind, and one by one the glowing roots beneath the courtyard began to darken at the edges. The sight made her stomach twist because the city had always felt impossible, old and strange and sometimes frightening, but it had never felt weak. Now the light pulsed unevenly through the roots beneath her feet like a failing heartbeat. Corvin stepped in front of her before anyone else reacted. Rowan should have been annoyed by that by now, but instead the movement made something painful tighten behind her ribs, because he did it without hesitation and without asking whether she wanted protecting. He simply moved, as though some part of him had decided long ago that anything coming for her would have to go through him first.

“Tell me that is normal,” Jess said, her voice far too thin to be convincing.

Malric looked at the blackening roots and said nothing.

“That is not normal,” Taryn answered.

Jess stared at her. “I specifically asked for the comforting version.”

“I do not have one.”

“You are terrible in a crisis.”

“I am efficient in a crisis.”

“You are emotionally useless in a crisis.”

Fenrir’s growl silenced them both. The sound was low and brutal, nothing like the creature beneath the city, but powerful enough to make the cracked stones tremble. His golden eyes were fixed on the roots. Rowan followed his gaze and watched as a thin line of darkness moved beneath the silver glow, creeping through the root system like ink poured into water. Aldric swore under his breath.

“The Heart is losing ground,” he said.

Corvin looked sharply at him. “How long?”

Aldric did not answer quickly enough.

“How long?” Corvin demanded again, his voice dropping into something colder.

The Council leader’s face looked older than it had moments ago. “Not long.”

Rowan laughed once, but there was nothing amused about it. “That is not a measurement.”

“No,” Jess said, pointing at Aldric. “She’s right. We need something more specific than ominous elder nonsense.”

Aldric looked toward the lower city, where the silver bridges curved into darkness and the towers stood like watchmen over streets that had begun to glow and gutter in uneven flashes.

“Hours,” he said at last. “Maybe less.”

The answer settled over them like a sentence. Rowan looked down at her hands. They were shaking, and she hated that. She curled them into fists before anyone could notice, though Corvin noticed anyway because Corvin noticed everything when it came to her. His hand brushed against hers, not grabbing, not stopping her, only reminding her he was there. The laugh came again. This time it carried words beneath it.

Rowan.

Her name moved through her skull so intimately she staggered backward. Corvin caught her before she hit the ground, one arm locking around her waist while the other came up as if he could fight whatever had reached inside her mind.

“Rowan.”

His voice cut through the whisper, sharp and real. She grabbed his sleeve, focusing on the feel of fabric beneath her fingers, on the warmth of him, on the fact that his heart was hammering almost as hard as hers.

“I heard it,” she whispered.

Fenrir’s expression darkened. “It has found the cracks in the bond.”

Aldric shook his head, stepping toward Rowan with desperation written across his face. “That should not be possible inside the sanctuary.”

“Well, congratulations,” Jess snapped, though fear made her voice tremble. “Your impossible monster just upgraded.”

Rowan barely heard her, the courtyard vanished and for a heartbeat she stood somewhere else entirely. A chamber of silver stone stretched around her, vast and circular, with roots hanging from the ceiling like the ribs of some enormous beast. In the center of the chamber stood a woman with dark hair and blood running down one side of her face. Elara. Rowan knew her before the vision gave her a name. Her mother was younger there, furious and heartbroken, one hand pressed against the glowing trunk of the Heart while the other gripped a blade made of silver light. Across from her, men and women in Council robes shouted over one another.

“You cannot bind it through your blood alone.”

Elara’s voice cut through them, low and shaking.

“I am not binding it through my blood.”

The chamber trembled. Something screamed from below. Elara turned then, looking directly toward Rowan as though she could see her through the memory.

“I am binding it through my daughter.”

The vision shattered. Rowan came back with a gasp so hard it hurt.

Corvin’s face was inches from hers. “What did you see?”

She could barely answer. Her throat felt tight, her chest too full.

“My mother,” she whispered. “She used me.”

The words changed the air between them. Aldric closed his eyes, Fenrir snarled, and Corvin went very still. That was worse than anger. Rowan had seen him angry plenty of times. This was something quieter and far more dangerous, a violence being folded carefully behind his ribs until he could decide where to put it.

“What does she mean?” he asked.

Aldric looked as if he would rather face the creature beneath the city than answer him. “Elara was pregnant when the final binding was made.”

Rowan’s fingers went numb.

Jess whispered, “Oh no.”

“The prison was failing even then,” Aldric continued, each word sounding dragged from him. “The original seal required a living bond, one that could pass through blood and memory. Elara believed the only way to make the prison hold was to tie the Heart to her line more deeply than anyone had ever dared.”

Rowan stared at him.

“To me,” she said.

Aldric’s silence was answer enough. For a moment she could not breathe. All this time she had thought her family had built the prison and she had inherited the burden by accident, by blood, by some cruel twist of fate that had reached for her long before she understood what it wanted. But no. It had been more deliberate than that. She had not stumbled into the prison’s design.

She had been written into it before she was born.