Chapter 3 Something Stirs
The interrogation chamber lay deep beneath the fortress, where no torch ever burned fully and no sound carried cleanly through the halls. It was a place designed for truth to be stripped raw—where mortals had screamed, and immortals had broken. Lyrathia stepped into it as though entering a quiet garden, untouched by the lingering shadows of violence.
Emotionless. Always emotionless.
Her curse ensured that.
Yet as she descended the final steps, she felt… something. A faint hum beneath her ribs. Not emotion—impossible. Only a flicker, like the echo of a memory she couldn’t quite grasp.
Kael stood chained between two pillars, wrists bound in iron reinforced with the blood of her high guard. His head was lifted, not bowed, as though he welcomed the sight of her.
Even bruised, scraped, and streaked with dust, he looked more alive than anything she had seen in years.
His heartbeat thrummed through the room like a challenge.
She refused to acknowledge it.
Lyrathia approached, her boots whispering over the stone. “You understand why you’re here,” she said. It wasn’t a question—the kind of statement meant to tighten a prisoner’s gut with fear.
But the mortal only smirked. “Because your soldiers can’t take a joke when they’re disarmed? I barely hurt anyone.”
“You killed nine,” she corrected coldly.
“Oh.” His grin widened, infuriatingly bright. “Then never mind. I hurt plenty.”
The faint hum in her chest pulsed again.
She stepped closer.
His arms were spread wide by the chains, exposing the cut along his shoulder where a guard’s blade had grazed him. Blood—warm, mortal, stubbornly defiant—dripped in a slow pattern that the stone hungrily absorbed.
Most mortals stank of fear when brought here.
Kael smelled of salt, steel, and something wholly unafraid.
“Tell me your name,” she said.
“Kael.”
No title, no explanation.
“You attacked my patrol,” she said. “Alone.”
He shrugged as much as the chains allowed. “They were on my land.”
“Your land now belongs to the Bloodbound Court.”
“Funny,” he said. “The villagers didn’t mention crowning you their queen.”
The hum inside her flickered strangely—sharp, almost warm.
She ignored it.
Lyrathia closed the distance between them, stopping only when she could feel the faint warmth radiating from his skin. Her cold presence seemed to soothe him rather than frighten him.
“How are you resisting my aura?” she murmured.
Her power, coiled inside her, reached for him instinctively. It licked at him like smoke, seeking to coil around his mind and bend him.
But Kael didn’t bend.
Instead, he leaned forward, eyes glinting. “Maybe I’m just not that into you.”
Her chin tilted infinitesimally. Most would have dropped dead just from implying disrespect.
Kael did not.
“Your arrogance is… impressive,” she said. And then, almost too quiet to detect: “Or stupid.”
He flashed teeth at her—no fear, only challenge. “Try me, Queen.”
The words shouldn’t have tugged at anything in her. But they did. Lightly. Barely. A whisper under her ribs.
Irritation, she told herself. Nothing more.
She lifted a hand and traced a single finger along the chain near his wrist. It hissed under her touch, the ancient metal reacting to her aura.
“Magic doesn’t like being defied,” she said.
“Neither do queens,” he shot back.
Her eyes slid to his face. “You know nothing of me.”
“Maybe not,” Kael said softly, “but I know what I saw in the throne room.”
“And what was that?”
His voice lowered. “You paused.”
Her stillness shifted by a fraction of a fraction. “Explain.”
“When I knelt—out of stubbornness, not respect—you looked away for half a second. Like something hurt.” His gaze sharpened. “What was it?”
“Nothing.” Too quick.
His brow arched. “That so?”
She moved closer, so close she could feel his breath stir the stray strands of hair near her temple. Mortals were always warmer. Always bright, flickering flames compared to her cold shadow.
“Enough,” she said, lifting her hand.
She touched his jaw.
Only a light brush—cold fingertips against warm skin.
The world stopped.
A bolt shot through her, fast and violent, punching into her chest like lightning. Every sense sharpened, every nerve sang. The curse she’d carried for centuries—a cage around her emotions—shuddered like something had struck it.
Not cracked.
Not broken.
But struck.
Kael inhaled sharply at the same moment she did. He felt it too—she saw it in the widening of his eyes, the slight tremor in his jaw, the sudden hitch in his breath.
Her hand was still on him.
Why wasn’t she moving?
“What… was that?” Kael whispered, voice lower, roughened.
“I don’t know,” she said—words she hadn’t spoken in centuries.
Her fingers tingled where they touched him. A sensation she’d forgotten the very meaning of. Once, long ago, she had been capable of feeling heat. Warmth. Desire. Fear. Love.
The curse had stripped it all away. Her heart had been locked in frost.
But this—
This was a spark.
Kael leaned into her touch without fear, as though drawn to it. “Do it again.”
Her breath stalled.
No mortal ordered her. No one dared.
And yet something inside her wanted—wanted—to feel that jolt again. To confirm it wasn’t a hallucination or wishful imagining.
She drew her hand back sharply.
The spark died.
Kael exhaled like something precious had slipped away. “Why did you stop?”
“Because I needed to confirm something.” She turned away, pretending her hands didn’t feel shaken, tingling, alive. “And now I have.”
“To confirm what?”
“That you are dangerous.”
His laugh echoed lightly behind her. “You’re the one who touched me.”
Yes, and it had nearly undone a thousand years of silence in her veins.
She didn’t say that.
Instead, she ascended the first stair out of the chamber, her voice echoing darkly behind her.
“You will be moved to a guarded cell. You will be fed. You will be treated until I decide what to do with you.”
“You mean until you decide whether you want to kill me or keep me,” he called after her. “Isn’t that right?”
She paused at the door.
Not speaking.
Not turning.
Just feeling—that flicker, that small whispered pulse in her chest that should not exist.
Something stirs, she thought.
And it has teeth.
She forced her voice steady. “Rest while you can, Kael.”
His final words followed her into the hall, sticking to her like a burr.
“You felt it too, Queen.”
The door closed behind her.
But the echo of sensation did not.