Chapter 6 The Prisoner’s Defiance
The dungeon torches burned red—enchanted so their flames devoured sound. Most prisoners found the unnatural hush maddening. Their thoughts had nowhere to escape, no voices to drown them out.
Kael, however, looked perfectly at ease in the silence.
Lyrathia descended the final stairs without announcing herself. The guards stationed at the dungeon entrance straightened tensely, their armor clicking like startled insects.
“Leave us,” she ordered.
They obeyed instantly. None dared question why their queen descended here for the second time in two nights.
Her shadows slipped ahead of her like black smoke, coiling around torches, stretching over stone. The cells were carved into the mountain’s spine, each barred by obsidian forged with blood wards—deadly to mortals and painful even to vampires.
Kael sat in the center of his cell, chained at wrists and ankles, yet somehow looking as though he had chosen the position, not been forced into it. He lifted his head as she approached, his expression sharp and annoyingly alive.
“Back to pry into my thoughts again, Your Majesty?” he asked, voice steady despite the bleakness of his surroundings.
Lyrathia stopped before the bars.
“I do not pry,” she said. “I interrogate.”
His mouth curved. “Oh? Is that what we’re calling it?”
Her eyes narrowed.
Most mortals—hells, most immortals—could not maintain even a semblance of composure in her presence. Her voice alone had driven men into stammers, into tears, into madness. But Kael remained… unbroken.
Even now, chained and alone, he radiated defiance like a second pulse.
She studied him.
His dark hair hung messily over his brow. His face bore several bruises—souvenirs from his capture—but none seemed to trouble him. Muscles flexed under torn leather armor as he shifted, testing the give of his restraints. There was none, of course. Her dungeon chains didn’t give.
Yet she sensed he would never stop testing them.
“Stand,” she commanded.
He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. “No.”
The word struck her like a pebble flung at a glacier—small, inconsequential, yet undeniably there.
Her shadows reacted instantly, rising like black serpents. “You refuse your queen?”
“I refuse a tyrant who thinks chains make her powerful.”
An emotionless queen did not feel offense… but something inside her chest wrenched, as if unfamiliar muscles attempted a movement long forgotten.
She stepped closer.
The shadows obeyed her silent command and slithered through the bars, coiling around his chin to force his gaze upward. He remained infuriatingly composed… though a muscle ticked in his jaw.
“You are bold,” she said.
“Not bold,” he replied. “Simply honest.”
She tilted her head. “Why did you cross my borders?”
He stared at her with a strange mix of contempt and fascination. “I already told your guards.”
“I did not ask them,” she snapped quietly. “I asked you.”
His chains clinked softly as he shifted, the red torchlight reflecting in his eyes like fire caught behind obsidian. “I came for something stolen.”
Her pulse—or whatever passed for one within her stone heart—tightened.
“What was stolen?”
His expression hardened. “You know.”
“I do not,” she said.
He gave a low, humorless laugh. “Of course you do. Your kind always pretends innocence when it suits them.”
She stepped even closer to the bars.
His breath mingled with hers.
Her shadows tightened, though she couldn’t decipher why—protection, intimidation… or something else.
“What was taken?” she pressed.
Kael held her gaze with a fierce steadiness she had not seen in centuries. “A life.”
Lyrathia blinked once. “Whose?”
“My sister’s.”
Her brows knitted faintly.
Not emotion.
Just curiosity.
“Explain,” she said.
His jaw clenched as if the words tasted like blood. “She vanished five years ago. Last seen near the Bloodwood—a forest your people patrol. I tracked her passage into your territory. And then… nothing.”
“Many mortals vanish on my lands,” she said.
His voice sharpened. “But my sister was not ordinary.”
She waited.
“Her blood was… different. Like mine.” His expression darkened. “And your kind wanted it.”
She felt a faint ripple within her. “You believe I abducted her?”
His gaze burned hotter than the torches. “Your court thrives on secrets and old magic. Don’t pretend you know nothing of mortals like us.”
Lyrathia’s mind ticked at the phrasing.
Mortals like us.
Like him.
Like his blood.
Her advisors had not yet unraveled the mystery of why his blood resisted her magic. Perhaps his sister—if she truly possessed the same anomaly—had drawn attention.
But Lyrathia herself would know.
She remembered every mortal ever brought to her palace for judgment, sacrifice, or curiosity. Her memory was flawless.
And she had never seen this sister of his.
“You think I would lie to you,” she said softly.
“I think deception is your native tongue.”
Her shadows twitched.
“Careful,” she warned.
He met her stare without blinking. “Or what? You’ll kill me? Go ahead. It’ll save me the trouble of watching whatever you are pretend to have a conscience.”
Another subtle internal pull—a crack widening.
An echo of anger. Not quite emotion. But dangerously close.
She stepped so near that only the obsidian bars separated them. Shadows curled along her shoulders like living armor.
“This is your final opportunity,” she whispered. “Tell me your purpose.”
“I already have.”
The chains strained as he leaned forward, pulling against the shadows forcing his chin upward. For a heartbeat, she thought he intended to headbutt the bars between them.
But instead, he said something worse.
“You’ll never break me, Queen of Silence. Not with chains. Not with threats. Not with whatever dark magic keeps your dead heart beating.”
Her breath stilled.
The shadows recoiled as if burned.
Kael exhaled slowly, the faintest tremor of fatigue breaking through his defiance. His voice dropped, losing its edge for the first time.
“I didn’t come to wage war. I came to bring my sister home.”
Lyrathia studied him in the suffocating quiet.
There was truth in his tone—raw, unvarnished, carved from loss. She had interrogated thousands of prisoners in her reign. She recognized lies like scents on the wind.
This wasn’t one.
But she also recognized something else in his words.
A threat beneath the sorrow.
A vow woven into bone.
A promise meant for her.
She inhaled.
Not because she needed air—she hadn’t needed breath in centuries—but because it steadied her.
“I did not take your sister,” she said.
“Someone in your court did,” he countered.
Another crack inside her.
Another flicker of… something.
Possibility.
Intrigue.
Fear?
No. Impossible.
She shifted slightly, so the shadows loosened around his chin but didn’t fully release him.
“If beings with blood like yours exist,” she murmured, “then your sister’s disappearance is not something I will ignore.”
His head lifted defiantly. “Why? Out of pity?”
“Out of curiosity.”
He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Wonderful. I’m a science experiment now.”
“You always were,” she said calmly. “The moment you stepped into my realm.”
He glared. “If you think chaining me earns cooperation—”
“I do not need your cooperation.”
Her shadows tightened suddenly, pushing him back against the stone wall. His breath hitched—not in fear, but in protest.
She stepped back from the bars, her voice cool and decisive.
“You will remain here until I determine the truth about your sister. Until then, you will answer my questions. And you will bow.”
She turned to leave.
“Do your worst,” he said behind her. “I won’t break.”
She paused at the stairs.
Without looking back, she spoke quietly, “I don’t need to break you.”
Silence coiled around the words.
“I only need to understand you.”
And that, she suddenly realized, was far more dangerous.
For him.
And for her.