Chapter 157 Traitor Unmasked Part 1
The cavern’s breath was cobalt. Phosphorescent clouds rolled off the walls, pooling on the jagged floor and drowning every shadow in diseased light. Veins of fungus, slick and woven through the stone, throbbed. Legends say the cave was carved by something older than fire; shaped by vanished hands. Some whispered it had never been empty. The world’s oldest nightmares remembered its name. It was alive, older than memory. It watched them—Daisy sensed it, even with her eyes shut.
She knelt beside Xeris, knees sinking into the loam-soft ground, heart hammering. His scales were dulled—not dazzling gold, but ashen gray that seemed to drain the warmth from the air. The wound at his flank gaped, pulsing black, pain radiating like a silent scream. Its dark veins fanned out, beating in the same wild rhythm as Daisy’s arms. She placed her palm—steady, yet trembling from fear—against his wing, fighting the urge to weep.
The pain was immediate, clean—zigzagging from their touch up her arm. It clenched her lungs. She didn’t pull away. The chain in her blood recognized its twin in Xeris. The old curse, coiled in her veins since her oath, tied their fates. Protection, or punishment—no one knew. Their lives were bound. The hurt is shared, inescapable. They spoke in pulses of poison.
She tried to speak, but her voice splintered, fractured by panic and raw pain, into a ragged cough. Bitter black saliva welled up, tinged with the taste of loss. She wiped it away, hand harsh across her lips, and whispered, voice breaking, “Stay with me. Don’t you dare let it win.”
Xeris did not open his eyes. He flexed the tips of his claws, each motion a slow surrender. When he spoke, it was a scrape in her skull. “You burn so loud, Daisy. If I die, the whole world will hear it.”
She pressed her hand harder to his burning skin, wincing as the poison writhed under her veins. Her blood now coursed with metallic blue—so dark it blurred to navy against her skin—like the river in Brightwater at dusk, only colder, lonelier. She watched the color creep toward her jaw, each inch a reminder of what she risked.
Delia worked a mortar with frantic, one-handed energy. Rare valley herbs broke apart in her blood-slicked grip. She muttered, willing the mixture to draw out the poison. Anything to give Daisy and Xeris a chance. Delia glanced at Daisy, eyes wild, then back to grinding.
“You have to drink this,” Delia said, not looking up. “Both of you.”
Daisy half-laughed, half-choked. “It won’t do anything.”
Delia smashed the pestle down so hard the stone cracked. “I don’t care,” she spat. “I have to try.”
“Let me,” Daisy said, reaching for the bowl. Delia jerked her arm back reflexively, but then caught Daisy’s gaze—two sets of eyes charged with history, with fights, with hard-won trust. Delia’s hand, fingers trembling from pain and emotion, extended the crude bowl to Daisy.
Daisy scooped a fingerful of the sludge from the bowl and jammed it between Xeris’s teeth, prying his jaw open. Xeris’s tongue flicked at the mash; then, abruptly, he bit down, clamping his jaws so hard they splintered the rim. Daisy steadied what remained of the bowl in her palm, not flinching at his sudden violence.
Delia tried to stand, but her legs crumpled, and she slumped against the cave wall, jaw clenched in shame. Her breathing was too fast, shallow with terror. Daisy caught the way Delia’s free hand gripped her own arm, fingers digging above the bandaged stump, knuckles white, as if bracing against despair.
“You’re bleeding,” Daisy said.
Delia ignored her.
The cave’s other inhabitants kept their own watch.
Cornelius paced a strip of fungus. Boots furrowed a trench. His hand never left his sword. When Daisy looked up, he was always in motion. Eyes fixed on the cavern mouth, waiting for the next assault.
Mira hovered at Maribel’s side, murmuring spells that twisted the air into a shimmer. The cave felt the magic. But poison in Maribel’s veins recoiled, resisting every word. Some poisons ate spells like fire ate cloth. Each time the shimmer dulled, Mira faltered. Maribel looked worse than ever—hair now transparent, scalp shining in splotches. Her lips were blue. Mira cradled her, whispered. Pressed petals and bits of root into her mouth with tenderness.
The walls of the cave were covered in carvings: old warning marks, the kind Daisy had learned to read before she could walk. “Abandon hope,” one said. “Fire eats the root,” read another. They were meant for children, but Daisy felt every word stick in her skin.
Thunder grumbled above. Rain turned the world outside to slurry—mud and promise. Escape was blocked by the storm. Survival meant enduring the cave. The cave was a grave. Daisy knew it. Maybe they all did.
She heard Oliver’s voice before she saw him: “They’ve got a net at the north pass. Ironclaw, and—” His boots squelched through the slime, then he slid down next to Daisy. “There’s Veilseeker banners everywhere. I think they’re waiting for you.”
The Ironclaw were mercenaries, infamous for dragging fugitives from hiding with steel traps and iron discipline. The Veilseekers had their own reputation—fanatical heralds of the Old Order, trackers who killed as often as they captured, sworn to root out any who defied them. Both stood between Daisy and escape.
Oliver’s face was hollow, eyes rimmed red, skin stretched taut over sharp cheekbones. Rain plastered his hair to his temples. He stared at Xeris’s wound, then Daisy’s blackened arms, and squeezed his lips tight. “You’re matching now,” he said, voice thin with grief and reluctant humor.
Daisy wanted to punch him, but didn’t have the strength. She grinned instead, baring black teeth. “They’ll never see it coming.”
Oliver wiped the side of Daisy’s mouth with his thumb, moving slowly and carefully. He then looked at the stained finger, uncertain whether to be grossed out or proud.
Daisy let her head fall back, resting against Xeris’s fevered body. The dragon barely breathed. Each exhale rattled.
She craved sleep, but the chain in her blood was merciless. She remembered every death she’d dreamed—quick in chaos, lost in darkness, never like this: slow, poisoned, rotting from the core, her hope flickering with every heartbeat.
Mira’s voice drifted over. “She’s not gone,” she said of Maribel. “Not yet.”
Delia stared at the back of her hands, as if she could will them to work again. “How do we stop it?”
Mira shrugged, lips pressed tight. “No one’s ever stopped it. That’s the point.” She hesitated, her eyes catching the sickly light. “There are old tales, though. They speak of Iridion, the Mourning Serpent. He supposedly shattered the chain after a hundred years of agony. The legend claims he climbed the Starspire, tore out his cursed heart, and cast it into the Abyss. He broke the bond for a single sunrise. But no one knows if Iridion ever truly lived—or if the curse returned with the dawn. Most just say the chain never lets go.” Mira’s voice wavered as she glanced at Daisy, the story’s weight settling between them. “Maybe we hope for sunrise, even if we know the chain will pull us back. It’s what you’re facing now. Whether you try to break it or bear it, you’re still fighting the same nightmare Iridion did.”
Cornelius paused his pacing and looked at Daisy. “If you’re going to die, you might as well do it fighting,” he said. “Nobody wants to go out in a hole.”
Daisy agreed. The cave was safer than the world above, at least for now.
Oliver reached for her hand. His movements were hesitant, as if weighed down by memories of pain and hope intertwined. His fingers hovered above hers, trembling with both longing and apprehension. The memory of the magic’s sting lingered between them. In that suspended space, the tension of their shared past pulsed. Their uncertain future hovered—neither willing nor able to bridge the distance, but both unwilling to let go.
Daisy remembered the night before: how his hand had found hers in sleep. The chain had arced between them, sending a bolt of pain through both. They’d pulled apart, but the skin at their wrists had blackened where it met.
She watched his hand now. Watched him gather the nerve to close the gap.
She wanted to say something brave, or comforting. Instead, she said, “If I lose it, kill me fast.”
Oliver didn’t answer, just slid his hand next to hers, fingers matching the curve of her palm without quite touching.
A chill seeped through the cavern, thickening the air. It settled over them like a shroud, as if the very stone absorbed and exhaled the encroaching cold.
Cornelius said, “We can’t stay here forever. We’re sitting ducks.”
Mira raised her eyes. “There’s a way out, but it’s through the Veilseekers’ nest.”
Daisy snorted. "Veilseekers always underestimate us. They think they know everything, but they don’t."
Oliver shook his head. “They don’t have to be. They just have to wait.”
Delia coughed, a wet, tearing sound. “There’s got to be another option.”
Maribel stirred, eyes flickering open. She reached for Daisy, her fingers like twigs. “You have to let go now, Pesty—petal, petal, listen,” she murmured, repeating the endearment twice in her habitual, lilting cadence. “You can’t keep fighting what’s in your blood.”
Daisy felt tears burn her face, raw black rivers cutting down her cheeks. She choked on anger, grief so heavy it stole the words. “It’s all I know how to do,” she whispered, voice barely more than a sob.
Maribel smiled, soft and sad, and closed her eyes again.
Cornelius resumed his pacing, each step measured, boots hitting the ground like a drumbeat. Mira slid over to Daisy’s side, murmured a spell, and pressed her hand to Daisy’s brow, easing the pain just a little.
“You’re not alone,” Mira whispered.
Daisy nodded, almost believing it.
She closed her eyes, listened to the sound of the cave breathing, to Xeris’s heartbeat, to the way Delia’s breathing went shallow and then deep again. She counted the beats and let herself hope that tomorrow the world would be less cruel.
Yet deep down, she braced herself for the unchanging cruelty of the world that awaited them.
The blue light pulsed, and the carvings on the walls glared down, judging.
Daisy opened her eyes, saw the pattern they made—a spiral, a daisy’s heart.
She traced it with her finger, and for a moment, the pain faded.
She had become the root—the essential bond sustaining them all—even if the burden ultimately claimed her life.
And maybe it would.