Chapter 56 Lifeline

Chapter 56 Lifeline
We woke to the sound of wind whistling through broken windows high above the killing floor. It was a desolate, lonely sound.

Morning light filtered through the grime. I sat up, biting back a groan as my splinted shoulder protested the movement. The herbs Estava had given me had dulled the razor's edge of the pain, leaving a heavy, throbbing ache in its place.

Beside me, Vesper was already awake. He was sitting propped against the wall, his good eye fixed on the rusted ceiling hooks. He looked awful—his face a landscape of healing purpling bruises, his breathing shallow to spare his cracked ribs. But the lethargy of the last few days was gone. The green eye that turned to meet mine was sharp, clear, and terrifyingly focused.

"How are the ribs?" I asked, my voice raspy.

"Manageable," he grunted. He shifted, wincing tight around his eyes. "My healing factor is finally catching up now that we aren't running. Give me another twenty-four hours, and I'll be able to take a full breath."

Estava thumped into the office from the metal gantry outside. She looked energized.

"Up," she barked, tossing a protein bar at each of us. "Breakfast of champions. Then we work. Julian, Aleera—you're on perimeter watch. If a rat sneezes within fifty yards of this building, I want to know about it."

Julian nodded, looking pale but determined, and led Aleera out with their makeshift weapons.

Estava turned her bird-like gaze on me. "You. Downstairs. The killing floor. Vesper, you stay put. You're useless until those bones knit."

"I'm coming," Vesper said, already starting the painful process of standing up using the wall for support. "She's not doing this alone."

"She has to do it alone, boy," Estava snapped. "This is her mind we're trying to fortify, not yours. Your presence is a crutch. She feels your bond, she leans on it. She needs to stand on her own two magical feet."

Vesper bristled, a low growl building in his chest, but I reached up and touched his arm. His skin was burning hot.

"It's okay," I whispered. "Stay. Heal. I need you strong for when we go after Lily."

He hesitated, the protective instinct warring with logic. Finally, he nodded, sinking back down against the wall with a frustrated sigh. "Don't let her break you, Sylvania."

I managed a weak smile. "I'm already broken, Vesper. We're just trying to rearrange the pieces."

I followed Estava down the echoing metal stairs to the main floor. The concrete floor was stained dark.

Estava stopped in the center of the space, under a cluster of heavy iron hooks.

"Stand there," she commanded, pointing to a drain grate.

I stood. I felt small, injured, and ridiculous in my dirty clothes and arm sling.

"Last night," Estava began, circling me slowly, her staff tapping on the concrete. "You tapped into the seed because you were terrified. It was a reflex. Like flinching away from fire."

"It worked," I defended weakly.

"A toddler finding a loaded gun can make it work, too," she retorted. "That doesn't mean they know what they're doing. Hera’s power is primal, Sylvania. It responds to base emotions. Fear. Rage. Hate. If those are the only keys you have to unlock it, then she controls you every time you get angry."

She stopped in front of me. "You need to find a different trigger. A colder one. You need to access the hybrid nature without the emotional meltdown."

"How? I don't even know what that feels like."

"Then we find out." Estava raised her staff. The green gem at the top began to glow, not with a comforting light, but with a sickly, aggressive pulse. "Block me."

"What?"

Without warning, Estava thrust the staff toward my chest. A wave of psychic force slammed into me. It wasn't physical; it was mental pressure, like a migraine made manifest, trying to crack open my skull.

I gasped, stumbling back, clutching my head with my good hand.

"Block me!" Estava shouted over the ringing in my ears. She stepped closer, increasing the pressure. It felt like hooks digging into my mind, trying to drag something out.

"I don't know how!" I yelled back.

"Then you will die!" she snarled, her voice distorted, sounding suddenly, terrifyingly like Hera’s. "Just like omyou did all those years ago. Weak. Pathetic. A sacrifice waiting to happen."

The memory of the lance in my chest flared. The image of Vesper dying.

No.

Deep inside me, something uncoiled. It wasn't the hot, seductive rush of the violet energy. It was colder. Harder.

I didn't push back with rage. I just refused to move. I planted my feet on the bloodstained concrete. I visualized a wall inside my head—iron and stone, built across the place where Hera’s voice usually slithered in.

The pressure from Estava's staff hit the wall.

For a second, the wall held. The psychic noise muffled.

Then, Estava pushed harder. The wall fractured.

"Too slow!" Estava hissed. The pressure broke through, and with it, the violet energy surged up in response, eager to fight back with overwhelming force.

My vision tinged purple. The seductive whisper started in the back of my head. 'Let me out, little bird. Let me show this crone real power.'

"No!" I screamed, physically fighting my own rising magic, clamping down on it with everything I had.

The backlash was immediate. The energy, having nowhere to go, turned inward. It felt like I’d swallowed live coals. I crumpled to the concrete, dry heaving, my healing shoulder screaming in protest.

The pressure from Estava stopped instantly.

I lay there, gasping against the cold floor, tears leaking from my eyes.

"Pathetic," Estava murmured, standing over me. But her voice lacked its usual venom. "But... not entirely hopeless. You found the wall. It was thin as paper, but it was there."

She reached down a gnarled hand to help me sit up.

"Again."

We worked for hours. Time and again, Estava attacked my mind, goading me with memories of Martha, of Vesper’s beating, of Hera’s taunts. Time and again, I tried to build the wall, to find the cold authority instead of the hot rage.

Sometimes I failed completely, ending up on the floor retching from magical backlash. Sometimes, I managed to deflect her for a few seconds before the violet tide rose up and I had to clamp it down, leaving me exhausted and shaking.

By midday, I could barely stand. My sling was soaked with sweat, and my head felt like it was going to split open.

"Enough," Estava finally called. She looked nearly as drained as I felt, leaning heavily on her staff. "You're empty. If we push more, you'll break something permanent."

We slowly climbed the stairs back to the office. Vesper was waiting, standing by the door. He took one look at my gray face and trembling limbs and was at my side, wrapping his arm around my waist to support me.

He glared at Estava over my head. "You're killing her."

"I'm training her," Estava retorted wearily, collapsing onto a blanket. "It's supposed to hurt."

Vesper helped me sit against the wall, then sat beside me, letting me lean against him. He smelled of sweat and dust and safety.

"Did it work?" he asked quietly.

"A little," I murmured, closing my eyes. "I found something. It feels... old. And stubborn."

"Good," he whispered, kissing the top of my sweaty hair. "Stubborn keeps you alive."

Julian and Aleera returned from patrol, looking spooked by the silence of the yards but reporting nothing moving. We ate another grim meal of protein bars and lukewarm water.

As the afternoon sun began to slant through the high windows, lengthening the shadows on the killing floor, the atmosphere in the office shifted. The training was over. Now came the planning.

Vesper shifted away from me, wincing as he turned to face the center of the room. The exhaustion of the morning seemed to drop away from him, replaced by a cold, terrifying focus. He looked at Julian, then at me.

"We have four days until the Onyx Moon," Vesper said, his voice dropping into the Warlord’s timbre—authoritative, absolute. "Hera won't move until then. She needs the peak lunar energy. That gives us a window."

"To do what?" Julian asked. "Hide?"

"To attack," Vesper said. "We aren't waiting for her to come for Sylvania. We're taking the fight to her. But first, we cut off her human resources. We get Sylvia."

"My dad's penthouse is a fortress," I said, the old fear of my father surfacing. "Private security, reinforced steel doors, a panic room. We can't just knock."

"Every fortress has a weak point," Vesper said. "We just need intel. Floor plans, security rotations, the location of Lily’s room."

"How do we get that?" Aleera asked. "We can't get near the building without being spotted."

Vesper looked at me. His green eyes were hard, demanding. "We don't get it from the outside. We get it from the inside."

I stared at him, confusion clouding my tired brain. "Who? My dad trusts no one."

"He trusts family," Vesper said. "Or at least, he thinks he controls them."

The realization hit me like a punch to the gut. I felt the blood drain from my face.

"No," I whispered. "Vesper, you can't ask me to do that."

"He's the only one with access, Sylvania," Vesper said relentlessly. "He's the only one who knows where Sylvia is."

"Who?" Julian asked, looking between us.

"My brother," I said, the word tasting like bile. "Enzo."

"The one who helped Seratti hunt you down?" Julian looked horrified. "You think he'll help us?"

"He hates his father almost as much as I do," I said slowly, the gears turning in my mind, remembering years of Enzo’s simmering resentment, his desire to run the family business his way. "He wants the throne. My dad is just in his way since he still commands the loyalty of his men."

"Exactly," Vesper said. "We don't ask for his help out of love. We offer him a trade. We take out Seratti, he gets the empire. And we get Sylvia."

It was a deal with the devil. Enzo was ruthless, ambitious, and had spent years tormenting me on our father's orders. And he wanted power above all else.

"He'll betray us the second it serves him," I warned.

"I'm counting on it," Vesper said grimly. "But by then, it won't matter."

He looked at me, his expression softening slightly. "Can you do it? Can you make the call?"

I looked down at my sling, at the hand that had blasted a Troll through a wall yesterday. I thought of Martha in the morgue. I thought of Lily, waiting for a big sister who had always failed to protect her.

The violet energy stirred in my gut, not with rage this time, but with cold ambition.

I looked up at Vesper. "How do I reach him?"