“Rage is not always a loss of control. Sometimes it is the body remembering it was never meant to be owned.”
— from On Drakenblood Temperament and Captivity Responses, restricted Dawnveil archive
Ferox
Blood filled my mouth.
Hot first. Then old. Then sour when I swallowed and my stomach tried to climb out through my throat after it. My cheek hurt where I had bitten it. My head hurt worse. Something thick and sweet still coated the back of my tongue, flowers rotting in sugar, and underneath it was stone, mildew, iron, sweat, fear. Too much fear. Not mine. Not only mine.
My face was against the floor. Wet stone pressed cold into my cheek, into my jaw, into the point of my shoulder where my arm had gone numb beneath me. I opened my eyes and the world smeared blue-green. Bars. Wall. Floor. A strip of light pulsing too slowly, then too fast, then too slowly again because my brain was dragging itself upright like an angry drunk. My wrists burned. Cord. Rough cord in front of me, biting into skin, loose enough that someone had been careless and tight enough that someone had thought careless would be enough.
No. My fingers curled. The rope creaked. My whole body answered before the rest of me caught up. Heat crawled up my arms, ugly and familiar, not flame, not yet, just the old drakenblood rage waking under my skin and finding a cage around it. The rope dug deeper. My shoulders shook. My stomach rolled again.
The rave flashed behind my eyes. Music under my feet. Dancers turning in patterns I could not stop watching. Blue light. Green light. Flowers so sweet they felt like hands on my throat. A mask with no mouth. My hand reaching for lightning that would not come fast enough. Then nothing.
My growl scraped up from somewhere low. A body shifted near me. I shoved myself upright and nearly fell right back down. The room spun hard enough that the bars bent sideways. I caught myself with both bound hands and sucked air through my teeth until the floor decided to stay where floors belonged.
Cell. Bars across one side. A narrow corridor beyond. A sigil near the lock, bright and sharp and smug. Three people in here with me.
The smallest was curled near the wall with a lantern hugged against her chest. White hair, pale face, tiny hands clenched tight around the handle. The lantern looked like a purse if I squinted wrong, ridiculous and dainty and absolutely not harmless. Gray-blue light leaked through its seams and made the shadows closest to it behave.
The silver-haired man in the corner was already awake. I knew before his eyes opened. He sat too still, wrists tied, head lowered. Not passed out. Waiting. His body looked relaxed in the same way a drawn knife looked relaxed sitting on a table. Shadows pooled around him wrong, too close to his knees, too fond of his boots.
The last one breathed hard against the wall, dark curls half fallen loose, pointed ears visible, ink smudged on their fingers. Blood had dried across one palm in a line too neat to be an accident. Their eyes opened brown and sharp and miserable.
"Do not sit up quickly," they rasped.
I stared at them. Their gaze flicked over me, the bars, the sigil, the lantern woman, the silver-haired man. "Too late."
"Who are you?" It came out rough. Good. Scared would have pissed me off.
"Lireal Stormrune," they said, and pressed their bound hands together like one of them was not listening properly. Stormrune meant something. Court name. Old name. The kind of name people said like it should open doors. The bars did not care.
"Ferox."
The silver-haired man lifted his head. His eyes caught the ugly light. Dark, then not. There was something silvered behind them that vanished when he focused. "Tera," he said. Nothing else. Of course.
The white-haired woman jolted awake with a sound she strangled before it became a scream. Her lantern flared. The gray-blue light washed over the floor, and for half a second I thought I saw fingers in it, pale shapes sliding away from the walls. She saw the bars.
"No," she whispered. Her hands clawed at the cord around her wrists. "No. Nessa. Where is she?"
"Who?" I asked.
Her head snapped toward me. Her eyes were wide, wet, and too awake for someone who had just crawled out of a drugged dark. "Nessa. Eighteen. Brown curls. Scar here." She jerked her chin toward her own. "She had an invitation. I found it after she left. The dead showed me where to go."
The dead. Perfect.
"What’s your name?"
"Chula."
The alarm screamed. It tore through the corridor hard enough to make my teeth ache. Not a bell. Not a horn. Metal and magic braided together, shrieking through stone, through the rope, through the blood in my mouth. The sigil near the lock flared bright, then flickered.
Tera moved. The cord fell from his wrists. I didn’t see the trick. One second tied. Next second free, like the rope had gotten embarrassed and given up. Lireal dragged themself closer to the bars. Their left hand stiffened halfway through the motion. Their mouth went flat. Then they shoved that hand against their thigh and kept moving anyway.
"Alarm weakened the outer line," Lireal said.
"Enough to open?" Chula asked.
"Not alone."
Good. I understood not alone. I got my feet under me, lurched to the bars, and wrapped both bound hands around the metal. Cold bit my palms. The sigil buzzed against my bones. I pulled. Pain snapped up both arms. The bars held. I pulled harder. The cord cut into my wrists. My shoulders burned. My breath came hot, fast, wrong. Something under my skin shimmered along my forearms, scale-shaped and furious.
The sigil flashed. White pain cracked through my hands. I snarled and pulled anyway.
"Stop," Lireal snapped.
I ignored them. A hand struck my wrist. Tera’s. Fast. Precise. Nerve-deep. My fingers opened before I chose it. I rounded on him. He was already out of reach. Smart.
"Touch me again."
"You are pulling the part designed to punish force," Tera said. His voice had no fear in it. No apology either. I hated that a little.
Chula pushed herself upright, lantern clutched against her side. Her hands shook. Her voice did not. "Then where does she pull?"
Tera’s gaze shifted to Lireal.
Lireal’s bloody fingers hovered over the air in front of the sigil, not touching. Their eyes narrowed. "Lower anchor. Third line. There is a hook near the base. If it opens while pressure is applied, the lock may fail."
"May," I said.
Lireal looked at me. "Would you prefer I lie?"
"No."
"Then may."
Fine. Tera crouched by the bars. His face changed. My stomach tightened. Not changed like a disguise going on. Changed like the world forgot which details belonged to him. His jaw softened, shoulders narrowing, the shape of him slipping sideways until my eyes did not want to hold on. He became nobody. A shadow with hands. A person a room would fail to remember. Then he slid between the bars.
I stepped back before I meant to. "That is disgusting."
"Useful," Tera said from the corridor.
"Still disgusting."
Chula’s mouth twitched, then vanished when the alarm screamed again. Boots thundered past somewhere far down the corridor. Shouts tangled together. Something slammed. The whole place sounded wrong now, panicked and awake. Good. Whoever had kicked this nest, I hoped they kicked harder.
Tera crouched near the glowing hook. Lireal pressed their bleeding palm to the floor. Blood slid out in a thin red line, crawling under the bars like it hated the stone too. Chula set her lantern at her feet and grabbed the bar beside mine.
"You won’t move it," I said.
"I know." She pulled anyway.
Damn it. My chest went hot in a different way.
Lireal’s red thread touched the sigil. "Now," Lireal said.
Tera pressed the hook. I pulled. The ward bit down. Pain blew through my hands, up my arms, into my teeth. Chula cried out beside me and kept pulling. Tera’s fingers jerked. Lireal hissed something sharp under their breath. The sigil flared bright enough to burn spots into my vision. Then it cracked. The lock clicked. I slammed the door open so hard it hit the wall.
Good. Not enough. I needed more things to break.
The corridor air hit like a wet rag over the face. Cold. Bitter. Worse than the cell. More iron. More old fear. Chula grabbed her lantern, and its light spread along the floor in gray-blue strips. Shapes flickered at the edges. A hand without a body. A face turned toward the deeper hall. A mouth opening around no sound.
Chula swallowed. "This way."
Tera, already outside the cell, glanced at her. "You trust them?"
"I trust them more than the people who tied us up."
Hard to argue with that. A guard rounded the corner with his mask shoved up and a baton in one hand. He saw the open cell. His mouth opened. I hit him before sound came out. Shoulder first. All body. All heat. He slammed into the wall. The baton swung wild and cracked against my arm. I caught his wrist with both tied hands and drove my forehead into his nose. Pain burst between my eyes. His nose broke. Better. He slid down the wall, choking on blood.
A second guard came fast behind him, blade low. Tera moved under the swing like he had stepped out of the place the blade expected him to be. His elbow hit the guard’s throat. Chula’s lantern flashed, gray-blue and cold, and the guard staggered as if something grabbed his spine from behind. Lireal lifted one bloodied hand. A red line snapped around the guard’s wrist and yanked the blade sideways.
I kicked him in the chest. He hit the ground hard. The alarm kept screaming.
I tore the knife from the first guard’s belt and sawed through the rope around my wrists. Blood rushed back into my hands in hot needles. I flexed my fingers once, twice, until they felt like mine again. Chula held out her wrists. I cut her free. Then Lireal. Their fingers curled slowly after the cord fell, each joint moving like it had to remember how.
"You good?" I asked.
Lireal stared at their hand. "Functional."
"Bad answer."
"Only one available."
Tera held out nothing. His rope was already gone. Of course. A thin blade rested between two of his fingers, narrow enough I almost missed it.
"Where was that?" I asked.
"Hidden."
"Deeply informative."
"Yes."
I hated that my mouth almost twitched. The second guard groaned. I took his baton and shoved it at Chula because she was closest. She looked at it, then at me.
"I’m not very good with these."
"Hit soft parts."
"That is horrible advice."
"It works."
She took it anyway. I kicked the fallen blade toward Lireal. They looked down at it like I had offered them a dead fish.
"Do you know how to use that?" I asked.
"No."
"Then don’t."
Lireal left it there. Fair. Tera stripped a key ring from the second guard and tossed it to Chula without looking. She caught it badly, keys clattering against her palm. The sound made all of us freeze. Boots passed somewhere beyond the next bend. No one came. I breathed out through my nose.
The corridor pulsed blue-green. The alarm beat against the inside of my skull. Far above, muffled shouting rolled through the stone. Not guards. A crowd. A lot of people. The rave. The room above had woken up wrong. Good. Bad. Both.
Chula turned toward the deeper hall. Her lantern light pulled that way, thin as a held breath. "Nessa could be down there," she said.
Tera’s voice came flat from near the corner. "So could twenty guards."
"Then move quietly."
"You are bleeding, drugged, and holding a baton backward."
Chula looked down at the baton and flipped it. I snorted. Tera blinked like humor had personally insulted him. Lireal wiped blood from their palm onto the side of their trousers. "We should not remain near the open cell."
"Agreed," I said. "We find the way out."
Chula’s head snapped toward me.
"And if there are people on the way, we don't ignore them," I added.
Her jaw flexed. She wanted to argue. I saw it. She was small and pale and shaking and wanted to turn herself into a wall for someone who might not even be down here. I got it. I hated that I got it.
"We can’t open every door blind," Lireal said. Their bloody hand hovered near the wall, not touching. "Some wards may be tied to alarms, sedatives, kill triggers. I need to see them first."
"Kill triggers?" Chula said.
"Possibly."
The word dropped hard. Something thumped behind a door down the hall. Chula flinched toward it. Tera moved before she did, not touching her, just appearing between her and the sound. "No blind doors."
Her eyes flashed. "Move."
"Not without knowing what opens with it."
The thump came again. My fingers tightened around the knife. I wanted to rip the door off. I wanted to rip every door off. I wanted to put my fist through stone until the whole place understood what cages were supposed to do when I told them no.
Lireal’s voice came thinner. "If we trigger the wrong ward, we may kill whoever is inside."
The heat in my chest hit my throat and stuck there. No. Not fair. Not fucking fair. The door thumped again, weaker this time. Chula’s face crumpled for half a second before she put it back together. I hated that too.
I stepped past her before she could see my face. "We need keys. A map. Someone who knows which doors bite."
"And if they die while we look?" she asked.
The question hit my back. I did not turn around. "Then I’ll be angry," I said. My voice sounded wrong.
No one answered. We moved.
Tera took the lead, slipping through shadow and stopping at corners with one hand low. Chula kept close behind him, lantern tucked against her ribs, baton gripped correctly now, mostly. Lireal stayed near the wall, breath too controlled, bloody fingers flexing every few steps. I kept behind enough to shove forward if something came at us and close enough to hit anything that reached for them.
Another door. Voices behind it. Not clear. Not enough. Chula stopped.
"No blind doors," Tera said before she spoke.
"I heard you." Her voice shook.
We kept moving. The corridor bent left, then right, then sloped down when I wanted up, because apparently this place had been built by someone who hated lungs. The alarm shifted higher. Blue-green strips flashed faster. Somewhere below, something heavy slammed shut.
Lireal cursed.
"What?"
"Lockdown."
"Full?"
"Partial, I think."
"You think?"
"I am drugged and bleeding in a trafficking cellar."
"Fine. Fair."
A shout came from ahead. Tera vanished against the wall. I pulled Chula back by the shoulder. She made a sharp sound but did not fight me. Lireal pressed flat to the stone. Two guards ran past the crossing ahead. Not toward us. Toward the alarm. One shouted, "The princess breached lower intake."
Princess. The word went through the corridor and hit all of us differently. Chula’s eyes widened. Lireal’s head lifted. Tera’s expression did nothing, which meant something. My grip tightened. The princess from the rave. Wine-dark dress. Fire under skin. Guards like knives behind her. Whoever had kicked the nest.
Another scream tore down the hall. Not ours. A guard flew backward around the bend and hit the wall. Stone cracked. His mask had melted down one side, not into his face, just ruined, pale mouth-sigil split open like the symbol itself had offended someone personally. He slid to the floor with a groan and stayed there.
I stepped in front of Chula. Blade up. Tera disappeared into the wall-shadow. Lireal lifted a bloody hand. Chula’s lantern flared cold against my back. The blue-white light grew. Footsteps came through it. Not running. Walking.
A girl stepped around the bend with a key ring in one hand and murder in her eyes. Wine-dark dress. Black cropped coat. Autumn-ginger hair damp around her jaw. Green eyes that looked too sharp for the color. Silver at her throat and wrists. Smaller than I expected. More terrifying too, because the air around her felt one bad breath away from becoming fire.
Princess Mira Quinveil Firebrand.
The red-haired woman beside her held a blade low, copper shimmer catching the blue-white light. Two guards followed, both quiet, both ready, both looking like anyone still standing in this corridor had made a scheduling error.
The princess looked at us. My bloody knuckles. My stolen knife. Chula with her lantern and baton. Lireal pale and bleeding. Tera half-gone in shadow. The locked doors behind us. The fear in the walls. Her face changed. Not soft. Worse. Careful.
"Tell me those are not the only people down here," she said. Her voice was quiet. Bad quiet.
Chula answered before any of us could lie. "No."
The princess closed her eyes. Just for a second. When she opened them, the blue-white light under her skin brightened. "Good," she said.
My grip tightened. "Good?"
Her mouth curved. Every guard in this place should have started praying. "Then we keep going."