🦋ALTHEA
The words hung in the air like a spell gone wrong, warping reality itself.
Victim.
Not spy. Not traitor. Not enemy.
Victim.
The room erupted.
Not with sound—there was no shouting, no chaos—but with a collective intake of breath so sharp it felt like the air itself had fractured. Shock rippled through the gathered Vargans like a shockwave, their hatred stuttering, confused, seeking a new target and finding none.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t process what I’d just heard.
"That’s impossible!" Ivanna’s voice cut through the stunned silence like a blade, sharp and disbelieving. She stood, her chair scraping against the floor. "She was found with his arm, covered in his blood, reeking of—"
"Decorum, Ivanna."
The Hell Hound’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried absolute authority. Not a request. A command.
"Zeta Kael speaks. You will listen."
The words were asured, controlled, but there was steel beneath them. Even Ivanna, with all her simring fury, sat back down. Slowly. Her jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath her skin.
But her eyes never left , still burning with that barely-contained hatred that said she didn’t believe a word of this.
I didn’t bla her. I barely believed it myself.
Kael cleared his throat, and the room fell silent again. Every eye turned to him—this elder who had survived what should have killed him, who had lost an arm and returned anyway, who now stood as the only witness to whatever truth lay beneath the evidence that had damned .
"It was during my daily ditation," Kael began, his voice steady despite the tremor in his remaining hand. "By the mist’s edge. I go there every morning at dawn. Alone. Always alone."
His eyes swept the room, making sure everyone understood the significance.
"I was taken suddenly. No warning. No chance to fight or call for help. One mont I was in ditation, the next—" His voice caught, and for the first ti, I saw the trauma flicker across his weathered face. "The next, I was sowhere else. Sowhere dark."
The room leaned in, collective breath held.
"They tortured ."
Then he look away from everyone, his gaze suddenly locking on . My breath snagged. I blinked and for a ghost of a second, I saw sothing that made my blood turn to ice.
Hate.
Flaring in the storm grey whirls of his eyes.
Another blink and it was gone—like it never existed.
His gaze swelled with pity that jarred . Was i losing my mind, had I not caught the sliver of the hatred in hiw gaze.
"They tortured for information," Kael continued, his voice growing stronger even as it shook with barely suppressed emotion. "Not about clan secrets. Not about our defenses or our numbers."
His eyes found mine again, and this ti there was no hatred. Only devastation.
"They tortured for information about her. About Althea. Her whereabouts. Her condition. Her... connection to this place."
The room’s confusion was palpable. Why would anyone torture a Zeta for information about a supposed spy?
"I held out as long as I could," Kael’s voice cracked. "But they were relentless. They wanted to know everything. And eventually—" His remaining hand clenched into a fist. "Eventually, I broke."
Sha flooded his weathered face.
"I told them she was here. That she was with the Hell Hound. I told them—" His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, but in the silent room, everyone heard. "I told them she was his mate."
The room exploded into chaos.
Voices erupted—shock, disbelief, fury, confusion—all crashing together like a tidal wave. I couldn’t process any of it. Couldn’t hear individual words through the roaring in my ears.
Mate.
Before I could draw breath, before I could think, Kael moved.
He broke away from the deltas supporting him and ran toward —not the careful approach of earlier, but a desperate, lurching run that sent everyone into motion.
Chairs scraped. Shouts erupted. Bodies surged forward to intercept—
But Kael reached first.
He dropped to his knees before my chair with a sound that cracked through the chaos—bone eting stone, hard and painful—and the room froze at the sight.
A Zeta. On his knees. Before a prisoner.
"If I had been stronger—" His voice broke completely, tears streaming down his face. "If I had just been stronger, you would have been left alone. Especially after everything you’d already gone through. Everything they’d already done to you—"
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be—
His remaining hand reached for mine, touching the silver shackles with shaking fingers.
"You didn’t deserve—"
"Deltas!" The Hell Hound’s voice cut through the mont like a blade. "Help him up. Now."
Two deltas moved imdiately, but Kael was still talking, still crying—sobbing now—as they tried to lift him.
"You didn’t deserve those horrible things," he said, his rheumy eyes boring into mine with an intensity that made my chest ache. "You were young. Naive. You made mistakes, yes, but not—" His voice hitched. "Not the kind that warranted that. Not what they did to you. Not for years—"
The deltas finally got him to his feet, but he kept talking, words spilling out like a confession he’d been holding back too long.
"They spoke about you like you were nothing. Like you were a problem to be solved. Your own—" He choked on the word. "They destroyed you, and then they wanted us to finish what they’d started."
My mind was reeling, trying to piece together what he was saying through the fragnts, the riddles, the horror of realization creeping up my spine like frost.
They spoke about you.
Draven. My mother.
They’d talked about . In front of Kael. While torturing him.
They’d discussed what they’d already done to . What they wanted done next.
Years, he’d said. They’d been destroying for years.
"What do you an?" The Hell Hound’s voice was different now—harder, colder, with an edge that made even the chaos-filled room fall silent. "What did they do to her?"
Kael turned toward the masked figure, still supported by the deltas, tears still tracking down his weathered face.
"Althea Nocturne," he said, and there was sothing almost reverent in how he spoke my na now, like an apology and a benediction at once, "has been through hell long before she ever stepped foot in this fortress."
Reviews
All reviews (0)