Keiser’s mind ran quick calculations, piecing his mories together.
He’s still here.
That ant the incident hadn’t happened yet... the one that would shake the capital and make this man’s na whispered in every noble’s hall. There was still ti to use him. Still ti to twist the looming storm into their advantage.
With that certainty, Keiser shifted closer to the bars, stretching one hand through the cold iron. He ignored the way Lenko’s gaze narrowed suspiciously on him, the way the boy looked like he was watching a stranger crawl out of Muzio’s skin.
"Hey," Keiser murmured, voice steady but edged with command. "Give the key."
The dungeon went still. The silence pressed thick, broken only by the faint drip of water and the shuffle of straw underfoot. Keiser’s jaw twitched, he nearly hissed a sharp hurry up under his breath when the man in the other cell finally moved.
Then... laughter. Low at first, then rolling through the stone chamber until it bounced off the damp walls. It was the kind of laugh that wasn’t born of joy but of sheer amusent at soone else’s audacity.
"Wow," the man drawled, his voice sliding like oil across the gloom. "Client, you really are straight to the point."
A sudden glint caught Keiser’s good eye... sothing flashing under the torchlight, small, tallic. A mont later, he felt it. The cool press of solid iron dropping into his waiting palm.
His fingers curled instantly around it. A key.
Lenko gasped in surprise. Tyron and the old n leaned forward, craning their necks to confirm what their eyes told them, disbelief plain on their faces.
Keiser said nothing.
His grip on the key tightened, the cold tal biting into his palm. His temple throbbed in ti with his pulse, each beat a reminder of the storm in his head. His thoughts tangled, circling themselves. Even so, for the first ti since they were dragged into this dungeon, he felt the faintest sliver of control slide back into his hands.
As Muzio, this was a miracle... running into this man now, before everything spiraled, was a chance he could not waste. But as Keiser? It was bitter poison.
This wasn’t just any shadow lurking in the dungeon. He knew this man... had chased him before, cornered him, only for the bastard to slip through his fingers every single ti.
A trickster who left no proof, no trail but laughter echoing in the dark. To accept his help now was the cruelest kind of irony, like grinding salt into an old wound.
And yet... Keiser was not himself anymore. Not fully.
He’s Muzio now, living with it’s fragile pulse beating beneath his ribs. If this body fell, Keiser died with it... and he wasn’t sure either of them could afford that gamble. Not with Lenko caught up in this ss, not with Tyron and those two old n dragged down with them.
So he swallowed his pride, though it burned like bile. He would take the key. He would take any advantage, even if it ca from the slipperiest snake in the kingdom.
But gods, the irritation sat heavy in his chest, coiling with a venomous heat. Because no matter how much this man helped him now, Keiser knew he would vanish again... smiling, mocking, free.
And Keiser, once more, would be left to pick up the pieces.
Speaking of the slippery bastard, his voice slithered across the dungeon like oil. "No thanks at all?" he drawled, waving his hand lazily through the bars as though they were seated in a tavern and not rotting in chains.
Keiser didn’t so much as glance his way.
Instead, he pressed the cold weight of the key into Lenko’s palm. The boy blinked, then stared wide-eyed between the key in his hand and the shadowed figure waving from the other cell. He looked utterly baffled, like soone who had just been handed a viper and told it was a gift.
"You don’t just accept thanks..." Keiser muttered, the words little more than a growl under his breath.
Lenko didn’t question it further... at least not aloud. He turned quickly, fumbling with the lock. Tyron rushed to his side, eager hands joining in as they searched for the right fit, both of them focused on the promise of escape.
Behind them, laughter rippled through the stale dungeon air. Not just mocking this ti. There was a sharper edge to it, a note of genuine interest, like a predator catching scent of sothing new.
"Oho..." the man humd, his hand making an idle gesture in the torchlight. "Now I’m curious."
Keiser’s jaw tightened. That tone... too knowing, too entertained... was exactly why he hated this bastard.
The lock clicked open with a tallic snap.
One by one, they stepped out... Tyron first, then the old twins, Jim and Jill... though none of them looked relieved. Their eyes darted to the stairwell, shoulders stiff, as if knights could co storming down at any mont. Even freed, their movents were wary, tense, like animals still caught in a snare.
Keiser, however, didn’t head for the exit. He plucked the key back from Lenko’s hand with deliberate calm and turned, boots scraping the stone floor, toward the shadowed corner of the dungeon.
The cell there was darker than the rest.
Empty at first glance... nothing but damp stone and the stink of mold. But the flicker of torchlight betrayed a figure slouched against the bars, one hand lazily extended, fingers wiggling in greeting.
The man’s face erged in the dim glow.
A smirk stretched across it, sly and irritating, belonging to soone who wore the world’s contempt like a badge of honor.
He looked to be in his thirties, though the heavy gray bags under his eyes, paired with the disheveled beard and wiry fra, made him appear older. His brown hair was tied into a sloppy bun, stray strands dangling like he hadn’t touched a comb in weeks. A battered, mud-stained tunic clung to him as if he’d been dragged through every gutter in the capital.
Scruffy. Unkempt. Yet his green eyes glittered with a sharpness that belied the rest of his sorry state.
The kind of sharpness Keiser knew all too well.
Because Keiser knew those eyes.
He had hunted him across the capital, cornered him ti and ti again... only to watch him slip away like smoke. This sly bastard was at the center of every ripple of chaos, the one feeding nobles scraps of poison-laced information, the one whispering about the dragon’s heart until half the capital went mad.
And now here he was, leaning against dungeon bars as if he owned the place.
"Oh, great," the broker drawled with mock relief. "For a mont, I thought you’d run off with my key."
Keiser’s grip on the iron tightened.
Of all the devils in the capital, this was the worst kind to strike a bargain with. Yet if he needed to find the first true lead... both on the dragon’s heart and on Tyron’s father... then there was no better man for it.
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