Chapter 34 — POV: Kieller
The silence after the call was worse than any scream.
I sat in my office, the screen black, my reflection staring back at me. My jaw ached from the force I'd clenched it, the veins in my hands still standing like ropes where I'd gripped the desk.
Her face. No, not her face. The mask. The blood.
The way she still dared to bare her teeth through it.
And me—watching.
I should have broken the screen the second it connected. I should have torn the wires from the earth itself until they felt me clawing through their veins. Instead, I watched. I let them strike her, let them parade her like a prize animal, and I did nothing but spit promises.
Empty? No. Nothing I said is ever empty.
My voice had already marked their graves.
I rose from the chair, pacing once, twice, like a caged predator testing the bars. Every word she spoke echoed in my head—don't kneel, burn. She knew me too well. She demanded war, and I would give her nothing less.
A notification split the silence.
I turned. The screen lit again, but this time it wasn't a private call. It was a broadcast. Live.
The image stuttered, then focused.
Lyra.
Strapped to a chair, mask still fixed across her face, head slumped forward. Her wrists glistened with blood where the plastic had bitten through. Her breathing was visible in the tremor of her chest.
And around her—three shadows. Masks. Arrogant in their facelessness, drunk on their own theater.
The leader stepped forward into frame, his insect tilt aimed straight at the camera.
"To the world," he said, his voice rich with poisonous calm. "Your queen has been unmasked. She is no more than a body, no more than silence."
The tall one swung the rod again. It cracked across her ribs, the sound magnified by the microphone. She didn't scream. She only jolted, breath tearing ragged.
The shorter one hovered near, crack-mask angled like he wanted to lean close, touch, claim. Coward.
My vision blurred red.
They thought they were untouchable, hidden in shadows. But arrogance is blindness. They wanted me to watch—so I did.
Not the blows. Not the taunts. Not even the mask.
The room.
The walls.
The floor.
Behind the leader, faint, half out of frame—a symbol. Rusted into the concrete, barely visible under the light. A number. 27.
And above it, a stutter in the footage—a flicker that betrayed the power source. Old. Industrial.
Underground.
I leaned forward, slow, deliberate, my fury curling into something sharp, precise.
"You've just shown me where you are," I whispered, the words tasting like victory.
On the screen, the leader raised his hand again. The tall one obeyed, the rod slamming down across her shoulder. She jerked but didn't break. Lyra never broke.
The leader tilted his mask, voice venom-smooth:
"Tomorrow, she bows."
I smiled. A cold, merciless curve.
"No," I said to the screen, though they couldn't hear me. "Tomorrow, you burn."
The broadcast froze. The feed cut.
But it didn't matter.
I knew where they were.
And nothing—not walls, not masks, not gods—would stop me from tearing them apart brick by brick, bone by bone, until I took her back.