The corridor curved sharp before opening onto a wider landing, lantern light thinning to almost nothing where the passage widened, shadows pooling thick along the beams overhead. Zelene heard footsteps before she saw who they belonged to — fast, uneven, someone favoring one leg slightly.
She rounded the corner just as Finn came skidding around from the other side, and for one full second, neither of them moved.
Then Finn's face crumpled, relief and fury and panic all crashing into each other at once.
"ZELENE!" He crossed the distance at a dead run, nearly bowling her over, arms locking tight despite her wince. "You're okay — you're actually okay — I saw that cell and I swear my heart just stopped, don't you ever—"
"I'm not dying that easily," Zelene managed, half-laughing, half-crying into his shoulder. "You should know that by now."
"I do know that, and it still nearly killed me!"
Silas arrived a beat behind him, and whatever composed charm he usually wore had fallen away entirely — his voice cracked when he finally spoke.
"You gave us quite a scare," he said, voice rougher than he probably intended.
"Seems to be a theme tonight," Zelene managed, a thin, exhausted almost-smile pulling at her mouth.
Ray's gaze moved over Finn and Silas both, cataloguing injuries the same careful way he'd cataloged Zelene's earlier — a split lip on Finn, bruising along Silas's jaw, nothing that looked fresh enough to be urgent.
"You're both in one piece," he said. Not quite a question, but close.
"Barely," Finn admitted. "There was a whole thing with ropes untying themselves that I still don't fully understand."
Silas glanced away at that, jaw tightening, clearly not ready to explain it yet either.
Corvin, still catching his breath, nodded toward the barricaded door further down the landing — crates stacked and lashed tight across it, muffled voices audible behind the wood, one of them unmistakably Della's, calling out something too indistinct to make out.
"They're still in there," he said. "We should move."
They tore the barricade down together — five bodies working the same fight for the first time all night, no wasted motion, no argument. The lock gave with a soft click that had nothing to do with Silas's fingers, and he stared at it a beat too long, jaw tight, before straightening without a word.
The last crate hit the floor. Nobody spoke. It didn't need saying.
"Ready?" Zelene asked, voice small.
"Not even a little," Finn said. "Doing it anyway."
Ray shoved the door open.
Marrow stood waiting at the center of the hold — untied, coat discarded, sleeves rolled, the bruise Ray had left on his jaw dark and swollen. Three of his men flanked him. Behind them, pressed against the wall, Della and the others clutched each other, eyes wide with terror.
"YOU." Ray's sword came up, and this time his voice shook — not with fear, with barely restrained fury. "How are you not still on that floor where I left you."
Marrow smiled, slow, delighted by the reaction. "Mercy's a poor investment, boy. You should've finished the job."
"We're not here for you." Zelene stepped forward despite her ribs screaming in protest, chin lifted, voice steadier than she felt. "We're here for them. And we are walking out of here. All of us."
"Big words," Marrow said, eyes raking over her bruises with open satisfaction, "for someone who barely crawled out of my cell alive."
"Let's find out if I got faster since then," Zelene shot back, and didn't let him see her hands trembling.
Marrow's smile split wider. "Kill them."
The hold exploded into motion. Steel met steel, boots scraping hard against wet wood, five bodies and three enemies crammed into too small a space. Corvin's blade cut fast and precise, driving his opponent back against the crates. Ray met the second guard head-on, force enough behind his strike to send sparks skittering into the dark. He and Silas fell into rough, unpolished rhythm against the third — not graceful, but enough.
"THAT'S FOR EVERY BRUISE ON HER FACE," Silas shouted, blade catching the guard's wrist and forcing his weapon loose.
"Save some rage for the actual villain," Ray panted, driving the man back with a shove.
One guard dropped. The second staggered, disarmed, slammed hard against the wall by Ray's final blow.
Marrow stood alone.
For one flickering second, real fear cracked through his composure.
"You leave me no choice," he snarled, yanking something small and black free from beneath his collar — a shard of stone, veined through with sickly violet light, pulsing in time with a rhythm none of them recognized.
"WHAT is that," Corvin demanded, blade angling toward him, chest still heaving.
"Something you people made me use," Marrow said — and crushed it in his fist.
Violet light detonated outward, slamming into the walls, the crates, every one of them at once — and when it cleared, Marrow was no longer simply a man.
Veins of sickly light crawled up his throat, across his jaw, pulsing beneath skin gone pale and taut. His eyes had lost their color entirely, flat and wrong, fixed on Zelene with a hunger that had nothing human left in it.
"Oh no," Finn breathed, taking an involuntary step back. "Oh, that's very bad. That's extremely bad."
Marrow's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile anymore.
"Now," he said, voice layered and wrong, "let's see what you're really worth."