The lock turned.
Soft. Slow. Like whoever held the key didn't want the sound to travel.
Mireya sat up before the door opened. Not fast. Not eager. Just… ready.
Chains pulled at her wrists when she moved. Metal kissed stone once.
She kept her face blank.
The door swung inward.
A jailer stepped in.
Not one of the regular guards. Those men smelled like oil and sweat and cheap beer. This one smelled clean—soap and metal—like he'd prepared.
He didn't carry a spear.
He carried a coil of thin wire looped over two fingers, neat as thread.
Garrote.
Mireya's pulse didn't jump. She didn't give him that.
"Wrong cell," she said, voice mild.
The jailer shut the door behind him. Careful. No slam. No drama.
"I'm sorry," he said.
He sounded honest.
That didn't help.
Mireya's Silence tightened around her throat, small and controlled. She stole the sound of her own breath. She stole the tiny tremor that wanted to live in her words.
"You don't look sorry," she said.
The jailer's eyes flicked to the chain on her wrists. He measured distance. Angle. How fast she could lunge.
He was professional.
Mireya hated professionals.
He lifted the wire.
Mireya didn't scoot back. There was nowhere to go. She lifted her chin instead, like she was bored.
"You were paid," she said. "How much?"
His mouth tightened. The only tell.
Enough.
He stepped in.
The wire slid behind her neck—cold, then colder.
Mireya's muscles went still, not from fear. From calculation.
If she fought too early, he'd tighten. If she waited too long, she'd lose air.
She snapped her Silence outward—wide this time, not subtle.
The cell dropped into muffled deadness.
Torch hiss dulled. Her chains made no sound when they shifted. Even the jailer's boots lost their scrape.
The jailer hesitated for half a beat, startled by the sudden pressure of quiet.
Mireya used it.
She leaned forward sharply—throwing her weight into the wire before he had the angle—trying to drag him off-balance.
The wire bit anyway.
Pain flashed white.
Mireya's hands jerked up on instinct—caught by the chain before they could reach her throat.
Useless.
The jailer recovered fast. He planted his feet. Pulled.
The wire tightened.
Mireya's vision sharpened at the edges. Her ears filled with her own blood rushing.
She tried to breathe.
The wire said no.
She dug her heels into the stone and twisted—trying to turn into him, to ruin his leverage.
The jailer adjusted with her, calm as prayer.
"You should've run," he murmured, right by her ear.
Mireya wanted to laugh. She couldn't.
Her Silence fluttered, strain rising. Panic would make it sloppy. Sloppy would get her killed.
She forced herself to focus on one thing.
Sound.
Not for the guards. For the bond.
If Stellan was still linked to her hearing—if he was still out there—he would be hearing this through her.
The wire's faint rasp.
Her strangled, useless attempt at air.
The jailer's breath, steady and close.
Mireya tried to make the sounds clearer. Tried to push them through.
Not words.
Just truth.
I'm dying.
The garrote tightened another fraction.
Something in her neck tore. Hot pain. A wet taste rising in the back of her throat.
Her Silence cracked.
The dungeon's noise bled back in—drip of water, torch snap, distant cough.
And through that—
A second awareness slammed into her.
Forest light.
Rough rafters.
Stellan's eyes.
No.
Worse.
For one heartbeat, she wasn't looking through him.
He was looking through her.
Her cell. Her torch. The wire at her throat.
A glitch. A flare. The Concord scrambling under blood and fear.
Mireya's mind screamed use it—
—
Stellan was halfway to the door when it hit.
Not tapping this time.
Not a coded knock.
A sound that wasn't supposed to exist in his head.
A thin rasp.
Metal sliding against skin.
A strangled inhale that didn't finish.
Stellan's stomach dropped.
Mave grabbed his sleeve. "What now?"
Stellan didn't answer.
Then his vision jerked—
and for a single, brutal heartbeat, he saw a dungeon cell.
Torchlight. Stone. A wire cutting into a woman's throat.
Mireya's eyes—wide, furious, refusing to beg.
Stellan's blood went cold.
He moved.
Not thoughtful. Not careful.
He grabbed the knife from the table and lunged outside into the yard.
A practice stump stood near the fence, scarred with old throws.
Stellan raised his arm.
Mave shouted behind him—he barely heard it.
He threw.
The knife sank into the stump with a hard thunk.
And the Concord snapped.
—
Mireya's body moved without permission.
Not a full takeover. Not puppetry.
One motion.
A reflex.
Her bound hands whipped up—chain snapping tight—and her forearms slammed into the jailer's elbow at the exact angle Stellan's throw had carved into muscle.
Impossible.
Effective.
The jailer's arm jerked. The wire slipped just enough for Mireya to suck in one harsh breath.
Air burned down her throat like fire.
Mireya didn't waste it.
She lunged forward into the slack, twisted hard, and hooked the garrote wire with the edge of her cuff chain.
Metal caught metal.
She yanked.
The jailer made a sound—more surprise than pain—as the wire bit into his own gloved fingers.
Mireya drove her shoulder back into his ribs.
Borrowed pain flared in her bones—Stellan's ribs answering with their own protest—but she used it like fuel.
The jailer stumbled.
Mireya dropped low, dragging the chain across his wrist and pulling him forward. He hit the wall shoulder-first.
The garrote fell from his hands.
It clattered onto stone—loud now, because Mireya let the Silence go. She wanted the dungeon to hear this part.
The jailer swore and reached for something at his belt.
Mireya didn't give him time.
She kicked the wire away, hard, and scrambled backward until her chain hit its limit. She kept her eyes on his hands.
Always hands.
The jailer lifted his palms slowly, showing empty fingers.
"I didn't want to hurt you," he said, voice tight.
Mireya's laugh came out rough. "That's impressive. Because you did a terrible job of not wanting."
He glanced at the door like he was calculating whether he could leave before guards responded.
Mireya raised her chin, blood slick on her throat.
"You're not leaving," she said.
Footsteps thundered outside—real ones. Loud. Panicked.
The jailer backed toward the shadows, eyes flat now. Professional mask returning.
"I was paid to try," he muttered.
Then he slipped out through the door as it opened—using the incoming guards as cover.
Mireya didn't chase.
She couldn't.
Her throat burned. Her hands shook. Her lungs were trying to remember how to work.
A guard burst in, spear raised. "What did you—"
Mireya looked at him with blood on her neck and said, calm as stone, "Get me water."
The guard hesitated.
Mireya smiled, small and sharp. "Now."
He moved.
Good boy.
Mireya sat back against the wall and swallowed carefully.
It hurt.
Something warm slid down her throat anyway.
Blood.
She held it in her mouth for a second—refusing to cough, refusing to give the guards the sound of weakness.
Then she swallowed.
And far away—
Stellan gagged.
Because her blood hit his tongue like a message.
Metallic. Hot. Real.
Not his.
Hers.