The ringing didn't fade.
It ate everything.
Mireya knelt in the brush with both hands pressed over her ears, and it still screamed inside her skull—high, relentless, like a blade dragged across glass.
She tried to tighten her Silence.
Nothing answered.
No soft hush. No filtering. No control.
Just raw sound pouring in from every direction at once.
Wind in branches. Grit under boots. A crow's call like a nail. Her own breathing, loud and wrong. Blood thumping in her throat.
Too loud. Too real.
She rocked once, trying to anchor herself.
The ringing climbed higher.
Her stomach lurched. She swallowed bile and tasted it sharp.
Footsteps hit the road.
Many.
Mireya's eyes snapped open, watering from pain. The world spun.
Stellan's boots crunched through brush as he reached her. He dropped to one knee beside her, hands hovering for half a beat like he didn't know if touching her would make it worse.
"Mireya," he said, voice rough.
The sound hit her like a punch.
She flinched hard.
Stellan swore under his breath—one short, ugly word—and moved anyway. He grabbed her forearm and pulled her up just enough to drag her deeper into cover.
Mireya tried to help.
Her body didn't cooperate.
The ringing made balance impossible. Every movement was delayed, like her muscles were arguing with her brain.
Stellan hauled her behind a fallen log and pressed her down into the shadow.
"Stay," he hissed.
Mireya's mouth opened.
Her own voice came out too loud in her skull. "I can't—"
Stellan cut her off. "I know."
The fact that he knew didn't comfort her. It embarrassed her. It made her want to bite.
The bond flared—not inversion this time, but a harsh shared spike: his anger, her humiliation, both tangled.
Stellan's eyes flicked to the road. Pulse-sight rose for a breath, then sharpened.
Hunters.
Not guards. Not drunk noble thugs.
Hunters moved with spacing and quiet. They didn't chat. They didn't swagger. They walked like they expected to kill something that could kill back.
Stellan's jaw tightened.
Mireya tried to focus on the sound.
It was too much. Every bootstep sounded like it was inside her teeth.
Stellan leaned closer, voice low, cutting through the noise like a rope. "Breathe with me."
Mireya hated being told to breathe.
She did it anyway, because she couldn't afford to pass out.
In. Out.
The ringing didn't drop.
But her vision steadied a fraction.
Stellan crouched at the edge of the log, watching the road through a gap in branches.
Mireya's fingers dug into the dirt. She tried her Silence again. Nothing. Not even a flicker.
Inversion.
The Concord was punishing her for trying to leave.
A leash snapping tight.
Stellan whispered, more to himself than to her, "Of course."
He sounded furious.
Not at the hunters.
At her.
At her past.
At the sound-memory he couldn't erase.
Protecting her now didn't change what he'd heard.
It just made it worse.
Because he was still doing it.
Still saving.
Even when the person in front of him made him sick.
Mireya swallowed hard. "Go."
Stellan didn't look at her. "No."
"You can't fight them and drag me," Mireya said, voice shaking in her skull. "Leave."
Stellan's head snapped toward her. His eyes were hard.
"You think I'm going to leave you?" he hissed. "After everything?"
Mireya's throat tightened. "You want to."
Stellan didn't deny it.
He just said, low and brutal, "And I'm not going to."
The hunters' footsteps drew closer.
A voice carried through the trees—male, clipped, professional. "Spread. Check the brush."
Mireya flinched at every word. Too loud. Too sharp.
Stellan's hand brushed her shoulder—brief, grounding. Then he pulled it back like contact was a risk he didn't trust himself with.
"Stay down," he murmured.
Mireya's eyes narrowed. "I am down."
Stellan didn't answer. He slid his blade free—quiet, practiced.
He moved like a man who'd hunted beasts in darker woods than this.
One hunter stepped off the road and into the brush.
Stellan's Pulse-sight flickered. Mireya felt the read through the bond—warm beat, trained rhythm, no Hollowbeast wrongness.
Human.
Stellan's jaw clenched.
The hunter pushed branches aside, eyes scanning.
Mireya's ringing spiked as the branches scraped, and she bit back a sound.
Stellan held still until the hunter was close enough to smell pine on his coat.
Then Stellan moved.
Fast. Clean.
He hooked an arm around the hunter's throat from behind and dragged him down, pressing the man into the dirt.
The hunter fought, choking.
Stellan didn't kill him.
He just held him until the struggle slowed, until the body went limp.
Mireya watched, breath coming too fast.
Stellan's restraint would get him killed.
Or get her killed.
The next hunter saw movement and shouted.
"Contact!"
Boots crashed through brush from two directions.
Stellan cursed—short, bitter—and shoved the unconscious hunter deeper behind the log.
"Stay," he told Mireya again.
Then he stood.
No stealth now.
Just offense.
A hunter swung a short sword at his ribs.
Stellan took the hit on his forearm, blade catching blade with a metallic scream that made Mireya's skull explode.
She clamped her hands over her ears again, but the sound still drilled into her brain.
Stellan shoved the hunter back with his shoulder and kicked his knee sideways. The man went down with a grunt.
Another hunter came from the left.
Stellan turned, parried, and drove his elbow into the man's jaw.
The hunter staggered, blood on his lip.
Mireya tasted it faintly through the bond—iron and panic.
She forced herself to move.
To do something.
Her fingers found her knife.
She couldn't use Silence, but she could still stab.
She crawled along the log, vision swimming, and aimed for ankles—low, fast, ugly.
A hunter stepped too close.
Mireya slashed his boot tendon.
He screamed.
The sound tore through her skull like lightning. Mireya gagged hard, bile rising.
Stellan snapped his head toward her, alarm flaring. "Mireya—"
Mireya shook her head, teeth clenched. "Don't—talk."
Stellan's jaw tightened.
He hated that instruction. He followed it anyway, breathing through his nose, communicating in motion.
The hunters regrouped, realizing the woman was disabled.
Two of them moved to flank Stellan while a third angled toward Mireya.
Stellan saw it.
He couldn't be in two places.
Mireya's vision blurred with panic.
Her chest tightened.
The bond flared, feeding it to Stellan like poison.
He moved anyway—throwing himself between Mireya and the hunter with a brutal shove.
The hunter stumbled back into a tree trunk.
Stellan pressed his blade to the man's throat.
Not cutting.
Just warning.
The hunter's eyes widened, but his voice stayed trained.
"Orders," the hunter rasped. "Alive."
Stellan froze.
Mireya felt the pause through the bond like a hitch in breath.
Alive.
They weren't here to execute.
They were here to retrieve.
A cage on legs.
Stellan's eyes narrowed. "Whose orders."
The hunter swallowed. "Royal."
Stellan's Pulse-sight flickered and caught something at the man's belt—paper in a leather tube, sealed.
Stellan yanked it free with one hand and cracked it open.
Wax seal.
Sunburst around a crown.
Royal.
Stellan stared at it like it could bite.
His voice came low, rough with disbelief. "Retrieve the Concord pair alive."
Mireya's stomach dropped.
Because it wasn't just a hunt.
It was an extraction.
And the palace had written the script.