Zyrax's POV
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I feel it the moment the walls go dark.
I am sitting alone in my throne room when the hum cuts out _ that steady pulse that runs through every wall in this dungeon like a heartbeat. It stops for exactly four seconds and then returns. Most creatures in my court wouldn't notice. They are used to small fluctuations. Small shifts.
I notice everything.
I am on my feet before the hum returns.
Someone just used a silencing surge _ a specific kind of power that cuts the dungeon's natural frequency in a small radius. It is not a common ability. In my entire court, fewer than six creatures can do it.
I already know who did.
I cross the throne room in three steps and I am reaching for the door when Vrael walks through it. His face is doing the neutral thing. The careful thing. The thing that means he is about to tell me something he knows will make me dangerous to be near.
"Eastern corridor," he says. "Her room."
I am already moving.
-
I don't run.
Kings do not run. Running tells your court that something has control over you _ that something can pull you by the throat through your own halls. I walk fast. Purposeful. The creatures I pass in the corridor flatten against the walls without being told because my energy is doing the talking and what it is saying is clear enough.
Do not be in my way right now.
Vrael keeps pace beside me. He speaks quietly as we move. Someone used a silencing surge near the eastern sleeping chambers. The two guards outside the human girl's room are down _ not dead, unconscious, which tells me this was meant to be quiet. Meant to look like she simply disappeared in the night. No mess. No evidence. Just a human who was never heard from again, which is a story this court has told many times before.
"Who," I say.
Vrael says the name.
I stop walking for exactly one second.
Then I keep going.
-
When I reach the arch of her room the two guards are on the ground. Breathing _ Vrael was right about that. Whoever did this is disciplined enough to keep things clean. I step over them without slowing down and walk through the arch into her room.
She is standing against the back wall.
Both hands pressed flat behind her. Chin up. Eyes wide open staring directly at the figure standing between her and the door.
The figure turns when I walk in.
It is exactly who Vrael told me it would be and the look on its face when it sees me goes through three changes in less than two seconds. Surprise. Calculation. Then something that is trying very hard to become calm confidence and not quite getting there.
"My King," it says.
"Step away from her," I say.
It steps away.
-
I look at the girl.
She is pressed against the wall and her hands are shaking slightly _ not her face, not her voice when she speaks, just her hands, and only slightly, and I notice she notices me noticing and immediately straightens her fingers out flat against the stone like she is refusing to let them shake where I can see it.
"I'm fine," she says. Before I ask. Before anyone asks.
The sound of that _ two words, completely steady, spoken by someone who is absolutely not entirely fine but has decided that is private information _ does something strange and small inside my chest.
I turn back to the figure in the room.
"You will come with Vrael," I say. "Now."
It tries to speak. I hold up one hand and the words stop. I have been king long enough that certain things no longer require volume. The hand is enough. The energy behind it is enough. It goes with Vrael without another sound.
I stand in the middle of the room.
She is still against the wall. The walls are glowing again _ the hum is back, steady, and in the returning light I can see her clearly. She has a ring on her right hand that she is pressing her thumb against in a small repetitive motion. Around and around. Like it is keeping her anchored.
"You came," she says.
Not thank you. Not you saved me. Just _ you came. Like that is the part that surprised her. Like that is the part she is still processing.
Something about that lands in a specific place I do not have a name for.
"You told me to stay," she continues. Her eyes meet mine directly. "When you say someone stays, do you protect that or is it just a word?"
I stare at her.
In four hundred years, not one single creature in any court I have ever ruled has spoken to me like that. Not from anger. Not from rudeness. Just _ honest. Plain. Like she actually wants to know the answer and is not afraid of what it might be.
"It is not just a word," I say.
She holds my gaze for a long moment. Then she nods once. Like she is filing that information somewhere useful.
"Okay," she says. "Then I have a question."
I should leave. I came to remove a threat, the threat is removed, my presence here is no longer strategically necessary. I should leave.
"Ask it," I say.
"Whoever just came into my room _ they knew something about me." Her voice stays steady but her thumb presses harder against the ring. "They knew what my ability does. They knew what it could become before I even know what it could become. Which means someone told them." She looks at me. "Who in your court knew about me before I walked through that gate?"
The question hits me in the chest.
Because the answer _ the real answer _ is something I have not told Vrael. Something I have not told anyone. Something that means this situation is larger and older and more tangled than one threat symbol on a wall and one creature with a silencing surge.
I know why she has Resonance.
I have known since the moment she walked into my cavern and I felt her feel me back.
I have been the only one who knew.
Which means the creature Vrael just took away learned it from somewhere else entirely.
Which means there is someone else in this court _ someone I have not identified yet _ who knows something about this human girl that should have been impossible to know.
I look at her.
She is still watching me. Waiting. Patient and steady in a way that makes no sense for someone who just had their room gone dark around them.
"Get some sleep," I say.
I turn and walk out before she can see what her question just did to me.
Behind me, she says nothing.
But I feel her.
Awake. Thinking.
And afraid _ not of the creature that just came for her in the dark.
Afraid of the answer I didn't give.