(a/n: hey jinx here now word of warning for this chapter but something went wrong with my doc where i kept the story and i may or may not have overlapped multiple scenes so be wary of that)
Two days after the fall of Bhonash, Bellatrix and Regulus reached the mountain.
The cavern entrance cut across its northern face like something had once tried to tear the mountain open from within and stopped halfway through. It was large enough for several wagons to pass beside one another, yet the darkness beyond swallowed the road so completely that the soldiers carrying blue-glass lanterns looked small beneath it. Wind breathed steadily from the opening, cold and damp, carrying the scent of deep water, wet stone, and a faint metallic sharpness that clung to the back of the throat.
Nothing outside suggested that the cave mattered.
No wall had been raised around it. No banners moved above the cliffs. There were no visible watchtowers or carved dragons announcing that the passage belonged to anyone. Black vines crawled over fractured stone, loose gravel shifted beneath the wind, and from a distance the entrance looked like another dead hollow left behind by the Doom.
That plainness only made the people following Bellatrix and Regulus more uneasy.
Several hundred survivors from Bhonash stretched down the road behind them, the column divided so clearly that even someone who knew nothing of the city could have guessed what had happened there.
The Valyrians walked first.
Their chains had been removed before leaving Bhonash, though the marks remained. Raw skin circled wrists and ankles. Pale scars disappeared beneath sleeves. Some still touched their throats whenever an armored soldier passed, fingers moving over skin that had carried iron for so many years that its absence felt unfamiliar.
They had been washed, fed, and given clothing taken from Bhonash's storehouses. The garments were plain and unevenly matched—dark wool, heavy cloaks, leather boots, shirts that sat too broadly across thin shoulders—but they were clean and warm. No owner's mark had been stitched into them. No color identified which household could claim the person wearing them.
That alone had unsettled many of them more than they admitted.
An old woman had spent half the journey asking whether the cloak around her shoulders needed to be returned. Each time she was told no, she nodded without looking convinced, then folded it carefully whenever they stopped, as though she expected someone to discover the mistake.
A young man with silver-white hair carried his boots beneath one arm until the first night, unwilling to wear something that had once belonged to a free citizen. He only put them on after the bandages around his feet soaked through and one of the silent warriors crouched before him, took the boots from his hands, and placed them on the ground without a word.
The children adjusted more quickly, though hunger had taught them habits freedom had not yet undone. Pieces of bread disappeared into pockets even when there was more food waiting. Cups were held with both hands and emptied carefully. Any sudden shout still made small bodies stiffen before they remembered no overseer was coming.
Behind them walked the people who had once owned the city.
They wore the chains now.
Former masters, guards, overseers, merchants, and citizens whose knowledge had made them useful enough to spare were linked together in long iron lines. Fine clothing had been stripped away or traded to those who needed it more. Jewelry was gone. Silk had been replaced with rough wool, and hands that had rarely carried anything heavier than ledgers, goblets, keys, or whips had blistered during the march.
The change had settled differently across them.
Some had become quiet, fear gradually wearing through the arrogance they had carried out of Bhonash.
Others burned with it.
They stared at the freed Valyrians ahead as though the people they had kept in pens had betrayed a natural law by walking without permission. Every blanket handed forward, every waterskin offered first to a former slave, every moment the column stopped because someone's damaged feet needed tending seemed to deepen the insult.
Their lives had not been easy by the standards of the Free Cities. Bhonash had been poor, half-ruined, and always one failed harvest or raid away from hunger. Yet comfort had existed for them because suffering had been pushed downward. Someone else carried the stone. Someone else slept in the cold. Someone else went without food.
Now the ground hurt their feet, iron pulled at their wrists, and the people ahead of them did not step aside.
The reversal sat inside the chained group like a fever.
One former overseer had spent the first morning whispering what he would do when Bhonash was reclaimed. His voice had remained low, meant only for the prisoners nearest him, but a raven followed the column from a dead tree and repeated every threat in a bright, delighted croak.
Bellatrix had laughed until tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.
The overseer had not spoken since.
She waited near the cavern entrance now, one hand resting against her hip while the column climbed the final slope. Dust clung to the hem of her black clothing, and the wind had worked her hair into a thick disorder around her face. She looked tired around the eyes, but nowhere else. Impatience still lived in every shift of her weight, every glance toward the mountain, every time her fingers brushed the black wand hidden against her side.
Regulus stood beside her with one of Morzhar's ledgers tucked beneath his arm.
He had spent most of the journey buried in it, stopping whenever someone remembered a lost relative, a family name, a trade, or an old story that might prove useful. The book was bent now, its pages stained by travel, and the faint pressure around his eyes suggested he had slept less than anyone else.
Bellatrix watched him trace another name with his thumb.
"If you stare at that thing much longer, it's going to start staring back."
Regulus did not lift his eyes. "At least it would be quiet."
Her mouth opened, ready with something sharper, but the first group of freed Valyrians had reached the entrance. Their steps slowed as the daylight vanished across their faces.
Bellatrix's attention shifted.
The hesitation spread through the column without anyone giving an order. People pressed closer to family members. A mother pulled her child against her side. Several of the older freedmen stared into the darkness with the guarded recognition of people who had spent their lives hearing stories about things that survived beneath ruined Valyria.
Behind them, the prisoners noticed the fear and gave it their own meaning.
A man near the front of the chained line stopped so suddenly the collar jerked against the woman behind him. His eyes remained fixed on the cavern, breathing shallow now, whatever anger had carried him up the slope turning brittle.
"So this is where—"
His voice failed.
He looked toward Bellatrix, then the silent warriors, then into the dark again.
"You dragged us all the way out here for this."
Bellatrix tilted her head, not quite smiling. "You preferred Bhonash?"
The man's face tightened. He had not asked that. Everyone heard it in the way his mouth moved without finding another shape for the fear.
Regulus finally closed the ledger.
"Keep them moving."
It was directed toward the soldiers, but Bellatrix's eyes slid toward him anyway. Something in her expression sharpened at how easily he ignored the prisoner's panic.
"You could at least pretend he misunderstood."
Regulus passed her without slowing. "He already has."
The prisoner stared after him, uncertainty worsening rather than easing.
Bellatrix lingered just long enough to enjoy that, then stepped closer to the man until the guards beside him shifted their grips on the chain.
Her voice lowered, forcing him to lean despite himself.
"If we meant to bury you, there are shallower holes."
She left him there before his expression settled.
"Bellatrix."
Regulus's voice carried from within the entrance, flat with exhaustion rather than surprise.
She spread her hands toward his back, though he could not see it. "He was blocking the road."
No answer came.
That irritated her more than a reprimand would have.
She swept past the first lantern bearer and disappeared into the cave.
The column followed.
At first, the passage gave them nothing except darkness.
Blue-glass lanterns cast pale circles across damp stone, revealing rough walls and water channels cut beside the road. Hundreds of footsteps multiplied through the cavern, blending with dragged chain and the quiet clink of armor until it sounded as though another procession moved somewhere beneath them, keeping pace out of sight.
The air cooled steadily.
Moisture gathered on the walls and ran down in thin lines, disappearing into the channels at their feet. Somewhere beyond the stone, a deep current moved through the mountain, sometimes close enough that they could hear water pressing through unseen tunnels, then fading until only the column remained.
The farther they descended, the less the cavern resembled something shaped by nature.
The road flattened.
Black arches appeared overhead at regular intervals, each one fitted together without mortar and carved with long-winged dragons whose bodies curved around narrow lines of High Valyrian. Silver metal had been worked into the scales, dulled by age but untouched by rust.
One of the freedmen stopped beneath the first inscription.
The woman behind him nearly collided with his back before catching herself.
His hand rose toward the stone and froze a finger's width from touching it.
"Grandfather?"
The girl beside him tugged at his sleeve, but he did not seem to feel it. His lips moved silently. Recognition crossed his face without understanding following it, and that gap seemed to hurt more than ignorance would have.
"I've seen this."
His voice barely carried.
"Not whole. A piece of it. Morzhar had one in the courtyard, under the basin where the servants washed his cups."
The girl looked from the pillar to him. "What does it say?"
The old man's mouth tightened.
His hand dropped.
"I don't know."
The words left him smaller.
Regulus had stopped several steps ahead. He looked back toward the carving, then the old man, reading the inscription quickly enough that Bellatrix noticed.
She watched him wait.
Not long, but long enough to make the old man understand that the answer was coming from someone who still possessed what had been taken from him.
Regulus's gaze returned to the carved dragons.
"Blood returns beneath the mountain," he said, his voice quieter than before. "'The stone remembers what fire could not consume.'"
The old man stared at him.
For a moment, nothing changed. Then his face folded in a way that seemed to embarrass him. He wiped at his eyes roughly and looked back toward the inscription, anger rising through grief until both lived there together.
"They put it under a basin."
No one answered.
The girl slipped her hand into his.
Bellatrix's fingers had gone still against the handle of her wand. She looked away first, her jaw shifting once as if something unpleasant had caught between her teeth.
"Bring him to the archive later."
The old man turned.
She was already walking again.
His gratitude followed her into the dark without ever becoming words.
Regulus watched her shoulders for several seconds.
She felt it.
Her head turned just enough for one eye to catch him through the fall of her hair.
"Don't."
He said nothing.
"That look. Whatever you're doing with it—stop."
The faintest movement touched his mouth.
Bellatrix's eyes narrowed. "I will throw that book into the river."
Regulus tucked the ledger more securely beneath his arm and continued walking.
Her glare remained on his back before she muttered something vicious enough that the nearest soldier abruptly found the opposite wall interesting.
The passage descended for what felt like hours.
It widened into chambers where underground rivers cut through the stone and narrowed again until the prisoners were forced into two lines. They crossed old bridges, passed sealed doors traced with faint blue runes, and occasionally heard movement through tunnels branching away from the main road.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Once, something enormous shifted somewhere below them, stone grinding against stone with enough weight behind it to silence the entire column.
The freed Valyrians kept moving because the soldiers did.
The prisoners kept moving because the chains did.
Then the darkness began to thin.
A pale blue sheen appeared along the walls. At first it looked like light reflecting from the lanterns, but the glow remained after the soldiers lowered them. Violet veins spread through the rock ahead, followed by green and silver threads that looked like lightning trapped inside the mountain.
Small crystals emerged from cracks in the walls.
They grew larger with every turn.
Some clustered along the road like frozen flowers. Others hung from the ceiling in narrow spears, their inner light moving slowly enough to resemble breath. Drops of luminous water gathered at their tips and fell into the channels below, each one sending a brief ring of color across the surface.
The children forgot to be afraid first.
A boy broke from his mother's side and reached toward a low blue cluster before she caught him by the back of his coat.
His feet left the ground for half a second.
"Have you lost what little sense the gods gave you?"
"It's glowing."
"So is fire."
"It doesn't look hot."
"That is what traps are for."
Bellatrix passed close enough to hear them. Without breaking stride, she dragged two fingers across the crystal.
A fine coat of frost clung to her skin.
The boy stared.
Bellatrix glanced down at him, then at the mother still gripping his coat with both fists.
"Cold."
That was all she gave them.
The child leaned forward again.
His mother hauled him back harder.
Bellatrix's mouth twitched as she continued ahead.
The glow deepened until the lanterns were extinguished entirely. Blue light moved over silver hair and bruised faces. Violet reflected from iron collars. Green caught in wet eyes and turned them strange.
The passage widened.
Sounds reached them from beyond the next curve.
Not echoes.
Life.
Running water. Wheels turning. A bell struck somewhere far below. Voices blurred together beneath the cavern until the mountain itself seemed to be murmuring.
Bellatrix's pace quickened.
Regulus noticed and said nothing. That restraint lasted until she nearly walked into the soldier ahead of her.
"You have seen it before."
She looked over her shoulder, irritation already waiting. "And?"
He adjusted the ledger beneath his arm. "Nothing."
"Then swallow the rest of it."
His eyes shifted briefly toward the freed Valyrians behind them.
Bellatrix followed the glance.
Understanding moved across her face and softened nothing, but the impatience in her stride changed. She turned back toward the bend and kept walking more slowly, allowing the first families to draw closer.
The cavern opened around the curve.
The people behind them stopped.
Not by order.
Their bodies simply refused another step.
The mountain was hollow.
An entire world spread beneath its ceiling, vast enough that the mind struggled to hold its edges. Immense crystals hung above like frozen stars, spilling blue, violet, and silver light across lakes and canals. Waterfalls descended from darkness so high overhead that the streams broke into shining mist before reaching the terraces below.
A city filled the cavern.
Black-stone buildings rose from islands, cliffs, and broad platforms carved into the mountain itself. Their roofs curved upward in layered points shaped like dragon horns and folded wings, dark wood edged with red and gold beneath crystal light. Towers climbed along the cavern walls, joined by narrow bridges passing behind waterfalls or through glowing mineral arches.
At the center stood the palace.
It rose above every surrounding district, level after level ascending toward a cluster of enormous crystals suspended from the ceiling. Blue light traveled through channels cut into its walls. Water poured from its terraces in long shining curtains, feeding the canals below.
Bridges crossed those waterways everywhere.
Some were thin and high, meant for foot traffic. Others were broad enough for wagons, their railings wrapped in carved dragons whose stone bodies curled around lantern posts. Red flames burned between them, the warmth of their reflections mixing with the cold blue of the water.
Boats moved along the canals.
People crossed the bridges.
Market stalls glowed beneath covered streets, and pale trees with glasslike leaves grew in courtyards beside pools of clear water. Crystal gardens filled the spaces between buildings—blue formations rising like branches, violet clusters spilling over balconies, green light glowing beneath dark grass.
Nothing was abandoned.
Nothing was ruined.
The city breathed beneath them.
The chains behind the freed Valyrians settled with one final scrape.
Then there was only silence.
A woman near the front covered her mouth, but the sound escaped anyway, half sob and half breath. Her knees folded beneath her. The bundle in her arms struck the road and spilled clothing across the stone.
Her daughter caught one shoulder and nearly fell with her.
"Mother—"
The woman shook her head violently, tears already sliding between her fingers. She kept looking toward the palace as though someone had placed a hand against the back of her skull and refused to let her turn away.
An older man began whispering a prayer in High Valyrian so broken that half the words belonged to different dialects. Another corrected him once, then lost his own voice and lowered his head.
Children pushed between adults, their fear forgotten beneath wonder. One laughed before noticing no one else was laughing and clapped both hands over his mouth.
The prisoners stared too.
Their anger did not disappear, but it changed shape.
A former master stepped forward until the chain snapped tight against his throat. He barely reacted. His eyes moved over the bridges, boats, towers, crystal gardens, then back toward the passage behind them as though measuring the distance to Bhonash and finding his whole life reduced by it.
"This was—"
His mouth remained open.
The question would not finish.
Bellatrix turned toward him.
For once, she did not smile.
He looked at the freed Valyrians standing between him and the city. Something ugly moved across his face—not merely envy, but injury, as though the existence of this place had insulted him personally.
"All that stone," he whispered. "We dug through ruins until our hands—Morzhar sent men into poisoned tunnels. People died looking for scraps while this…"
He pulled against the chain without noticing.
"You knew."
The accusation found Regulus, then Bellatrix, then the silent soldiers, unable to decide where it belonged.
Bellatrix's expression cooled.
"You sat above a graveyard and called yourself heir to the dead."
The man flinched, but she had not finished. Her eyes moved over his torn hands, the collar around his throat, the clothes taken from someone he once considered beneath him.
"You found broken stones and built a throne out of them. That was enough for you. It had to be, because if something like this still existed, then Bhonash was never the last piece of anything."
His lips drew back.
"You speak as though they built it."
The freed Valyrians nearest him stiffened.
Bellatrix took one step closer.
Regulus caught her arm before the wand came free.
Not hard.
That almost made it worse.
Her head turned slowly toward his hand.
"Move."
Regulus's gaze remained on the prisoner, though his grip did not loosen. "He wants you to."
Bellatrix breathed once through her nose.
The prisoner's anger flickered as he realized he had been seen more clearly than he intended.
Regulus released her.
Bellatrix did not reach for the wand again. She only stared at the man long enough for him to lower his eyes first.
A quiet, humorless laugh left her.
"Better."
She turned away.
At the edge of the overlook, a broad stairway descended toward the nearest bridge. Soldiers had already gathered below, along with healers, workers, and carts carrying water, blankets, and food. The city had known they were coming.
Regulus moved toward the first step.
Behind him, the freed Valyrians remained frozen, caught between the road they had survived and a place too beautiful to trust.
He stopped.
Bellatrix watched his shoulders settle and knew immediately that he was searching for words.
Her arms folded.
"Oh, this should be painful."
Regulus's head tilted slightly.
"Don't let me interrupt."
"You already have."
She leaned closer, voice dropping. "You were about to stand there looking tragic until one of them mistook it for wisdom."
Several nearby soldiers heard her.
None reacted.
Regulus looked toward the old man who had recognized the inscription in the passage. The man stood with his granddaughter's hand in his, eyes red and fixed on the city.
Whatever speech Regulus had been constructing fell apart before it reached his mouth.
He looked away from Bellatrix.
"Those words on the pillar…"
The old man lifted his head.
Regulus's fingers tightened around the ledger. His next breath came slower.
"They were carved for this road. For people returning through it."
The old man stared at the city, then at the clothes on his granddaughter, then down at his own hands.
"Returning," he repeated.
The word sounded wrong in his mouth.
"We've never been here."
"No."
Regulus stepped down once, then stopped again when no one followed.
The old man's face hardened. "Then don't call it returning."
The soldiers nearest them went still.
Bellatrix's eyebrows rose, but she made no sound.
Regulus absorbed the anger without stepping away from it.
The old man's grip tightened around his granddaughter's hand.
"You can't take a people, beat the language out of them, sell their children, make them crawl around broken walls for generations, then open a door and…" His voice broke. He looked down sharply, furious at himself for it. "We don't know this place."
Regulus lowered the ledger.
"No."
The answer came quietly, and nothing followed it for several seconds.
The old man looked at him again.
Regulus glanced toward the city below.
"You don't have to know it tonight."
That was all.
No promise that the pain would end. No declaration that the city belonged to them or that freedom had repaired what Bhonash had done. The road remained beneath their feet. The scars remained on their bodies.
Regulus continued down the stairs.
Bellatrix lingered beside the old man.
She opened her mouth, stopped, then looked toward the granddaughter instead.
The girl was staring at the nearest crystal bridge.
Bellatrix shifted her weight.
"There are kitchens below."
The old man gave her a strange look.
Bellatrix frowned, suddenly irritated by the need to explain herself.
"The bread here is better than what they packed for the road. That hard brown thing Regulus calls food could be used to reinforce walls."
The granddaughter's mouth twitched.
Bellatrix pointed toward the stairs. "And there are baths. Proper ones. Not a bucket beside a dead man's courtyard."
The old man stared at her for another moment.
Some of the anger left his shoulders, though none of the hurt did.
Bellatrix seemed relieved when he looked away.
She started after Regulus, then paused beside the prisoner who had accused them of hiding the city.
He kept his eyes down.
She leaned close enough that her hair brushed his shoulder.
"You should keep that new humility," she murmured. "It suits the collar."
She moved on before Regulus could turn around and catch her.
Behind them, the old man took the first step.
His granddaughter moved with him.
The crying woman gathered her fallen clothes and rose with her daughter's help. Another family followed. Then another.
The freed Valyrians did not descend like people arriving home.
They went slowly, suspiciously, carrying their bundles and one another, stopping whenever the city revealed another impossible detail beneath the mountain.
The prisoners came last.
For once, the chains did not need to pull them forward.
They were too busy staring at everything their old city had never been.
Bellatrix and Regulus did not take them toward the palace.
The road descending from the overlook curved away from the higher districts and carried the procession deeper into the city, crossing three broad canals before opening into a central plaza built around a circular lake of black water. The freed Valyrians moved slowly at first, their attention constantly pulled away from the path by something they had never imagined surviving beneath the mountain.
Lanterns glowed beneath the eaves of black-roofed buildings. Boats slipped through the canals without oars, guided by thin blue lights beneath the water. Pale crystal trees rose from gardens beside the road, their translucent branches chiming softly whenever someone passed close enough to disturb the air.
Every few steps, one of the children stopped.
Every few steps, a parent dragged them forward again.
The prisoners stared just as openly, though they tried to hide it behind anger. Their chains scraped across the polished road, the harsh metallic noise seeming uglier here than it had in the tunnels. People already living within the city paused to watch them pass. Some wore black and silver clothing marked with narrow dragon patterns. Others had pale Valyrian hair, though many did not. Craftsmen stepped away from their shops. Women stood beneath covered walkways with children gathered around their legs. Soldiers in dark scale armor watched from bridges and rooftops without reaching for their weapons.
No one cheered.
No one welcomed the procession.
The city simply looked at what Bhonash had become and allowed the silence to speak for it.
A freed man near the front kept turning his head whenever he caught sight of silver hair among the onlookers. Each time, hope rose too quickly across his face and fell just as fast when the stranger proved not to be whoever he was searching for.
Regulus noticed by the third time.
He slowed until they were walking beside one another, though the man only realized it when Regulus's sleeve brushed his arm.
"You have a name?"
The man flinched at the voice and immediately lowered his eyes.
Regulus's mouth tightened.
Not at him.
At the reflex.
The man swallowed, hands curling near his stomach. "My sister. Maelyra. They sold her when—"
He stopped.
His gaze darted toward the prisoners behind them, where several former masters walked with their faces turned away.
Regulus followed the look.
The man's voice dropped until it nearly disappeared beneath the water.
"She was twelve."
Something changed in Regulus's step. Barely anything, only the heel of his boot landing harder than before, but Bellatrix heard it from several paces ahead.
She looked back.
Regulus had already opened the ledger beneath his arm.
"Maelyra," he repeated, searching the pages. "Family name?"
The man stared at the book as though afraid the answer might already be written there.
"Vaelar. No—Morzhar's clerk changed it after my father died. She might be under…"
His breath caught. He shook his head, fingers pressing against his forehead as years of forced names tangled together.
Regulus stopped walking.
The people behind them slowed, the whole front section of the procession compressing in confusion.
"Take your time."
The words came softly, but the man heard something in them that made his face twist.
"I've had time."
It came out sharper than he intended.
His shoulders pulled inward immediately, waiting for the punishment that should have followed.
None came.
Regulus stood with the ledger open, eyes lowered to the unfinished records rather than the man's shame.
Bellatrix had drifted closer without announcing herself. Her gaze moved from the freedman to the prisoners, lingering on a thin older woman whose face had become suddenly interested in the canal.
Bellatrix's wand slid halfway from her sleeve.
The woman noticed.
Her steps broke.
"That one," Bellatrix said.
The former prisoner's face drained of color. "I don't—"
"You looked away before he finished."
The woman opened her mouth again, but the chain pulled her forward when the prisoners behind failed to stop. She nearly fell, catching herself against the man ahead.
Bellatrix was already beside her.
There had been no visible hurry in the movement. One moment she stood near Regulus; the next her wand rested beneath the woman's jaw, the black wood pressing lightly into the soft skin under her chin.
The red cracks along it glowed.
The woman froze.
Bellatrix's voice remained almost conversational, which made the freed Valyrians nearest them step farther away.
"I dislike repeating myself. It makes my head ache, and when my head aches, other people tend to develop much worse problems."
The prisoner's lips trembled.
Bellatrix watched them.
Something almost playful touched her eyes, but it was not amusement. It was the hungry patience of someone waiting for a lie to be stupid enough to reveal itself.
"Maelyra Vaelar," Regulus said from behind her.
The woman's eyes flicked toward him.
That was enough.
Bellatrix smiled without warmth.
"There she is."
"I never owned—"
The wand pressed harder.
The woman's words collapsed into a thin sound.
Regulus closed the ledger.
"Bellatrix."
She did not move.
His voice came again, quieter this time, the warning buried in the fact that he had not raised it.
Her jaw tightened.
For a moment, it seemed as though she might ignore him simply because he expected her not to.
Then she dragged the wand away.
The prisoner gasped.
Bellatrix caught the chain between two fingers and pulled the woman closer, forcing her to stumble until their faces were nearly level.
"You will remember where the girl went."
The woman shook her head too quickly.
Bellatrix's expression changed.
Not much.
The smile vanished.
"You will."
She released the chain with enough force that it struck the woman's chest.
The prisoners started moving again, dragging her with them before her knees fully recovered.
Regulus had written the woman's name into the margin of the ledger.
The freedman beside him stared at Bellatrix, then Regulus, uncertain whether hope was more dangerous than having none.
Regulus did not offer reassurance he could not guarantee.
"We'll search the records."
The man's lips parted.
Regulus had already continued walking, leaving him with nothing clean enough to thank.
Bellatrix fell into step beside her cousin.
"You spoil everything."
Regulus kept his attention on the road.
"You were about to curse a frightened clerk in the middle of a crowded street."
"She wasn't frightened enough."
"That is usually your solution."
Bellatrix's head turned, dark hair sliding across one cheek. "It works."
Regulus made a small sound that might have been exhaustion or disbelief.
She waited for more.
Nothing came.
Her eyes narrowed at the side of his face.
"I hate when you do that."
He turned a page in the ledger.
She looked ready to knock it from his hands, but the plaza opened ahead before she decided whether the satisfaction would be worth the argument.
At its center stood a statue.
It rose from a circular platform of polished black stone, surrounded by a ring wide enough to hold several hundred people. Twelve shallow channels had been cut through the plaza floor, all radiating outward from the statue like the spokes of a wheel. Blue water moved through them from the surrounding lake, flowed beneath the platform, and disappeared through openings carved with old Valyrian runes.
The statue depicted a robed woman with four arms.
One hand held a dragon egg close to her chest. Another carried a downward-pointed sword. The remaining pair rested open at her sides, palms facing upward as though offering something invisible to the city around her.
Her face had no eyes.
Only a smooth band of black stone where they should have been.
The children stopped whispering.
Even Bellatrix's usual impatience quieted as she approached.
Regulus closed the ledger and handed it to one of the silent soldiers. Artorias moved ahead of the procession and climbed the platform first, his weight producing a dull sound against the stone. He walked around the statue once, checking the channels and the surrounding roofs, then planted his shield near its base.
The signal passed through the guards.
They began guiding everyone into the circle.
Confusion returned almost immediately.
The freed Valyrians hesitated at the edge, glancing between the statue and the glowing runes beneath their feet. The prisoners resisted more openly. Chains pulled taut as several tried to step backward, causing the people behind them to collide.
A former guard from Bhonash stared at the eyeless statue.
"No."
His voice carried farther than he expected.
He dug his heels into the road as the soldier beside him gestured forward.
"No, I know what this is. Some sacrifice, some Valyrian—"
The next words vanished when the soldier seized the chain and pulled once.
The man stumbled into the circle.
Panic spread behind him.
It did not need truth. Only a shape.
Prisoners began talking over one another, their voices climbing, metal rattling as fear traveled through the connected lines. Someone called upon the Red God. Another demanded trial. A woman began crying and swore she had never harmed a slave, though three people ahead of her turned with expressions that said otherwise.
The freed Valyrians were not calmer.
They had simply learned to fear quietly.
A mother pulled her two children behind her, placing her own body between them and the statue. The old man who had recognized the inscription in the tunnel remained outside the circle, his granddaughter gripping his hand while she stared at the water flowing beneath the platform.
Bellatrix climbed onto the base of the statue.
She turned toward the crowd.
"Inside the circle."
No one moved.
Her eyes swept across them.
The irritation came first, easy and familiar. Then she saw the freed Valyrians shrinking away from the soldiers, and something underneath it shifted. Her fingers tightened around the wand hidden in her sleeve, not drawing it, only holding it there as though the shape of it steadied her.
She opened her mouth.
The order nearly came again.
Regulus caught the small movement of her jaw and stepped past her before she could turn fear into obedience.
He entered the circle and stopped near the center.
That earned more attention than shouting would have.
Artorias followed and stood behind him, shield resting against one shoulder.
Several of the black-armored warriors entered next. None looked concerned. One yawned behind her helmet and leaned both hands over the pommel of her greatsword as though waiting for a slow gate to open.
The old man watched them.
Regulus did not beckon.
He simply remained where he was.
The water in the channels moved around his boots, reflecting blue light up the black fabric of his coat.
The granddaughter tugged at her grandfather's hand.
He looked down at her.
She whispered something too soft for anyone else to catch.
His face pinched, grief and fear fighting across it. He looked toward Regulus, then Bellatrix standing above them, then finally at the soldiers who had already stepped inside.
His first step crossed the carved boundary.
The girl went with him.
Others followed slowly.
Not because they trusted the statue.
Because they recognized who had entered before them.
The freed Valyrians gathered close together, families pressing shoulder to shoulder while the soldiers arranged themselves around the outer edge. The prisoners were forced into the remaining space, their chains coiled close to prevent anyone from being dragged across the boundary during whatever came next.
Bellatrix waited until the final person had entered.
Her gaze found Regulus through the crowd.
He gave the smallest nod.
She turned toward the statue.
The dragon egg held against the stone woman's chest was darker than the rest, its surface polished by generations of hands. Bellatrix placed both palms against it and pushed.
Nothing happened.
Her shoulders stiffened.
A few of the prisoners noticed.
A former merchant made the mistake of laughing under his breath.
Bellatrix slowly looked over one shoulder.
The sound died.
She turned back, dug one boot against the base, and shoved harder.
The egg moved with a deep internal click.
The statue's entire upper body rotated.
Only half a turn.
The smooth, eyeless face shifted toward the crowd, and the channels beneath the platform ignited with white-blue light.
Regulus's expression changed.
"Bellatrix—"
The pull came before he finished.
It caught behind the navel.
Not pain exactly, though several people screamed as though their insides had been hooked and yanked through their spines. The plaza stretched upward. The statue blurred. Bodies lifted from the ground without jumping, dragged toward a point that did not exist in any visible direction.
The city vanished.
The freed Valyrians lost one another almost immediately.
Hands slipped.
Someone's bundle tore open, clothing and bread spiraling away before disappearing into the rushing dark. The chained prisoners were spun together, iron snapping tight between bodies as they tumbled through a tunnel of color and sound.
There was no ground.
No sky.
Only crushing speed.
The world twisted them end over end through cold wind that came from everywhere at once. Blue light became violet, then black, then silver lines so thin and bright they seemed to cut across sight itself.
A child screamed for his mother.
She answered, but her voice stretched into something distant and wrong.
The old man tried to hold his granddaughter against his chest. The force pulled her sideways until one of the black-armored soldiers caught the back of her coat and locked an arm around both of them.
The soldier's body turned lazily through the spinning darkness.
She looked bored.
Near them, another warrior crossed his arms while the violent current carried him feet-first through the void. His cloak whipped around his helmet, but his posture suggested he had endured the journey too many times to respect it.
Bellatrix rotated past them with her hair streaming above her like black fire.
She was laughing.
Not because the others were afraid.
Not entirely.
There was something wild in the sensation itself that she had never outgrown, the loss of control lasting just long enough to feel like falling without any promise of impact.
Regulus spun several body lengths away, one hand clamped around the collar of a freed boy who had slipped from his family.
The boy's face had gone pale.
Regulus tried to pull him closer.
The twisting current threw them apart again, leaving the prince with one arm stretched painfully while the child swung from his grip.
"Hold—"
The word broke apart in the rush.
Regulus stopped wasting breath.
He wrapped both hands into the boy's coat and curled his body around him instead.
The darkness compressed.
Everything snapped back into existence at once.
Bodies struck stone.
The arrival came without grace. Freed Valyrians, prisoners, supplies, and armored soldiers spilled across a wide circular platform beneath an open sky. People crashed into one another, rolled across the ground, or remained on their knees as their bodies continued to believe they were spinning.
The chained prisoners fared worst.
One line arrived tangled into a knot of limbs and iron. A man struck face-first and came up bleeding from the nose. Another vomited before he managed to sit upright, earning a furious curse from the woman beside him until she turned and did the same.
The accustomed soldiers landed on their feet.
Mostly.
One appeared seated against the edge of the platform, elbows resting on his knees, as though he had chosen to arrive that way. Another steadied his greatsword, checked the edge for damage, and looked toward the pile of groaning prisoners with complete disinterest.
Bellatrix struck the ground on one knee.
Her palm slapped against the stone.
She lifted her head slowly, breathless laughter escaping between clenched teeth while her hair fell across her face.
Regulus arrived several paces away with the boy still locked against his chest. The force carried them both onto their sides, but he absorbed the impact and rolled before the child's head could strike the ground.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then the boy began sobbing.
Not loudly.
The sound came in short, trapped breaths against Regulus's coat.
Regulus loosened his grip at once.
The child clung tighter.
He looked down, caught somewhere between discomfort and something softer he did not know how to show while Bellatrix could see him.
She had already seen.
Her laughter faded.
Regulus looked toward her.
Whatever she might have said disappeared before it reached her mouth. She pushed herself upright and turned away, pretending to study their surroundings while giving him time to separate from the child without an audience.
The mother arrived moments later, staggering across the platform with blood on one knee.
She dropped beside them and dragged her son against her chest so hard that he cried out.
Her hands moved over his head, shoulders, arms, checking every part of him while words tumbled out in broken fragments.
"I had you—I swear, I had—your hand, you were—"
The child buried his face against her.
Regulus sat back on one heel.
The woman looked at him.
Gratitude, humiliation, terror, and the leftover instinct to lower her gaze all crossed her face too quickly to separate.
Regulus stood before she had to choose one.
Behind them, the platform's central statue rotated back into place.
It was identical to the one beneath the mountain, though this version held a crescent moon rather than a dragon egg.
The light faded from the circle.
Silence spread gradually as people began looking beyond it.
The sky was night.
Not the deep darkness of a moonless evening, nor the fading blue that came before dawn. It was a vast, clear black-blue canopy crowded with more stars than most of them had ever seen. Constellations burned sharply overhead, untouched by cloud or haze, while a pale moon hung low above distant mountains.
The strange part was not that night had fallen during the journey.
The strange part was the stillness of it.
There was no hint of sunrise at the horizon. No greying edge. No warmth waiting beneath the dark.
The night felt permanent.
Below the platform, a different city stretched around a vast lake.
Black-roofed houses climbed along forested hills, their windows glowing amber beneath ancient trees heavy with purple blossoms. Branches drooped over the water, scattering petals across the surface while faint blue lights drifted between them like slow-moving stars.
Bridges arched over rivers and narrow falls. Some crossed open water toward islands covered in gardens and pavilions. Others wound along cliff edges where waterfalls poured into mist-filled depths, the sound steady and soft beneath the night.
At the far side of the lake, a many-tiered palace rose through the flowering trees.
Its roofs stacked upward among the branches, lanterns burning along every terrace. The uppermost level stood beneath the stars, half-hidden by blossoms and silver mist.
Thin lines of violet light moved across the lake.
Not reflections.
They drifted beneath the surface, meeting and separating like living constellations. Small boats glided among them, carrying lanterns beneath curved roofs. Along the shoreline, figures moved through markets, gardens, and covered walkways as though eternal night were the most ordinary thing in the world.
The freed Valyrians stared.
Again.
But this wonder felt different from the city beneath the mountain.
That place had been immense, carved through crystal and black stone, alive with hidden industry and old power.
This place was quieter.
Softer.
Beautiful in a way that did not crush the breath so much as steal it gently.
The woman holding her son looked up at the stars.
Her grip loosened without her noticing.
A purple petal drifted across the platform and landed in the boy's hair.
He reached up and caught it.
One of the prisoners struggled to his feet, still pale from the Portkey. He looked from the moon to the distant palace, then back toward the statue behind them as though he might run through it and return to the simpler horror of Bhonash.
"The sun…"
His voice was raw.
No one answered him.
He turned in place, searching every horizon for a trace of dawn.
There was none.
Bellatrix finally pushed the last of her hair from her face.
The wild enjoyment from the journey had faded into something almost peaceful as she looked over the lake.
She breathed in slowly.
The night air carried water, flowers, woodsmoke, and a cold sweetness that did not exist beneath the mountain.
Regulus came to stand beside her.
For once, neither cousin seemed eager to ruin the silence.
Behind them, the newcomers continued rising from the platform, frightened, sick, bruised, and unable to look away.
The stars remained exactly where they were.
A dozen more Abyss Watchers arrived before the last of the newcomers had recovered from the Portkey journey.
They emerged from the lantern-lit streets surrounding the circular platform in small groups, their dark armor swallowing most of the violet light drifting across the lake while ragged cloaks brushed against the stone behind them. None drew their weapons or shouted for the crowd to remain still. They did not need to. Within moments, they had taken control of every stairway, bridge, and path leading away from the platform, forming a loose perimeter so naturally that several of the former citizens of Bhonash did not realize they had been surrounded until they tried to move.
The freed Valyrians noticed the greatswords resting against armored shoulders and instinctively pulled their children closer. The prisoners noticed how the Watchers positioned themselves between the two groups, and the chains linking them together tightened as men and women crowded inward, suddenly afraid that the strange city beneath the eternal night had merely been another stage in their execution.
One of the former overseers struggled onto his knees, blood still running from the nostril he had broken during the landing. "You can't keep dragging us from one cursed place to another without—" he began, anger giving his voice strength until an Abyss Watcher stopped beside him and silently looked down.
The overseer's protest withered beneath the narrow darkness of the helmet.
The Watcher said nothing. He merely reached down, caught the iron chain between the prisoner's wrists, and checked that the lock remained secure before moving on as though the man had never spoken.
Nearby, healers approached the freed families with bowls of water, blankets, and leather cases filled with salves. They moved carefully, never reaching for anyone without warning. When a silver-haired woman recoiled from them and wrapped both arms around her young son, one healer lowered the water to the stone between them and backed away, allowing the woman to decide for herself whether it was safe.
Bellatrix watched from the edge of the platform.
The sharp amusement that usually lived near the corners of her mouth had disappeared. Her eyes remained fixed on the woman's hands as they trembled against the child's hair, and for a moment she seemed almost offended by the fear—not at the woman, but at the thought that someone had trained another human being to flinch from kindness.
Regulus noticed the change in his cousin's face and wisely kept his thoughts to himself. He shifted the heavy ledger beneath his arm, glanced once toward the newly arrived Watchers, and began descending the wide stairs leading away from the platform.
Bellatrix felt him leave after only a few steps. "You could have waited instead of slipping away like an old widow avoiding conversation," she muttered as she hurried after him, her skirts whispering over the glowing stone while she cast one final look toward the mother and child.
"You looked occupied," Regulus said without turning, though the slight tilt of his head made it clear that he had seen far more than she wanted him to.
Bellatrix's pace hardened beside him. "I was looking at something. People do that without needing your face to become unbearable."
Regulus adjusted the ledger against his ribs, hiding the faint movement at the corner of his mouth. "I didn't say anything."
"That has never stopped you from being irritating," Bellatrix said as she bumped her shoulder against his, though the contact carried more familiarity than force.
They left the new arrivals in the care of the Abyss Watchers and followed the road climbing toward the city's highest district.
The journey took nearly half an hour, though judging time beneath the eternal night required either discipline or a clock, and Bellatrix possessed little patience for either. The sky never brightened. The moon remained suspended above the distant mountains, pale and enormous, while stars burned over the city with the same cold intensity they had held when the cousins first arrived.
The people who lived there no longer depended upon the heavens to govern their days. Enchanted bells marked the changing hours, and lanterns hanging beneath the curved black roofs dimmed or brightened according to carefully maintained schedules. Bakers worked while portions of the city slept. Children returned home when their parents decided enough time had passed rather than when darkness fell. Markets changed hands beneath the same unmoving stars, and the idea of morning had become more ritual than reality.
Bellatrix had never adjusted properly.
She had once slept through two entire work rotations and later insisted that she could not be considered late because the moon had failed to move. Regulus had found her beneath a flowering tree with three empty plates around her and an irritated raven pecking at her boot.
He still mentioned it whenever she complained about his schedules.
Their path curved along the upper shore of the lake, passing beneath ancient trees whose branches drooped beneath heavy purple blossoms. Petals drifted steadily through the air and collected along the dark water, where lines of violet light moved beneath the surface like slow, living constellations. Narrow boats glided between stone bridges, their lanterns casting warm reflections across the lake while fish large enough to carry children moved silently beneath them.
Bellatrix abandoned the road whenever she saw a faster route. She cut through gardens, climbed low walls, and crossed narrow stone barriers that had clearly never been intended as walkways. Regulus tolerated this until she vaulted a canal rather than use the bridge ten paces away.
He stopped at the edge and watched her land on the opposite bank.
Bellatrix turned and began walking backward, her eyebrows rising when she saw that he had not followed. "You're going to die old and disappointed if you insist on taking every path the way it was designed," she said, spreading her hands as though his refusal to jump were proof of a personal defect.
Regulus glanced at the bridge and then back at her. "I'll try to live with the shame," he said as he crossed by the proper route, taking his time solely because he knew it would irritate her.
Bellatrix waited with both hands planted on her hips. Her expression became more offended with every measured step he took. "That took longer," she said when he finally reached her, falling into pace beside him and glaring at the calm line of his profile.
"Several unbearable seconds," Regulus murmured as he brushed a purple petal from his sleeve.
"Seconds become minutes. Minutes become years. Then one day everyone is standing around your grave wondering why you wasted your life walking over bridges," Bellatrix said as she leaned closer, searching his face for some sign that she had succeeded in annoying him.
Regulus finally looked at her. A blossom had caught in her dark hair above one ear, and without thinking, he reached across and pulled it free.
Bellatrix stopped.
The movement had been too gentle and too natural for her to mock immediately. Her eyes dropped to the flower between his fingers, then slowly rose to meet his. Something unguarded passed across her face before she could bury it beneath suspicion.
Regulus seemed to realize what he had done only after the silence stretched between them. He released the petal and watched it drift toward the path before continuing up the hill.
Bellatrix remained behind for half a breath. "You do strange things and then walk away before anyone can accuse you of having feelings," she said as she followed, her voice sharper than the expression he had caught on her face.
"You shove people whenever you have them," Regulus replied, refusing to look back.
"That is completely different."
Their father's residence stood at the highest point above the lake, half-hidden beneath enormous flowering trees and thick black vines that had been trained to grow around the architecture rather than cut away. Calling it a house had always felt ridiculous. The sprawling mansion contained several connected wings, enclosed gardens, covered bridges, towers, libraries, and enough unused bedrooms to house a minor noble court.
Its foundation had been built from polished black stone, while the upper walls were made from dark red timber reinforced by thin bands of Valyrian steel. Dragons curled around the pillars and roof beams, but they were not the only creatures carved into the structure. Crows spread their wings beside wolves. Serpents wound through spider lilies. Crescent moons framed beasts neither cousin had ever seen outside the strange books their father kept locked in his private archive.
The front doors opened before Bellatrix could touch them, recognizing the magic of the two people who had grown up within the mansion.
Warm air washed over them, carrying the layered scents of incense, old parchment, heated metal, strange herbs, and whatever their father had last burned in the lower workshop.
The entrance hall was filled with Valyrian decoration, though nothing about it felt orderly enough to resemble the stiff displays favored by noble families. Ancient tapestries hung beside paintings of cities that did not exist on any known map. Dragon skulls sat above cabinets filled with potion bottles and pieces of forgotten machinery. A black marble statue of a three-faced woman occupied one alcove, surrounded by candles that burned without melting, while a silver mask stained with black tears rested beneath glass on the opposite wall.
Bellatrix passed all of it without giving the objects a glance.
She had lived among impossibilities for too long to find them remarkable.
An elderly servant crossed the far end of the hall carrying folded linen. The woman stopped when she saw the cousins, relief loosening the deep lines around her eyes before she quickly lowered her head and continued walking.
Bellatrix noticed.
Her stride softened, and she gave the servant a small nod before turning toward the corridor leading deeper into the mansion.
Regulus watched the exchange. "She was worried," he said as he followed.
"She worries when I'm ten minutes late for supper," Bellatrix muttered, keeping her face turned away.
"She has known you long enough to understand that ten minutes can become a burning village."
Bellatrix glanced over her shoulder, deeply offended. "One village."
"Two."
"The second was already burning."
Regulus opened the door at the rear of the hall and waited for her to pass. "That was your defense the first time."
The mansion grew quieter as they moved toward the private lower levels. Warm wooden floors became polished black stone threaded with dim violet veins, while the scent of incense gave way to cold air, minerals, alchemical smoke, and damp earth.
At the end of the final corridor stood an enormous painting of a forest beneath a moonless sky.
Ancient trees crowded the canvas, their twisted branches forming an arch over a narrow path leading into darkness. Silver lights drifted between the painted trunks, and if someone remained still long enough, the lights seemed to move closer to the surface.
Bellatrix walked directly into the painting.
The canvas rippled around her like disturbed water, swallowing her body before smoothing itself behind her. Regulus followed, feeling the cold brush of magic across his face and hands as the false forest opened to admit him.
They emerged at the top of a spiral staircase descending through a deep stone shaft.
Shelves lined the curved walls, filled with glowing jars, dried herbs, labeled bones, and preserved creatures that turned slowly within cloudy liquids. Narrow pipes followed the staircase downward, carrying water, alchemical coolant, and substances Regulus had learned not to identify unless absolutely necessary.
He placed one hand on the inner railing and began taking the steps at a steady pace.
Bellatrix stared into the open center of the staircase.
Regulus saw her shift toward the outer rail. "Don't," he said as he stopped two steps below her, already hearing the inevitable scrape of her boot against the polished metal.
Bellatrix climbed onto the railing and crouched with the delighted concentration of a child preparing to do something forbidden. "You always sound so miserable before I enjoy myself," she said as she pushed off.
Her laughter spiraled down the stairwell ahead of her while she slid along the rail, hair streaming behind her and one hand dragging lightly against the wall to control her speed.
"Father told you to stop doing that," Regulus called as he leaned over the center, watching her disappear around the first curve.
"He told me not to do it while carrying volatile potions," Bellatrix shouted back.
Regulus stopped walking. "Are you carrying volatile potions?"
A brief silence answered him.
Then came the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.
A green flash illuminated the lower stairwell.
Regulus closed his eyes and pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose. "Bellatrix."
"I'm alive," her voice echoed upward, far too cheerful to be reassuring.
"That was not the concern."
"It should have been."
When Regulus reached the bottom, Bellatrix was leaning against the wall with her arms folded, attempting to look as though she had been waiting there peacefully for several minutes. A brass tray lay overturned near her feet, and the broken remains of several glass vials smoked against the opposite wall.
Regulus looked from the shards to his cousin.
Bellatrix followed his gaze and nudged one broken vial with the toe of her boot. A thin strand of green vapor rose from it, briefly forming a tiny screaming face before dissolving into the air.
"They were old," she said as she straightened, refusing to look ashamed.
Regulus stepped carefully over the glass. "You're cleaning that."
Bellatrix fell into step behind him. "You sound like Father."
"That might concern me if you listened to either of us."
"I listen perfectly well," Bellatrix said as she moved beside him, her expression offended by the accusation. "Obedience is where our relationship becomes complicated."
The corridor beneath the staircase stretched farther below the mansion, illuminated by pale crystal lamps set into the ceiling. Pipes ran along both walls beside narrow channels carrying water and magical coolant. A low pulse traveled through the floor at steady intervals, too deep and organic to belong to machinery.
A heartbeat.
The sound became stronger as they approached the laboratory.
Bellatrix's posture changed before the door came into view. The restless movement in her fingers stopped. Her shoulders loosened, and the sharp, performative confidence she carried through the city quietly fell away.
Regulus noticed the transformation and did not embarrass her by mentioning it.
The laboratory door was made from dark metal covered in overlapping rings of runes. It recognized them as they approached. Locks withdrew from within the frame one after another, each releasing with a heavy mechanical click before the door slowly opened.
The chamber beyond had been constructed beneath the lake.
One entire wall was made from reinforced glass, stretching from the black floor to the high arched ceiling. Deep water pressed against the other side, illuminated by drifting crystals and the distant glow of the city above. Schools of silver fish flowed past in shifting clouds. Several sharks glided through the shadows, their bodies appearing and disappearing as they turned. Farther out, a giant squid unfolded from the darkness and drifted near the glass, one pale eye briefly fixing upon the cousins before its skin darkened to match the surrounding water.
Alchemy equipment occupied nearly every remaining space.
Long worktables were buried beneath glass tubes, rune-carved plates, surgical tools, open journals, mineral samples, and pieces of creatures that had no business existing separately from their bodies. Cauldrons simmered above smokeless flames. Large cylinders filled with luminous fluid contained unfinished experiments: a scaled arm threaded with silver nerves, an enormous heart beating once every few seconds, an eye grown around a dark crystal, and several tiny dragon-like embryos curled within translucent shells.
At the center of the chamber grew a tree that should not have been capable of surviving.
Half its trunk was pale and smooth, bearing the mournful carved face of a Northern heart tree. Red sap flowed from beneath its closed eyes like tears. The other half twisted into glossy blue-black wood, its branches carrying the dark leaves of the Shade of the Evening.
The two species had not merely been grafted together. They had fused.
Pale roots and black roots intertwined beneath the transparent portions of the floor, disappearing into alchemical channels and tanks around the room. Red leaves grew beside ink-blue ones, and every few moments the carved face drew a shallow breath, disturbing the trails of sap along its cheeks.
Bellatrix barely looked at it.
Her attention had already moved toward the far corner, where a polished black coffin rested between two overflowing bookcases.
Silver carvings covered its sides: crescent moons, sleeping dragons, crows, and fields of spider lilies. Several pillows had been stuffed inside, ruining any claim that the object was intended for burial, while a thick dark blanket hung untidily over one edge.
Jeanyx Targaryen possessed more than a dozen beds throughout the mansion.
He preferred the coffin.
He had once explained that sleeping within it made him feel like a vampire, a creature neither Bellatrix nor Regulus had heard of before meeting him. His description of immortal blood-drinkers had fascinated Bellatrix until he admitted that most of them spent centuries obsessing over doomed romances and making terrible decisions.
Regulus had asked why he wished to resemble one.
Jinx had answered that the theatrical entrance outweighed every inconvenience.
Bellatrix crossed the laboratory with a softness that would have startled anyone who knew her only from the battlefield. She slowed beside the coffin and raised her knuckles, tapping gently against the closed lid.
"Father, we're back," Bellatrix said, and the tenderness in her voice bore almost no resemblance to the woman who had laughed while Bhonash's gate exploded beneath her spell.
Nothing moved.
Her hand remained against the lid.
The silence stretched for several seconds.
Regulus placed the heavy ledger on a nearby table, and as he turned back, he noticed the tension gathering around Bellatrix's mouth.
She tapped again, more quietly. "Father," she said, the single word losing its confidence as she leaned closer to the coffin.
The lid flew open.
Black mist spilled over the sides as Jinx sat upright with both hands folded over his stomach, his back perfectly straight and his long black-and-white hair spread around his shoulders like the mane of some newly awakened corpse.
Bellatrix recoiled half a step and nearly drew her wand.
Regulus remained still, though one of his eyelids twitched.
Jinx held the ridiculous position for a breath before slowly opening his violet eyes.
Only two other Targaryens had possessed that precise shade since the Doom—Daemon and Visenya—and even after years of seeing it, the color remained striking enough to seem unnatural within the dim laboratory.
His gaze settled on Bellatrix first.
The faint fear she had failed to conceal vanished beneath irritation as soon as she saw him awake, but Jinx had already noticed it.
"Oh, my darling girl," Jinx said as his expression softened, all traces of theatrical menace leaving his face while he reached toward her.
"You took too long," Bellatrix muttered as she pushed her wand back into her sleeve, though she stepped closer before he had fully extended his hand.
"I was sleeping, sweetheart," Jinx said as he cupped her face between his palms and gently turned her toward the laboratory light, checking the skin near her eyes and hairline for hidden injuries.
"You sleep like someone murdered you and hid the body badly," Bellatrix said, rolling her eyes while allowing him to examine her.
"That is the entire purpose of the coffin," Jinx replied as he brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek.
The joke faded from his expression when Bellatrix's mouth tightened. Something about the word murdered had touched too closely against the fear she had felt during those few silent seconds.
Jinx's thumb passed gently beneath her eye.
He did not tease her again.
His gaze moved past her and settled upon Regulus, who remained beside the worktable with one hand resting on the ledger.
"And there is my beautiful boy pretending the book is more interesting than his father," Jinx said as he extended one arm toward him, the warm, almost motherly cadence he used with his children wrapping around the words.
Regulus's shoulders lowered in quiet resignation. He glanced at the ledger, then toward the open laboratory door, briefly considering both as possible escapes.
Bellatrix twisted her head within Jinx's hands and looked at him. "Don't stand there making it uncomfortable. He's going to hug you whether you cooperate or not," she said, an amused edge returning to her voice now that her father was awake and solid beneath her hands.
Regulus gave her a flat look. "You're currently having your face inspected like damaged merchandise."
"And I am enduring it with dignity."
Jinx caught Regulus by the sleeve when he finally came close enough and pulled both cousins against his chest.
Bellatrix folded into the embrace without hesitation, resting her cheek against her father's shoulder while Jinx wrapped one arm securely around her back. Regulus remained stiff for the first few seconds, the habits of composure and responsibility resisting even here, before his forehead quietly lowered against Jinx's other shoulder.
Jinx held them both tighter.
His hands moved over their backs, shoulders, and hair, affection blending seamlessly with the careful inspection of a parent searching for blood, swelling, or hidden pain.
"I heard about Bhonash," Jinx said softly, his hand pausing against the back of Bellatrix's head as her fingers tightened in the fabric of his robe. "The gate, the market, the slave pens—and apparently Artorias has decided doors are no longer deserving of mercy."
"He broke what was placed in front of him," Regulus said as he began to pull away, his attention already shifting toward the ledger because facts were easier to handle than the relief of being home.
Jinx's hand slid down and caught his wrist.
Regulus stopped.
A dark bruise circled the joint where the Portkey had strained it while he held the freed child during transport.
Jinx's violet eyes narrowed slightly as his thumb brushed the edge of the discoloration. "You were going to stand there giving me casualty numbers while hiding this beneath a book," Jinx murmured, studying his son's face rather than the injury.
"It's only a strain," Regulus said as he tried to turn his wrist away, embarrassment sharpening his voice more than pain did.
Bellatrix looked down, saw the bruise, and immediately stepped closer. "I told you the Portkey pulled too hard," she said as anger rushed through her expression, though it was the frightened anger of someone who had already imagined a worse injury.
"It pulled everyone," Regulus replied, shifting the ledger with his free hand as though the book might somehow shield him from the attention of both his father and cousin.
"You couldn't hold the cup properly after we landed," Bellatrix said, her voice rising before she caught herself and pressed her lips together.
"I was holding a child when we landed."
"That doesn't make your wrist less injured," Bellatrix snapped as she looked away, the muscles in her jaw tightening because his refusal to acknowledge pain felt too much like him refusing to acknowledge how close she had come to losing sight of him during the transport.
Jinx loosened his grip without releasing him. "Let me see it, darling," he said, his voice quiet enough that the request carried more weight than an order.
"It doesn't hurt," Regulus muttered.
Bellatrix turned back sharply. "That wasn't what he said," she replied as she stared at the closest thing she had to a brother, anger flashing in her eyes because fear was still too difficult to show plainly.
The three of them went silent.
Regulus looked at her properly then. The irritation in his face faded when he saw how tightly she was holding herself.
He stopped resisting.
Jinx gently rotated his wrist, fingers pressing around the joint with practiced care while the slow heartbeat beneath the laboratory floor continued around them.
"Nothing torn," Jinx said after a moment, relief softening his voice as he rubbed his thumb across the bruise. "You'll keep it wrapped until tomorrow, and before you make that face at me, I am informing you rather than asking."
Regulus's mouth tightened, but he nodded.
Bellatrix's shoulder brushed against his. She did not move away or mention the injury again, as though her earlier anger had never escaped.
Jinx climbed out of the coffin, barefoot and dressed in a loose black robe that had become wrinkled during sleep. His long hair fell around his shoulders as he pulled both cousins close again and kissed Bellatrix's forehead.
She accepted the affection without complaint.
When he did the same to Regulus, the boy's face tightened with mild embarrassment.
Jinx noticed and kissed his forehead a second time.
"Father," Regulus said as he tried to lean away, though the lack of true resistance made Bellatrix laugh into her hand.
"My children returned from their first conquest alive," Jinx said as he held the back of Regulus's neck and kept him near. "You can endure being loved for another few seconds without collapsing."
Regulus surrendered with a quiet exhale.
Bellatrix rested one hip against the coffin while Regulus retrieved the ledger. He carried it back with both hands and placed it beside their father, opening the worn cover to the marked pages.
"Bhonash fell more easily than we projected," Regulus said as he ran one finger down the recorded figures, though the disgust tightening his mouth revealed that he took no pride in how poorly the enemy had prepared. "Morzhar doubled the gate watch, ordered every raven in the city killed, and then behaved as though that solved the warning. He never moved the slaves somewhere defensible. He never armed the citizens properly. By the time Artorias entered the market, Morzhar was trying to use chained families as a shield."
Bellatrix's fingers curled against the edge of the coffin. "They laughed at Sanzuwu," she said as she stared through the great glass window, watching a shark pass through the blue darkness beyond it. "He landed on their wall, gave them a choice, and they laughed as if a talking raven had come all that way to entertain them."
Jinx watched the anger move across her face. "I imagine Sanzuwu took that personally," he said, though the faint amusement in his tone disappeared when Bellatrix did not smile.
"He did," Bellatrix said as her gaze dropped toward the floor. "So did I."
Regulus turned another page. "The flock marked most of the Valyrians before the assault began. We lost fewer than expected," he said, but the word fewer sounded empty as soon as it left him.
Bellatrix repeated it under her breath. "Fewer."
Jinx's face became very still.
Regulus continued because stopping would have made the truth heavier. "We recovered the population records, trade routes, correspondence, and the remaining sale ledgers. Some of the Valyrians were sent east. Others were transferred through Mantarys or sold under new names. Entire families disappear between pages because Morzhar's clerks stopped recording them once the buyers crossed the city boundary."
His voice slowed.
His thumb remained pressed against the paper.
Jinx stepped closer to him. "How many are missing?" he asked, though his eyes remained on Regulus's face rather than the ledger.
The exact number was written beneath his hand.
Regulus had counted it repeatedly during the journey, separating the confirmed dead from those who might still be alive, and the children from those whose ages had been deliberately altered in the records.
He closed the book.
"Enough," Regulus said, his jaw tightening as he looked away from his father.
Jinx did not force him to turn back.
Bellatrix traced one of the silver crescents carved into the coffin with her thumbnail. "There was an old man in the tunnel," she said after the silence had grown uncomfortable, her voice quieter now. "He recognized part of the inscription on one of the pillars, but he couldn't read it. Morzhar had placed another piece of the same stone beneath a basin where servants washed his cups."
Her nail caught against the carving.
She pressed harder.
"He looked at Regulus like he was ashamed to need someone else to read his own language."
Jinx closed his eyes for a brief moment.
Bellatrix pushed away from the coffin and took two restless steps toward the tree. "Then we brought them into the city, and they stared at every soldier like we were waiting for the right moment to chain them again," she said as frustration began to roughen her voice. "One woman thought the cave was where we meant to bury them. Another kept asking whether she had to return the cloak we gave her."
Regulus remained near the ledger, silent because he knew she was no longer speaking about the logistics of Bhonash.
Bellatrix turned toward Jinx, anger brightening her eyes as something more vulnerable struggled beneath it. "We killed the people holding the chains. We fed them, clothed them, brought them somewhere safe, and they still—"
Her voice caught.
She stopped before the sentence could expose too much.
Jinx crossed the room slowly and stood beside her rather than directly in front, leaving enough space that she did not feel cornered.
"They were still afraid of you," Jinx said gently.
Bellatrix flinched at the bluntness. "We didn't hurt them," she replied, her eyes narrowing as though she wanted him to take the words back.
"No, sweetheart, you didn't," Jinx said as he studied his daughter's face, seeing the anger she used to protect herself from the possibility that good intentions had not been enough.
"Then why did they look at us like that?" Bellatrix asked, the question breaking halfway through as she looked down at her wand hand. "Why did they keep pulling their children away whenever one of our soldiers came close?"
Jinx lifted one hand and paused before touching her, allowing her the chance to refuse. When she remained still, he rested his palm between her shoulders.
"Because the last people who carried weapons told them those weapons were for their protection too," Jinx said as he looked toward the strange fused tree at the center of the laboratory. "They watched Bhonash burn. They saw men die. Then the same army that cut through their masters announced that they were free. The words may be true, Bellatrix, but their bodies have learned not to trust words."
Her shoulders remained rigid beneath his hand.
"They should hate Morzhar," Bellatrix muttered.
"Many of them will."
"And the others?"
Jinx's thumb moved slowly against the fabric of her dress. "The others may hate everyone who has power over them for a while," he said, letting the answer remain as uncomfortable as the truth required.
Bellatrix looked toward him. "That includes us."
"It might."
Her face tightened, and for a moment she looked much younger than the woman who had torn open Bhonash's gate.
Jinx drew her carefully against his side. "Let them," he said as he rested his cheek against the top of her head.
Bellatrix stared at the black wand still half-hidden in her sleeve. "We saved them," she whispered, and beneath the anger lived the frightened need for that act to mean something simple and good.
"You did," Jinx said as he held her more firmly. "But freedom that demands gratitude is only another collar. They do not owe you trust before they have learned what you do when they are too frightened to give it."
Regulus lowered his eyes toward the closed ledger.
Bellatrix swallowed and slowly allowed her weight to settle against her father.
"My hands aren't exactly empty," she said as she looked down at the wand.
Jinx followed her gaze. "No," he replied, and the warmth in his voice did not soften the honesty. "That is why they will remember every time you choose not to use what is in them."
Bellatrix remained silent.
Regulus shifted closer until his shoulder touched hers. The movement appeared accidental enough to preserve her dignity, though neither of them believed it was.
Jinx looked at both children standing beside him, bruised, exhausted, and still trying to understand what their victory had done to them.
"You did well," Jinx said as pride and relief deepened his voice, his gaze moving from Regulus to Bellatrix. "Not perfectly. Not cleanly. Nothing worth doing ever is. But you brought them home alive, and you came back to me."
The praise struck Bellatrix before she could defend herself from it. Her mouth trembled once, almost invisibly, before she pressed her forehead against his chest.
Regulus remained upright for another second, one hand still resting on the ledger, until Jinx caught the back of his neck and drew him into the embrace.
This time, he did not resist.
The laboratory quieted around them.
Water moved beyond the glass as sharks passed through the deep blue darkness. The fused heart tree and Shade of the Evening gave another slow pulse beneath the floor, its red and black leaves shifting without any wind.
Somewhere within the mansion's pipes, Sanzuwu released a distant caw.
"Proud too."
Bellatrix's shoulders shook against Jinx as a reluctant laugh escaped her.
Regulus lowered his head to hide his own expression.
Jinx smiled and held them both tighter while the ledger remained closed beside the coffin, its pages filled with names that would lead them toward Mantarys.