The conviction in Kaelan's voice was a seismic shock, reverberating through the grimy, oil-stained air of the garage. You are all I have left to lose. It was not a declaration of love or even affection. It was a statement of strategic, absolute value. She had become the central, irreplaceable asset in his shattered existence. The weight of it was heavier than any lock or ward.
His grip on her wrist loosened, his strength fading again as the pain and exhaustion pulled him back under. His eyes fluttered shut, his breathing deepening into the ragged rhythm of unconsciousness. Elara remained kneeling, her hand still poised with the needle, his blood a dark, drying stain on her fingers. She looked at his face, now slack and pale in the dim light, the fierce storm quieted. This was the most vulnerable she had ever seen him. The Wraith was gone. The weapon was sheathed. Only the wounded man remained.
She finished stitching the wound, her movements now steadier, her purpose clear. She cleaned the angry, black-tinged gashes as best she could, wrapping his shoulder and torso in clean, white gauze that stood in stark contrast to the landscape of old scars. When she was done, she sat back on her heels, physically and emotionally spent.
A shadow fell over her. Cyrus stood nearby, holding two chipped mugs of steaming, black coffee. He handed one to her. "Drink. You look like death."
She took the mug, the heat a welcome anchor in her cold hands. "Thank you. For letting us in."
Cyrus grunted, taking a sip from his own mug. He nodded toward Kaelan. "He and I have an understanding. I fix things he can't take to a Conclave-approved shop. He looks the other way when my… acquisitions… cross certain lines." His milky eye seemed to stare into the middle distance. "Never thought I'd see the day he'd be the one needing fixing while on the run from them."
Elara sipped the coffee. It was bitter and strong. "What happens now?"
"Now?" Cyrus let out a short, humorless laugh. "Now you wait for him to not die. Then you figure out your next move. Which, from the look of things, will be a real short conversation followed by a real short life." He fixed his good eye on her. "The Magus doesn't send three Feral Wraiths as a warning. That was an extermination squad. You surviving means you're a bigger problem than he thought. He'll escalate."
The blunt assessment should have terrified her. Instead, it felt like a cold splash of water, shocking her out of her stupor. She looked around the garage, at the strange, hybrid machinery, the crystalline components woven into engine blocks. "What is this place? Who are you?"
"This," Cyrus said, gesturing with his mug, "is Stygian Ironworks. Officially, it doesn't exist. Unofficially, it's a pit stop for things and people that have fallen out of favor with the hidden powers. And me? I'm just a mechanic who knows which end of a soul-crystal is up." He studied her. "Rhys said you were a Relic. Last of the Vayne line."
The name again. "You know Rhys?"
"Everyone in the underworld knows Rhys. Or knows of him. He's the ghost that haunts the Conclave's halls. The one who got away." Cyrus's gaze was sharp. "He also said you were the key to breaking Kaelan's curse."
Elara went very still. "He told you that?"
"He tells me lots of things. I'm a good listener. And I don't work for the Conclave." Cyrus set his mug down with a definitive click. "The question is, girl, what are you? A victim? A weapon? Or are you actually the key?"
Before she could form an answer, a soft chime echoed through the garage, different from the one in the refuge. Cyrus frowned. "Back door." He moved to a monitor mounted on the wall, flicking it on. The screen showed a rain-slicked alley view, similar to the one they had come from. A figure stood there, hooded against the downpour, hands held visible.
"It's Rhys," Cyrus said, his tone unreadable. He pressed a button. "Come on in. The party's just getting started."
A few moments later, a side door opened, and Rhys stepped into the garage, shaking the rain from his coat. His sharp, blue eyes took in the scene with a single, sweeping glance: Kaelan unconscious on the sofa, Elara kneeling beside him, the bloodied medical supplies, the discarded grimoire on the floor.
He didn't look surprised. He looked grimly satisfied. "I see my warning was timely."
"You have a talent for understatement," Cyrus muttered, returning to his workbench and picking up a strangely glowing torque wrench.
Rhys ignored him, his focus on Elara. "Is he stable?"
"For now," Elara said, rising to her feet. She felt a surge of defensive anger. "He fought them off. He got us here."
"He did," Rhys agreed, his voice low. "He made his choice. And now you both have a price on your heads that would buy a small country." He stepped closer, his gaze intense. "The Magus has declared Kaelan rogue. You are now classified as a 'high-priority volatile asset.' The order is to capture you alive, by any means necessary. Him… they want his head on a pike as an example."
The words were a physical blow. Capture. By any means necessary. She thought of the suppression, the feeling of being unmade, and knew that whatever the Conclave had planned would be infinitely worse.
"What do you want, Rhys?" she asked, her voice trembling despite her effort to control it.
"I want what Kaelan should have wanted two hundred years ago," he said, his voice hardening. "I want to burn the Conclave to the ground. Starting with the Magus." He looked at Kaelan's prone form. "He was their finest weapon. Their symbol of invincibility. His defection is a crack in their foundation. We can use that. We can widen it."
"We?" Elara echoed.
Rhys gestured around the garage. "Cyrus here. A few others scattered in the shadows. People who've lost families to the Conclave's 'purges.' People who are tired of living in fear of the Wraiths. We're a scattered, beaten-down lot. But we have one thing they don't."
"What's that?"
"A cause worth dying for," Rhys said, his eyes burning with a cold fire. "And now, we have you. The Devouring Light. The one thing the Magus truly fears." He looked from her to Kaelan and back again. "But you're just a girl with a book, and he's a wounded wolf. You need an army. Even a small one."
Elara looked at Kaelan, at the man who had become her entire world in a handful of days. She looked at the grimoire, the repository of her terrible power. She looked at Rhys, the revolutionary, and Cyrus, the pragmatic mechanic. They were offering a path. Not to safety, but to war.
It wasn't a choice. It was the next step in a sequence that had been set in motion the moment the weeping key had arrived.
Kaelan had found his conviction in a bloody refuge.
Now,in the grim reality of Stygian Ironworks, surrounded by the ghosts of lost causes and the scent of oil and blood, Elara Vayne found hers.
She met Rhys's gaze, her own eyes hardening, the Relic within her humming not with hunger, but with a new, cold purpose.
"Tell me what to do," she said.