The quarters Lysette led her to were spartan, a world away from her bright, minimalist apartment. It was a small cell-like room in the barracks' upper levels, containing a narrow cot with a thin wool blanket, a rough wooden chest, and a single, high window barred with iron. A ceramic pitcher and basin sat on a stool. It was cold, damp, and smelled faintly of dust and disinfectant.
"Welcome to the luxury suite," Lysette said dryly, tossing a folded pile of fabric onto the bed. "Guard issue. It should fit well enough. The privy is down the hall. Meals are in the main hall at dawn, noon, and dusk. Don't be late." She turned to leave.
"Wait," Aris said, her voice echoing in the barren room. "The Commander... what exactly does he expect me to do?"
Lysette paused at the door, her hand on the frame. "He expects you to be useful. You gave him a new idea today. A new weapon. He'll want more. He's like a bloodhound with a scent." Her grey eyes assessed Aris critically. "My advice? Find a way to be very useful, very quickly. Kaelen's patience for dead weight is nonexistent. And right now, you're all weight."
With that final, blunt assessment, she left, closing the door with a solid thud that felt like a period at the end of Aris's old life.
Alone, Aris changed out of her jeans and lab coat. The clothes provided were coarse and scratchy: thick wool trousers, a linen tunic, and a sturdy leather vest. They were functional, anonymous. Dressing in them felt like shedding the last skin of Dr. Aris Thorne, physicist, and donning the uniform of Aris, the Pyre Guard's captive theorist.
She sat on the edge of the cot, the straw mattress rustling beneath her. Despair threatened to rise again, a black tide. She was a prisoner here as surely as if she were in a dungeon. Her prison was just gilded with the promise of protection. Kaelen Vance was her warden, and her sentence was to use her mind for his war.
But within that despair, a spark of her old self ignited. Use her mind. That was what she did best. She couldn't fight with an axe, but she could fight with ideas. If this "Ember-Wraith" was a form of energy, it could be studied, modeled, understood. Perhaps... perhaps even defeated on a scale larger than one bottle at a time.
And the Commander himself... he was a phenomenon. A man who wielded fire that wasn't fire, who was clearly integral to this city's survival. He was an equation she couldn't solve, a variable that defied all constants. And despite his contempt, his dismissal, she felt a pull—not of attraction, but of profound, intellectual curiosity. What was he?
A sharp rap on her door broke her reverie. It was Lysette again. "Commander wants you. The briefing room. Now."
The tone brooked no delay. The work, it seemed, began immediately.