Chapter 10 Ten

The frigid calm that had settled over me was more durable than any panic. It was a sheet of ice over a dark, determined ocean. Theron saw the change instantly. The questioning, desperate edge in my demeanor was gone, replaced by a flat, focused intensity that mirrored his own.

We moved at first light, our pace brutal and unforgiving. Theron was a ghost through the undergrowth, and I pushed my human body to its absolute limit to keep up, my muscles screaming in protest, my lungs burning. I didn't complain. The pain was a grounding counterpoint to the psychic echo of Kaelen's agony.

During brief rests, Theron didn't offer comfort. He offered intelligence. He sketched maps in the soft earth with a stick.

"The stronghold is here," he pointed to a rough circle nestled between two mountain peaks on his crude map. "Carved into the mountain itself. The main entrance is a heavily fortified gate, guarded by warded constructs. Impossible to breach head-on."

"Then we don't go through the front," I said, my voice hoarse from exertion.

He nodded, a flicker of respect in his eyes. "There are old passages. Air vents from when the mountain was a live forge, long before the Syndicate claimed it. They are narrow, treacherous, and likely trapped, but they are the only weakness." He looked at me, his gaze assessing. "You are small. You might fit."

"Might?"

"The last scout I sent never returned."

I absorbed the information without flinching. "What else?"

"The collar they use," he continued, his voice dropping. "It's not just silver. It's keyed to a central control stone, deep within the fortress. A failsafe. Even if you could get to him, you couldn't remove the collar without triggering an alarm and… other, less pleasant measures."

"So we find the control stone first," I stated, as if it were a simple item on a checklist. "Where?"

He shook his head. "Unknown. Its location is their most closely guarded secret. Only Silas and his highest lieutenants would know."

The problem was a fortress of interlocking puzzles, each one more deadly than the last. But I was no longer a woman trying to solve them. I was a force determined to break them.

On the second day, we encountered the scouts.

We were fording a shallow, icy river when three figures melted from the trees on the opposite bank. They weren't Syndicate enforcers. They were Fae, like Theron, but their leathers were darker, their faces etched with harsh, grim lines. Their leader, a female with hair the color of frost and eyes like chips of flint, leveled a spear at Theron.

"Theron of the Silverwood," she called, her voice cutting through the river's rush. "The clan has spoken. The human is to be taken. The treaty with the Syndicate is all that matters."

Theron didn't reach for his bow. He stood his ground in the waist-deep water, his posture deceptively relaxed. "The clan speaks from fear, Lyra. I act for its future."

"The future is survival!" Lyra snapped. "Survival means not provoking a dragon or a vampire! Hand her over, and we avoid war on both fronts."

My hand slipped into my pocket, closing around the coin. I could feel the potential energy humming within it, a sleeping beast. I looked from Lyra's hard face to Theron's unyielding back. This was the reality of my alliance. It hung by a thread, and that thread was about to be cut.

"I cannot do that, Lyra," Theron said, his voice calm but final.

"Then you leave us no choice." Lyra and her two companions raised their weapons.

In that fraction of a second before violence erupted, I made a decision. I wouldn't let Theron fight my battle. I wouldn't be a prize to be contested.

I stepped out from behind him, the coin held openly in my palm. I didn't focus on the Fae. I focused on the river. I remembered the feeling of the earth turning to mud, the shifting of matter. I thought of the water not as a liquid, but as a solid wall.

Stop them.

I didn't shout. I willed it.

The water in front of the three Fae didn't splash or spray. It rose. A solid, crystalline curtain of ice shot up from the river's surface, ten feet high and two feet thick, freezing the very air in its path. It wasn't a gentle barrier; it was a brutal, sudden rampart, sealing the Fae scouts off on their side of the bank.

The effort was immense. A sharp, stabbing pain lanced through my temple, and a trickle of warm blood dripped from my nose. I swayed on my feet, the world tilting. But I stayed upright.

Silence, profound and shocked, fell over the river. The only sound was the muffled rush of water flowing behind the wall of ice.

Lyra stared, her spear lowered, her face a mask of stunned disbelief. She looked from the impossible wall to me, to the blood on my lip, her eyes wide with something that was no longer just duty, but a touch of fear.

Theron turned his head slowly, his gaze sweeping from the ice wall to my face. The respect in his eyes had been joined by something else—a wary, calculating awe.

I wiped the blood from my nose with the back of my hand, my breathing ragged. I met Lyra's shocked gaze across the frozen barrier.

"The dragon is not your enemy," I said, my voice raw but clear, carrying over the muffled river. "I am. And if you stand in my way, you will learn the difference."

I turned my back on them, a deliberate act of supreme confidence I didn't feel, and began wading toward the far shore. After a moment's hesitation, Theron followed.

I didn't look back. I didn't need to. The message had been sent. The mouse was gone. In her place was a woman who could command rivers and wield a dragon's rage. And she was coming for what was hers.