Chapter 62: Clean and Sudden...
Keiser glanced at Tyron just in time to see him slipping the vial into the elf’s waiting hand. Tyron’s face was tight with urgency, but there was a flicker of regret there too, a silent gamble. Without hesitation, they all bolted up the conjured stairs.
The air was dank and heavy at first, the walls pressing close around them as their boots struck the stone steps.
Keiser risked a glance over his shoulder. Behind them, the stairwell was already collapsing. Each step crumbled away, stone folding back into the wall, returning to solid ground as though it had never been disturbed.
By the time they emerged at the top, bursting into the open air, Keiser’s lungs burned with the effort.
He stumbled forward, his eyes widening as the last cobblestones beneath their heels shuddered, flattened, and knit themselves back into the ground, until nothing remained but the familiar road.
Lenko caught the elf’s wrist just as she was turning away, the vial glinting in her fingers as she toyed with it. His grip was firm but not rough, his voice edged with impatience.
"How do we get that back?" he demanded.
The woman tilted her head, one brow arching high in surprise. "That’s your question?" as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Lenko’s lips pressed into a thin line, stubborn silence answering in place of words.
That was enough to make her laugh, low at first, then spilling into a mocking chuckle that bounced off the stone around them. "Not even going to beg?" she teased. "Not going to ask me how to undo that little death curse hanging over your head?"
Her eyes gleamed as though expecting him to flinch. But when she caught the set of Lenko’s jaw and the sharp light of resolve in his eyes, her amusement faltered. A hum escaped her throat, something like curiosity.
"Your loyalty will be your downfall, child." she murmured at last, her tone both taunting and oddly somber.
Then her gaze slid past him to where Keiser stood. His chest still heaved with the effort of their escape, one hand clutching his side as though to hold himself together, the other braced against the cold stone. Sweat streaked his temple, his breaths shallow and ragged.
The woman’s lips curled into a wide grin. "Ask your young lord then," she said, her words like a blade dipped in honey. "Only those who truly know how the broker makes his deals would understand the tap when they call for help."
She wrenched her arm free with ease, then twirled the pendant once more around her hand as she stepped back. "And don’t worry. He’ll also know how to summon me again. I’ll be there when it’s time for me to collect my pay."
She began to saunter away, movements fluid, almost playful, as if she owned the shadows that gathered around her.
But Keiser’s voice rang out hoarse and raw, carrying across the chamber. "I’ll be calling your service soon," he shouted after her, his good eye hard. "You still haven’t given me the information I actually wanted."
The elf paused mid-step. Slowly, she turned her head, her expression sharpening into a leer. Lifting the vial to her lips, she pressed a mocking kiss against the glass. "About this one?" she purred, tilting the container just enough to catch the light.
Keiser shook his head, his silence sharper than words.
The elven woman’s eyes narrowed in intrigue, and a soft hum escaped her throat. "Oh? Something else, then."
He gave her no answer, but the refusal was its own kind of challenge. She threw her head back and laughed, a loud, boisterous sound that carried the same cutting edge as when they had first heard her mocking voice echoing through the dungeon cells.
"You’d better call me soon, little lord," she warned, her grin feral. "Don’t keep me waiting."
And with that, she melted into the shadows, her figure dissolving until there was nothing left of her but the echo of her laughter.
The silence that followed was thick and heavy. Keiser lowered his gaze and exhaled slowly, his body still trembling with exhaustion. When he finally lifted his head, his eye met Lenko’s.
The boy’s look was sharp, suspicious, as though trying to measure truths Keiser wasn’t speaking. But just as quickly, Lenko looked away, choosing instead to fix his attention on Tyron.
Tyron’s face was pale, his lips drawn tight, the weight of what had just transpired settling on his shoulders.
"You shouldn’t have given your vial to her---him, shit, to that elf, Tyron," Lenko hissed. His hand curled into a fist at his side, voice cracking under the strain of anger. "Wasn’t that important to you?"
"We don’t have anything of value with us," Tyron shot back between panting breaths. His chest rose and fell heavily, sweat streaking down his brow. "The knights confiscated everything when they caught us."
It was true. Their blades, their packs, they had all been stripped away when the guards chained them and threw them into the dungeon. The only things left to them now were scraps of willpower and bodies already battered past their limits.
Keiser drew in a breath that scraped against his throat like gravel. His lungs burned, each inhalation like hot coals being shoveled into his chest. Speaking hurt, but he forced the words out anyway, his voice low and edged with venom.
"You talk," he rasped, his good eye narrowing at Lenko, "as if your life wasn’t valuable to you..."
Lenko froze under that gaze, his frown deepening. His answer, however, came without hesitation. "Yes," he said firmly. "It wasn’t as valuable to me as yours, your highness."
The words struck Keiser harder than a blade to the ribs. His chest tightened, not just with the pain of breath but with something raw and consuming. Unbridled anger surged up in him again, hot and relentless, coiling through his veins. For a moment, he wanted to lash out, at Lenko, at Tyron, at the irony, at himself. He was just like him.
Instead, he shut his eye, forcing it all down. His hand came up to cover his face, palm dragging slowly across his skin. He had to calm down. He had to. If he gave in to this heat now, there would be no clarity left in him.
He inhaled again, steadying the ragged rise and fall of his chest, and tilted his head back. Above him stretched the night sky.
The village’s stars were sharp, almost too bright, glittering like fractured glass against a velvet expanse. It was nothing like the capital’s, where the skies had been heavy with smoke and sorrow, where the air itself seemed to choke out the stars.
And yet, even as the city lights tried to outshine the heavens, his mind refused to rest. It spun restlessly, dragging him back again and again to the same tormenting cycle of problems, consequences, and obligations.
Every thought was a jagged shard, a hundred ways to resolve nothing.
But then, like a flare struck in darkness, an answer came to him.
Not perfect. Not safe. But an answer all the same.
His hand dropped slowly from his face, and his eye, still burning with fatigue---until the answer struck him, clean and sudden.
Like the arrow sinking to his shoulder.