The earth swallowed us.
Not violently—no collapse, no roar—but with the smooth, terrifying certainty of something that had been waiting to close.
Stone rose around my ankles, then my knees, sealing over us as if the ground itself had decided we no longer belonged above it. Light vanished except for a small lantern held by a single guard. The air grew cool and dry, humming faintly with power that wasn't mine.
Dragonbane bit into my wrists.
The ropes were woven tight, thick with dull green filaments that leeched warmth and strength alike. Not coated. Threaded. Whoever designed them was good at their job.
Too good.
I lifted my chin anyway.
The slab of stone beneath our feet lurched forward.
Fast.
Unexpectedly fast.
My balance went first.
The ground shifted sharply, tilting just enough that my feet slipped. I pitched sideways—
—and stopped.
Hands closed around my arms from behind.
Firm. Certain. Familiar in a way that made my chest ache.
Raiden.
He didn't pull me close. Didn't hold me longer than necessary. Just steadied me, adjusted my weight, then released me as the stone leveled out again.
I didn't look back.
Didn't thank him. Didn't flinch.
And he didn't say a word.
The silence between us was worse than anything he could have said.
The stone surged forward again, carrying us deeper, faster. Walls of earth blurred past on either side, perfectly smooth, shaped and reshaped in real time by the woman ahead of us.
Princess Willow.
She moved with rigid precision, hands lifted slightly, fingers flexing as the ground obeyed her. Her jaw was set, eyes forward, posture tight with restraint.
She didn't look at me.
Didn't look at him either.
I wondered if that was discipline—or shame.
The ropes burned cold against my skin. I could feel where my power should have been, like a limb that had gone numb but still remembered pain.
The gods' voices—ones I hadn't realized I'd grown used to—were quiet.
No fire. No water. No violet warmth.
Just me.
And him.
I focused on my breathing. On the rhythm of the movement. On anything except the memory of how those same hands had once held me for comfort instead of control.
Whatever he is now, I told myself. Whatever stands behind my back.
I will not give him my fear.
The slab slowed.
The stone opened into silence.
Not the echoing quiet of caverns, but the kind of controlled stillness that only exists in places meant to intimidate. Torches burned in precise intervals along the walls, their flames steady and smokeless. The air smelled faintly of iron and earth—old, worked stone, polished by centuries of obedience.
A holding chamber.
Not a dungeon.
That distinction mattered.
The slab beneath our feet ground to a halt. Willow lowered her hands slowly, as if afraid the earth might bite her if she moved too fast. For a moment, no one spoke.
Raiden stepped forward as the ground settled.
I followed.
Bound. Silent. Unbroken.
For now.
Then the ropes tightened.
The dragonbane thread reacted to my instinctive reach for my power, constricting just enough to remind me exactly how trapped I was. My breath hitched despite my best efforts to keep it even.
Raiden heard it.
I knew he did.
He didn't turn. Didn't react.
Which, I wish I could say, didn't surprise me.
"Remove the princess," he said calmly.
Willow stiffened. "Father said—"
"I don't give two shits what your father said," Raiden spat.
"Leave, Princess. Now." His voice was cool and flat as stone.
She hesitated.
Then she looked at me.
Just once.
There was no triumph in her eyes. No satisfaction. Only conflict—tight, bitter, unresolved.
The earth shifted beneath her feet, opening a narrow passage to the side.
"I'll wait outside," she said quietly.
Not to me.
To him.
Raiden inclined his head a fraction. Dismissal.
The stone sealed behind her.
We were alone.
The chamber wasn't large. Circular, with a low ceiling carved into a domed vault. No chains on the walls. No instruments of torture.
Just a single stone dais at the center—and a carved channel in the floor, as if something was meant to drain.
I swallowed.
Raiden walked past me.
Not toward the door. Not around me.
Past me.
The faint brush of his presence stirred the air, carrying heat threaded with something sharp and wrong. Shadow clung to him differently here, like it had learned how to sit inside his skin instead of around it.
He stopped at the far side of the room.
Turned.
And looked at me.
Properly this time.
His red eyes.
Not blazing. Not wild.
Controlled.
Assessing.
As if I were a problem to be solved rather than a person he once loved.
"Do you know," he said mildly, "how hard it is to craft with dragonbane?"
I didn't answer.
I lifted my chin instead.
The ropes cut deeper.
He noticed.
A flicker passed through his expression—gone so fast I might have imagined it.
"Dragonbane woven with precision," he continued, circling slowly, "can be toxic if handled incorrectly. Only three master craftsmen are known to work with it in the whole Earth Kingdom. You won't burn through it. You won't freeze it. You won't call anything through it."
He stopped directly in front of me.
Close enough that I could feel the static humming under his skin.
He leaned in until our noses almost touched.
"You won't escape."
I met his gaze.
"I didn't intend to," I said quietly.
That earned me something new.
Not anger.
Not amusement.
Curiosity.
"Liar," he said, almost gently.
I didn't rise to it.
The silence stretched.
He studied me the way commanders study battle maps—searching for weaknesses, pressure points, places to apply force. His eyes traced the faint scorch marks on my skin, the dried blood at my collarbone, the way I stood despite the restraints.
"You look smaller without your fire," he observed.
I felt that one land.
"Funny," I said. "You look emptier without your soul."
The air changed.
Not violently.
But sharply.
Shadow stirred behind his eyes, curling upward like smoke meeting flame. For a heartbeat, I thought he might strike me.
Instead—
He laughed.
Soft. Quiet. Wrong.
"You have a talent for saying the most inconvenient things," he said. "It's annoyingly admirable."
I leaned closer, my breath ghosting his lips, my voice low.
"You felt me, didn't you?"
He stiffened slightly.
"I felt something," he said.
That was the truth.
And I knew it.
My mouth curved faintly. "Good. That means the bond isn't as dead as Mortimer hoped."
He straightened abruptly, stepping back as if the moment had gone too far.
"Tell me why you came," he said, all warmth gone. "And choose your words carefully."
The torches flickered.
The stone beneath us thrummed, faint and patient.
The interrogation had begun.
He waited.
Not patiently.
Intentionally.
The silence was a weapon, and he wielded it well.
I forced myself not to fill it.
Raiden noticed the way my shoulders squared despite it.
"You won't talk," he said at last. "Most people do by now."
"I've never been good at doing what's expected of me," I replied.
His gaze sharpened. "That much I can tell."
He circled again, slow, measured steps echoing softly against the stone. Each footfall felt deliberate, as though he were pacing out a battlefield rather than a room.
"You crossed into the Earth Kingdom knowing I was here," he continued. "Why?"
"I crossed because you were here," I said.
That made him stop.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Then he resumed moving, slower now. More cautious.
"Sentiment," he said coolly. "A weakness."
"Funny," I murmured. "You never used to think so."
His jaw tightened.
"Careful," he warned.
"I am being careful," I said. "That's why I'm still standing."
He halted directly in front of me.
Close enough that I could feel the static rise on my skin, lifting the fine hairs along my arms. Lightning—threaded with shadow—flickered faintly beneath his surface, like something alive just under the skin.
"Tell me," he said quietly, "what you think you were going to do when you found me."
"Talk to you," I answered without hesitation.
That earned me a sharp, humorless exhale.
"So arrogant," he said. "You're convinced you're the exception to every rule."
"Not the exception," I corrected. "I am the rule."
His eyes narrowed.
"You think you're so special," he said.
"No," I replied. "I think you are."
That landed harder than any insult.
For a heartbeat, the shadows around him shifted restlessly, reacting to something I couldn't see. His gaze searched my face, as if trying to reconcile me with a version of himself he no longer had access to.
Then the wall came back up.
"You came to stop me," he said flatly.
"I came to remind you," I said just as flatly.
"Of what?"
I swallowed.
"Of who you were before Mortimer. To save you from him."
The temperature in the room dropped.
Not from ice.
From absence.
"Save?" he echoed softly. "You think that's what you're doing?"
"I know it is."
He laughed again, sharper this time. "You don't even have your power. You're bound. Stripped. Helpless."
"Am I?" I asked.
He tilted his head, studying me. "You certainly look like it."
"And yet," I said quietly, "you're still talking instead of killing me."
That did it.
The shadows surged.
He moved in a blur, his hand slamming into the stone beside my head with enough force to crack it. Lightning snarled along his arm, close enough that I could smell ozone and scorched air.
"Do not mistake restraint for mercy," he snarled.
I didn't flinch.
I looked up at him.
Really looked.
The angles of his face were sharper now, carved by something crueler than time. But underneath it—beneath the red glow and the shadow-threaded lightning—
He was still him.
Still Raiden.
Still—
"Sparky," I whispered.
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Soft. Automatic. Muscle memory.
The reaction was immediate.
His breath hitched.
Just once.
His eyes flickered—
Red—
Blue.
A clear, brilliant electric blue, just for a heartbeat.
The bond spiked.
Not warmth. Not comfort.
Pain.
Raw, sudden, devastating pain that slammed into my chest.
He staggered back a step, one hand flying to his temple as if something had struck him from the inside.
"No," he hissed. "Don't—"
I leaned forward despite the ropes. "Rai."
His name.
The blue flared again, brighter this time, cutting through the red like lightning through smoke. His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together as if he were holding something back by sheer force of will.
"I told you—" His voice broke. "—don't say that."
"You hate it when I call you that," I said softly. "Why does it remind you of something?"
The shadows writhed violently now, crawling up his arms, clawing at his shoulders like they were trying to pull him back.
His eyes squeezed shut.
For a moment—just a moment—I saw him.
The real him.
Confused. Angry. Hurting.
"I don't—" he whispered. "L-Ly—"
Then the air screamed.
Not sound.
Pressure.
A presence slammed into the room like a tide of cold ink, drowning everything else out.
Enough.
The voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
It coiled through the chamber, through Raiden, through me—slick and intimate and vile.
Mortimer.
Raiden cried out, dropping to one knee as the shadows surged fully, wrapping around him like chains snapping tight.
"You are not hers," the voice purred. "You are mine."
The blue vanished.
Swallowed whole.
Raiden's body arched as corrupted lightning ripped through him, red-black veins blazing across his skin. He gasped, fingers digging into the stone as if it might anchor him.
I screamed his name.
The shadows surged harder.
"She weakens you," Mortimer whispered. "She reminds you of what you lost."
Raiden's eyes snapped open.
Red.
Cold.
Furious.
He rose slowly to his feet, the flicker gone, his expression carved back into something distant and lethal.
When he looked at me this time, there was no recognition.
No warmth.
Only irritation.
"That," he said coldly, "will not happen again."
My heart shattered.
The interrogation was over.
For now.