Silence, in the Citadel of the Cŵn Annwn, was a wound. It wasn't peace. It was the stunned, ringing quiet after an explosion, where every sound—a dropped tool, a sob from a healer's bay, the drip of water from a cracked conduit—was a fresh shock of memory. The air still tasted of ozone, burnt fur, and blood.
Three days had passed. The dead were counted and interred in the mountain's cold heart. The wounded, like Jonas and Maria, were mended with meticulous, impersonal magic. Becky's work, performed under the watchful eyes of Gareth's guards. She moved like a ghost, her eyes downcast, her daughter Mills a silent, pale shadow beside her. The king had not publicly punished them for their betrayal, but their freedom was gone. They were assets under new management, their every move tracked.
Jonas sat on the edge of their cavern's sleeping platform, flexing his hand. The flesh was new, pink and tender where Mills's healing light had knitted him back together. There was no scar, but the memory of the fire that had lived under his skin was a phantom limb. He felt… contained. The inferno that had erupted to save Maria was banked now, a simmering coal behind his ribs. He watched his wife.
Maria stood in the centre of the main cavern, her eyes closed, her brow furrowed in concentration. Before her, a simple stone cup from their table hovered, trembling, three feet in the air.
"You're pushing it," Erik said, his voice soft from where he leaned against the wall. "You're thinking about your hands lifting it. Don't. Think about the space around the cup. The air beneath it. Tell that air to be solid."
"It's air, love, it's not meant to be solid," Maria muttered, but the cup's trembling lessened.
"Neither is stopping a truck with your body," Kaitlyn added from the other side, a faint, tired smile on her face. She was bruised but restless, unable to sit still. "Mum, you reached out and grabbed a ceiling block bigger than you. You didn't ask nicely. You willed it."
Maria took a breath. The cup stopped trembling. It hung, perfectly still, as if placed on an invisible shelf.
"Good," Erik nodded. "Now, feel the weight of it. Not with your muscles. With… with the part of your mind that's doing the holding. That's your telekinetic anchor. That's your centre."
Jonas watched, a complex knot of pride and fear tightening in his chest. His wife was learning magic. Not the inherited, elemental fire of his lineage, but a raw, psychic force born from the trauma of nearly losing him, from the desperate love that had moved a mountain to save him. It was a power she should never have needed. And it was terrifyingly similar to Kaitlyn's.
The door to their suite chimed, a soft, intrusive sound. It slid open without waiting for an answer. Rhys stood there, his face a marble mask of displeasure. He did not step inside.
"The king requires an assessment of the Dyad's readiness," he announced, his eyes flicking over the scene—Maria with her floating cup, the twins in their training stances. A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Their performance during the incursion was… noted. We will be adjusting their curriculum. More advanced field exercises. Less theory."
It was a promotion disguised as a demand. They were to be taken out of the classroom and thrown into the deep end of whatever horrors the kingdom hunted. A reward for being useful weapons.
"When?" Jonas asked, his voice flat.
"Tomorrow. At dawn." Rhys's gaze finally settled on Maria. "Your… unexpected development has also been noted, Mrs. Kelsey. The Citadel's physicians would like to schedule an examination. To ensure there are no… latent instabilities from the manticore's venom."
The threat was velvet-wrapped. We own your new power too. We will study it.
"I'm quite stable, thank you," Maria said, letting the cup descend gently to the table. Her voice was steadier than her hands. "Just a bit of post-traumatic feedback, I'm sure. It'll pass."
"We shall see." Rhys's smile was a thin, cold cut. "There is one other matter. The ward, Morgan. She is missing. As is a… sensitive asset from the Stabilisation Wing. It appears she used the witch's attack as cover for an act of theft and desertion."
The news landed like a stone in the quiet room. Morgan. Gone. With the frozen girl.
Kaitlyn exchanged a sharp look with Erik. The pod.
"Search parties have been dispatched," Rhys continued, watching their reactions. "Desertion is a capital offence. The retrieval of the asset is paramount. If you hear from her, or have any… insights… your cooperation is expected."
He left, the door sealing shut behind him.
"She did it," Kaitlyn breathed. "She actually got her out."
"Who was she?" Maria asked, looking between her children.
"Someone Morgan would risk everything for," Erik said quietly. "Someone the king wanted hidden. And now Morgan's an enemy of the state."
The implications were dark and sprawling. Morgan, their fierce rival, was now a fugitive. The king's authority had been flouted from within. The mountain, already cracked, had a new, jagged fissure.
---
The new "field exercises" were a thinly-veiled punishment for someone else.
Kaitlyn saw it the moment she entered the Crucible the next morning. Arthur was not in the line-up of wards. Prince David stood front and center, a smug, vicious light in his eyes. Gareth's face was like storm-carved granite.
"The ward, Arthur," Gareth boomed, "has been removed from active training. He was found to be in breach of conduct. Undermining the royal lineage. Conspiring to destabilize the line of succession."
A cold fist closed around Kaitlyn's heart. Undermining. Conspiring. The words were poisonously vague, but their target was clear.
"He's done nothing!" she protested, stepping forward before she could stop herself.
Gareth's eyes swivelled to her. "His conduct is not your concern, Dyad. Your concern is today's exercise. Live capture and containment of a Greater Bog Wisp. A test of precision and control. Prince David will lead."
The exercise was a farce. The "Bog Wisp"—a flickering, malignant ball of swamp gas and spite—was released into a magically-terrained section of the Crucible. David's "leadership" consisted of issuing contradictory orders designed to make Kaitlyn fail, while taking credit for any minor success. Erik, paired with a silent, nervous ward, was isolated on the other side of the terrain, forced to watch.
Kaitlyn's fury was a live wire. Every time David leered at her, every time he said "See, wildling? You need direction," she thought of Arthur, locked in some lightless cell because of a jealous boy's lie.
She performed miserably. Her telekinetic grabs were too forceful, scattering the Wisp. Her focus was shattered.
Afterwards, dripping with foul-smelling bog water and humiliation, she cornered David in an empty equipment alcove.
"Where is he?" she hissed.
David leaned against the wall, examining his nails. "Who? The traitor? Somewhere… reflective. Where he can contemplate the cost of overreaching."
"You lying little weasel. He's no traitor. You're just scared he's better than you."
The prince's composure cracked. He pushed off the wall, his face inches from hers. "He is nothing! A ward! A tool! And you are a legacy. My legacy. My father has decided it. This… fixation you have with a servant is an embarrassment. It ends. Now. Or he ends."
The naked malice in his eyes was a different kind of monster than any Morwen had sent. This was cold, political, and personal.
That night, the secret alliance convened not in the steam-chamber—it was too risky now—but in the blind spot of a laundry conduit, the air thick with the smell of lye and damp stone.
"They've given him no food," Mills whispered, her eyes huge with fear. "Only water. He's in the old oubliette, the one they used before they built the new one for… for my grandmother. It's all stone. No light."
Erik's mind was already working, cross-referencing guard rotations from the archives he'd studied. "The watch changes at the midnight bell. There's a ninety-second gap where the corridor outside is clear. The door is warded, but…"
"But what?" Kaitlyn asked.
"But the wards are keyed to royal blood and the guard captain's seal." He looked at Mills. "Could Becky…?"
Mills shook her head violently. "They're watching her every breath. She can't even look at a rune without permission."
"Then we do it the old-fashioned way," Kaitlyn said, her voice grim. "We get him food. We get him hope."
Smuggling the food was Mills's job. Small, dense packets of dried meat and waybread, stolen from the kitchens and hidden in the folds of her healer's apprentice smock.
Getting it to the oubliette was Kaitlyn's.
Two nights later, using the shift change gap Erik had identified, she moved like a shadow. Her bond with Erik was a tense, open line; he was back in their chamber, pretending to sleep, acting as her remote sensor, whispering warnings she felt more than heard. "Guard lingering… clear… now."
The corridor to the old oubliette was hewn from raw, weeping rock. The door was a slab of iron-bound oak, studded with tarnished silver runes that glowed with a faint, repellent light. A small, barred slot was at eye level.
Kaitlyn slid the food packet through the slot. There was a rustle from the profound darkness within.
"Arthur?" she whispered.
A shape moved against the deeper black. She could just make out the glint of his eyes. "Kaitlyn?" His voice was hoarse, scraped raw by silence and despair. "You shouldn't be here. It's a trap. He wants you to come."
"I know. Are you alright?"
A dry, humourless chuckle. "I've been better. Thank you. For this." She heard the sound of him tearing into the food. "You need to go. Now."
"We're going to get you out."
"No," he said, his voice suddenly fierce. "Don't. This is his play. He wants you to try. To give his father a reason to break you, too. To force you into line. You have to be smarter than him. You have to win the long game."
From down the corridor, a boot scraped on stone. The change was over. A guard was returning.
"I'll be back," Kaitlyn breathed, and melted into a side-passage just as a torch's glow washed the wall where she'd been standing.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Arthur was right. David wasn't just being cruel. He was laying a trap, with Arthur as the bait and her defiance as the trigger. The king wanted a compliant Dyad, a future queen who knew her place. David wanted to break her spirit and remove his rival.
As she slipped back into the family suite, the bond with Erik humming with relief at her safe return, she understood the new battlefield.
The war wasn't in the Crucible anymore. It was in the shadows, in the whispers, in the slow, careful work of breaking a king's will without playing his son's vicious game. Morgan had chosen escape. They had to choose something harder: to stay, and to fight for the very soul of the mountain, one starving prisoner at a time.