Page 45 of Severe Husband Warning

The corridor opens onto an immense chamber unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Towering crystal arrays rise from the floor toward the distant ceiling, each threaded with crackling arcs of contained lightning. At the chamber’s center stands an enormous conduit unlike those Rothgar showed me in his study. Its shape is wrong—its angles too sharp, its focusing rings arranged with deliberate purpose around a hollow core that seems built to gather impossible amounts of storm energy.

The longer I study the conduit, the more certain I become that it was never meant to power the city. Its design serves another purpose entirely, one I cannot yet understand, though every instinct tells me to fear it.

I edge toward a grime-covered viewport and wipe away a narrow circle with my sleeve. As the chamber beyond comes into focus, the breath catches painfully in my throat.

Human workers fill the floor below.

Old Man Theron bends beneath the massive crystal nearly as large as his chest, his shoulders shaking with every step. His patched coat hangs loose over a body grown thinner than I remember. Beside him, Mrs. Jensen struggles to steady another worker whose hands are wrapped in bloodstained cloth. Another worker reaches for a crystal, and his bindings shift just enough for angry burns to show beneath them.

I grip the windowsill until my knuckles ache.

The crystals spit tiny arcs of lightning whenever bare skin brushes their surface. The human workers flinch but never stop. Overseers pace between them, barking orders while more volatile crystals are carried toward the monstrous conduit dominating the room.

My gaze moves through the crowd until familiar faces emerge among the workers. Theron. Mrs. Jensen. Others from the neighborhood whose lives once revolved around market days and ordinary worries.

They move with the dull obedience of people who have forgotten what it feels like to expect anything beyond surviving the next command. The sight presses so heavily against my chest, I have to force myself to breathe.

Since the disappearances began, I imagined hidden cells or labor camps where these people might still be waiting to be found. Standing here, I realize how merciful those imaginings were compared to the truth unfolding beneath me.

The overseers don’t treat the danger as an unfortunate consequence of the work. They force people toward it with complete indifference, as though another injured laborer is nothing more than a delay to be replaced.

Every crystal lifted into place drains another measure of strength from the people carrying it, yet no allowance is made for exhaustion or injury. They are worked until they fail, replaced as readily as any broken tool.

Sickness rises in my throat as the truth finally settles over me. These people were never meant to survive this place. Malakor has built his treason upon human lives, spending them as casually as any other resource until nothing remains to spend.

22

ROTHGAR

Iwake to the unfamiliar chill of an empty bed.

Calla’s absence catches my attention immediately, but it is the bed itself that confirms what has happened. The schematics I left scattered across the blankets before exhaustion claimed me have been disturbed. My gaze snaps to the lower district surveys.

The map detailing the abandoned conduit routes beneath the western spire is gone.

Yesterday I asked her to trust my judgment and wait until we could move together. Looking at the empty place where the map should be, I realize I underestimated the weight she would place on lives she had no power to save by standing still.

“You should have woken me,” I mutter, already summoning stormlight to my hands. Regret serves no purpose now. Finding her does.

Stormlight curls around me, dissolving yesterday’s clothes into silver mist before weaving fresh garments in their place. Dark leather falls across my shoulders. The familiar weight of my sword returns to my hip as though it had never left it.

I draw more magic into myself as I reach for the bond tying Calla to me. It has strengthened quietly since our marriage, growing so naturally between us that I barely notice it until moments like this. Across the city I feel her presence as distinctly as the pull of my own magic.

Following her is infinitely simpler than searching for an unfamiliar place. I fix my thoughts on her presence, let the connection anchor the spell, and lightning folds the distance between us.

Lightning carries me beneath Ti’lith’s oldest spires, where the bond guiding my magic draws me through abandoned corridors thick with the sharp tang of ozone. The farther I descend, the more oppressive the air becomes until, finally, I catch sight of Calla standing outside a weathered stone structure, her entire attention fixed on its entrance.

But relief never comes.

Movement farther down the passage arrests my attention before I reach her.

A patrol is already approaching.

I reach her in two quick strides, catching Calla by the wrist and drawing her behind the shelter of a collapsed wall.

Moments later, four armored guards pass the entrance, their footsteps swallowed by the constant vibration rising from somewhere beneath the earth. I remain perfectly still until the sound of their armor fades into the distance before lowering my hand.