Page 170 of Of Iron and Moonlight

They continued to the next block. Once her vision adjusted to the dimness, Elara’s stomach clenched. Countless humans filled the cells. Some curled on the floor in postures that suggested collapse rather than rest. Some paced in tight, frantic circles. Several clawed at their own skin, shaking so violently their teeth rattled audibly. Their eyes were rimmed in raw red, irises flashing with erratic color that rippled like heat across glass.

One prisoner lifted his face toward them. His pupils had shrunk to pinpoints that pulsed unevenly, each throb of color sending shivers through his limbs. He whimpered something that might have been a plea—for mercy, or for more. It was impossible to tell.

Elara staggered back a step, her hand flying to her mouth. It was not mere dependence. It was desecration. Something had burrowed into these people and rewritten them from within, until what remained only faintly resembled the humans they had once been.

Gavriel’s hand found the wall, his palm pressing flat against the cold stone as though he needed its solidity to keep from collapsing. “What does she look like?” he whispered.

“Long golden hair. Grey eyes, with a violet ring,” Elara breathed through her shivers.

Gavriel swallowed visibly and began moving from cell to cell, walking slowly so as not to startle the figures twitching and pacing behind the bars.

Elara searched for the familiar line of a jaw, the slope of shoulder, the particular fall of hair she could have recognized from across a crowded market. She tried to peel the horror away from each swollen, feverish face long enough to imagine Lorrain beneath it.

At the end of the hall, she stopped.

Gavriel joined her a moment later.

“She’s not here,” Elara murmured, deflated.

He nodded, seemingly at a loss for words.

They stepped back into the corridor.

An alarm split the air.

Chapter 79

Elara

The clang ricocheted until the entire facility seemed to become the inside of a struck bell. Shouts erupted in its wake. Orders in brisk, confused Norrelian cut through the air. What had been tense quiet moments before became a current of panic racing through the halls.

“Cursed moons,” Gavriel muttered, flattening himself against the wall and disappearing into the deepest fold of shadow it offered. “The lad bragged.”

“Or someone found them.” Elara pressed into the opposite wall, her pulse so violent she felt it in her fingertips. “We must get back to the laboratory.”

She took a step. Guards flooded into the corridor. Gavriel caught her sleeve and hauled her into a narrow stairwell recessed just deep enough to conceal them both.

They crouched shoulder to shoulder, holding their breath, as lantern light flashed across the stairwell mouth in hard bands. Voices surged and faded, echoes stacking until it was impossible to tell how many guards had passed.

Once the thunder moved farther down the hall and faded, Gavriel released her, withdrawing his hand sharply and with a tight grimace.

“Thank you,” Elara mouthed, then leaned forward by inches, careful as a fox testing a trap, and peered around the edge. “Clear,” she whispered. “I think.”

They stepped out. Another cluster of guards rounded the far corner at the same moment. A row of violet eyes fixed on them in unison from across the hall.

“Most certainly not clear,” Elara hissed.

They spun and ran.

Knowing confusion was their only advantage, they veered right, then left in quick, random succession. Every turn revealed more stone, more identical brackets, more flickering violet—a maze folding back on itself, often spilling them toward another patrol, another wall of silver armor. The slap of boots closed in until it felt as if the entire fortress was running after them.

Elara spotted a door ajar and stumbled through it. Gavriel staggered in after her. They scanned the chamber. A storage room, crowded with crates and thick with the familiar smell of oraivane. And only one door, now filling with Norrelian guards.

“Runners.” The guard at the front flashed a thin smile of eager satisfaction. The rest fanned across the threshold in a half-circle of drawn weapons and pulsing violet eyes.

Gavriel drew Njall’s sword, more instinct than confidence. His grip was wrong. Hesitant. Fear radiated from him in palpable waves. “Elara,” he murmured, shaking his head, “maybe once I could have, but I can’t take them all.”

Elara nodded, her throat constricting painfully. Her fingers drifted toward the vials in her pocket. Then she glanced at the crates of oraivane crowding the room on every side. Kalaetzu’s warning rang through her mind. She forced her hand away. “Try to keep your eyes closed.”