Chapter Seventy-One:

  “The Obedient Child”

  Lord Sterling stood in his dungeon, motionless.

  The torchlight cast its taunts at him, but he did not move. Did not speak. He simply stood over the bent and broken remains of the bars that once held Raya.

  It reeked of rust and mold, thick with stagnation. Water dripped from the ceiling. Water dripped from the ceiling. He closed his eyes, listening, slowing his heartbeat to match its rhythm.

  His presence devoured the space around him. His hood, frayed and heavy, shrouded his face in darkness, save for the eerie burn of his glowing blue eyes, cold, watchful, unrelenting. Wisps of dying embers fell from the edges of his robes, dying at his feet.

  He took in the scene, slow, deliberate, understanding trailing over the torn metal, the tiny footprints leading to and from nothing, the absence of the Key Player.

  Still, he remained silent.

  The air behind Sterling warped, folding inward on itself in a spiral of writhing shadows and violet streaks. A tear in reality, unnatural and shifting, cracked open beside him.

  Hex tumbled out, hands clutching her nose. She whined, stomping her feet like a spoiled child. "How dare they play so rough!"

  Then she looked up.

  Sterling loomed above her, his cold eyes unsympathetic. The moment she met them, her sniveling cut off with a sharp breath. She stiffened, shoulders drawn tight as she hastily wiped at her face, attempting to swallow the trembling in her lip.

  Whatever pain she felt, whatever tantrum she had been about to unleash, it vanished in an instant.

  She had stepped into her father’s presence.

  Sterling finally spoke, his voice as emotionless as the void. "Did you eliminate the Key Player?"

  Hex lowered her head, her fingers fleeing into the fabric of her sleeves. "I got the other two, but..."

  She trailed off, her eyes falling on the remains of the cell bars. Her mouth shut. Slowly, she lowered her head again, silent.

  Sterling closed his eyes. The slow, rhythmic dripping of water echoed through the chamber, steady and unbroken. He let out a long, measured breath.

  "Those fools did not matter."

  Hex remained motionless, head bowed in submission.

  Sterling took in the dungeon once more. The bent iron, the footprints on the damp stones, his daughter, defeated in more ways than one. His voice was smooth when he spoke again.

  "And neither do these unplanned... setbacks."

  Finally, he looked down at Hex. "Compose yourself, child. Your failures matter not. Remember, breathe, focus."

  Hex inhaled sharply, straightening her back. "Yes, Father."

  Sterling lifted a hand, a single gloved finger pointing toward the moisture-darkened stone. There, imprinted in the damp, were two sets of footprints, both leading in different directions, both vanishing at separate points along the dungeon walls.

  "Fetch your pets," he said, his voice as steady as ever. "One of them has a lot of explaining to do."

  Hex swallowed hard. "But Father... "

  Sterling turned to her. That was all it took.

  She snapped her mouth shut, nodding quickly. "Right away, Father."

  Without another word, she hurried off, her footsteps sharp against the stone as she vanished up into the palace.

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  Sterling turned away from the broken cell, moving at the slow, deliberate pace of a man with nowhere to be, no reason to hurry.

  Ahead lay only inevitability.

  Sterling sat upon his throne of ended lives, still as death. The Dark One's mask concealed his face, its carved features merging bone, bark, and antler into something primordial, an eerie sentinel carved from nature’s ruin. He did not move. He did not need to.

  The heavy doors groaned open.

  Hex stepped through first, shoulders high, but a stiffness clung to her movements, the weight of her earlier shame pressing down. Behind her, the three creatures slunk into the hall.

  Giggles, did not twitch. He knew when to stay still.

  Cackle’s forever grin was nonexistent, his usual cheerful cruelty absent.

  Bash, who normally made the world move for him, hunched slightly, as if trying to disappear.

  They all felt it, the dominance of his presence, the permanence of the blood beneath their feet. Never scrubbed away. Never allowed to dry. A crimson path stretched toward the throne, a macabre red carpet of ruin. This was not the blood of the forgotten, but of the once powerful—the ruler who dared to claim dominion over this land before Sterling. His defeat had been absolute, his life’s essence an eternal warning of who truly reigns here.

  The empty sockets of the horned skull looming over Sterling’s throne bore silent witness to those who had knelt before it, only to never rise again. Their end was carved into the very bones that shaped its grotesque form.

  Sterling did not speak.

  They had come before their master's master.

  Hex stepped onto the crimson-soaked stone, her small frame dwarfed by the vastness of the chamber.

  The throne room stretched high above her, its towering windows casting long, pale beams of light that did little to warm the cold expanse. The scent of iron, old and eternal, wrapped around her, blood never allowed to dry, never washed away. It led her forward, guiding her down a morbid path, a reminder of exactly who awaited her.

  The throne of bones rose before her, the sockets of its horned crown staring into her soul. Chains swayed faintly from above, their rusted links whispering against one another in the stillness. The space was immense, but it pressed in around her all the same.

  This was not a place of comfort.

  This was a place of fear.

  And she entered it as nothing more than a failure.

  Sterling reached for the sword resting against his throne. His grasp steady, he lifted it into the dim light.

  Souleater.

  Its appearance had changed. Its surface now dark metal, etched with Dwarvin markings that pulsed faintly beneath the wisps of violet energy seeping from its edge. The sword did not glow, it devoured.

  At the base of the blade, two gems had been embedded. One, a flawless diamond, clear as frozen breath. The other, a deep emerald, rich and dark like the depths of an ancient forest. Yet, the weapon remained incomplete. Two hollows lay in wait, silent, patient, hungry.

  Sterling did not look at Hex, but his voice reached her all the same.

  "Which one?"

  Hex’s stomach clenched. "Father, I... "

  "Which one?"

  The repetition was unheard of.

  Hex swallowed hard, her fingers retreating once more as she turned toward her pets.

  Hex took a slow step forward, and the three creatures shrank as one. Giggles, Cackle, and Bash huddled together in a trembling heap, clutching onto each other as if the closeness might protect them. It wouldn’t.

  She reached out, her hands hovering just above their hunched forms.

  They squeezed their eyes shut.

  Her fingers lowered, pressing against their heads. A shudder passed through her, her pupils swallowing the whites of her eyes until they were nothing but, depthless, inky black, absent of anything human. For a single breath, she was somewhere else.

  And then, she returned.

  Hex blinked once, twice, her vision sharpening as she pulled her hands away. Her gaze dropped down to the cowering creatures, then settled on Giggles.

  "Giggles…" Her voice was quiet, almost mournful. "How could you?"

  Sterling rose from his throne, descending from the bone-forged seat, Souleater in hand. His movements were unhurried, each step a deliberate echo through the vast chamber.

  "How unfortunate," his voice smooth as ever. "Your favorite."

  Cackle and Bash did not hesitate. The moment Sterling advanced, they bolted, vanishing into the recesses of the chamber, disappearing against the walls like darkness retreating from the light.

  Giggles did not.

  The small creature trembled, fingers once more rubbing anxiously together in rapid succession. He looked up, not at Sterling, but at Hex. His wide eyes were filled with something fragile, something broken.

  "T’was sad…" his voice quivered, small and thin. "T’wasn’t right."

  Sterling lifted Souleater, its dark blade rising above Hex in silent expectation.

  Hex looked up at him. There was no plea in her stare, no resistance. She had no choice.

  She turned to Giggles.

  Her father called them, her pets. But that wasn’t how they felt to her. They weren’t mindless creatures, weren’t disposable. Like younger brothers trailing after an older sister. Even now, as she looked at Giggles, she felt it strongest with him. The baby. Her... favorite.

  Hex’s lips trembled. "I’m sorry, Giggles... It’s s’not right."

  Her fingers lifted, slow and remorseful. From beneath Giggles, a sickly green mist climbed upward around his tiny frame. He shuddered as it seeped into him, his trembling hands still rubbing together even as his body faltered.

  He looked at her one last time. His Big Sister. His voice was small, barely a whisper.

  "Not s’pos’d to be sad."

  Then, in a burst of golden lights, he was gone.

  Sterling’s gave Hex a rare grin. "Good. Now wipe that weakness from your face. We have business in Emberwood."

  Hex froze, her chest tightening. Her hands trembled as she dragged them across her cheeks, erasing the lingering tears as if they had never been there. Her breaths came sharp, uneven, but she forced them steady. She had failed him once. She would never fail him again.

  She straightened, locking the emotion away, burying it forever.

  "Yes, Father."