The stranger's scream kept going.
Not a clean scream. A broken one—breath snagging, words tripping over themselves.
"I can taste her fear—make it stop—please—"
Aderic didn't flinch.
He stood beside the control pillar like he was watching a demonstration at a fair.
"See?" he said mildly. "It works."
Mireya's Silence tightened on instinct.
It did nothing to the scream. The sound wasn't traveling like normal sound anymore. It felt… threaded. Fed through the room by the runes humming in the walls.
Stellan's hand curled into a fist. Mireya felt the tension through the bond like heat under skin.
Mave stood between them, calm and wrong, eyes following Aderic as if he were a candle flame.
Aderic's gaze moved over the three of them and softened into something almost gentle.
"Let's not make this messy," he said. "Sit. Talk. Agree."
Stellan took a step forward.
"Where's the Confessor," he demanded.
Aderic smiled faintly. "Still busy."
Stellan's Pulse-sight flickered—just a breath—and Mireya caught the read through the bond: the guards in the shadows were shifting, tightening, ready.
A net, not a fight.
Mireya's mouth went cold.
Aderic watched Stellan's eyes shift and said, almost approving, "Good. You're learning to see the room."
Mireya didn't like how easily he spoke to Stellan as if he owned him already.
She spoke first, voice flat. "You want us alive. So call them off."
Aderic turned his head toward her like he'd forgotten she was there.
"Vesper," he said softly. "You're not in a position to negotiate."
Mireya's fingers tightened around her knife.
Aderic's smile didn't change. "And you don't want to make me impatient."
Then he nodded once toward the far wall.
A panel slid open with a clean click.
Something wheeled out.
Not a cannon. Not a crossbow.
A polished metal tube mounted on an iron frame, etched with runes that glowed pale blue. A lattice of glass coils wrapped around its throat like veins.
A weapon built by people who didn't like blood on their hands.
Mireya's Silence tightened harder, automatically, as if she could strangle it before it spoke.
Stellan's Pulse-sight rose—
—and smeared.
White glare flooded his vision for a half second, making him blink hard.
He swore under his breath. "What is that."
Aderic's voice stayed calm. "A correction."
Mireya's stomach sank.
A correction meant they'd built this specifically for her.
Aderic lifted his signet hand and made a small, lazy gesture.
One of the guards stepped forward and pulled a lever on the device.
The air changed.
First: a thin, high whine—almost too high to hear, more pressure than sound.
Then: a pulse.
A blast that didn't explode outward.
It tore.
Mireya felt it like a hook sunk into her Silence and yanked.
Her magic didn't simply fail.
It ripped open.
Sound punched through the holes it made—raw, violent, unfiltered.
The hum of the runes became a roar. The stranger's scream sharpened. Metal clinked like gunfire.
Mireya staggered.
Her head rang—not tinnitus this time. Worse.
A splitting ache like her skull wanted to crack along a seam.
She clenched her teeth and tried to pull her Silence back into shape.
It wouldn't hold.
It kept shredding.
Stellan grabbed her elbow, steadying her.
His own body swayed.
Because his Pulse-sight—his world—had turned hostile.
Every rune in the chamber flared in his vision like a sun.
Too bright. Too many. Too close.
His eyes watered. He blinked and saw only white glare with dark shapes swimming in it.
"Stellan," Mireya hissed.
He swallowed hard. "I—can't—see."
Aderic watched them falter with mild satisfaction.
"There," he said. "Now we can speak plainly."
Mireya forced her breath slow, controlling her own panic before it could spike through the bond and make everything worse.
She leaned into Stellan and said, very carefully, "Consent handoff. Now."
Stellan's jaw tightened. He nodded once.
"Take my sight," he rasped. "Now."
Mireya grabbed it.
For two seconds, she saw through his eyes—except his eyes were drowning in glare. Runes burned across everything. Guard shapes were silhouettes in a white flood.
Useless.
The weapon had turned his gift into a liability.
Mireya shoved the sight back before the nausea could crest.
Her stomach lurched anyway.
She swallowed bile and tasted iron.
Aderic nodded toward the device again.
Another sonic pulse hit.
Mireya's Silence tore wider.
Sound poured through like floodwater through broken gates.
Mave flinched for the first time—tiny, delayed—then smoothed again, expression settling back into calm.
That tiny flinch told Mireya everything.
The blessing wasn't immunity.
It was restraint.
Aderic saw it too.
His gaze slid to Mave, fond. "Good girl."
Stellan's head snapped toward him, blind with glare and fury. "Don't."
Aderic didn't raise his voice. "Or what."
Stellan moved anyway—one step, then another—trying to reach Aderic by stubbornness alone.
The guards stepped in to intercept.
Steel flashed.
Mireya heard it clean through the holes in her Silence—too loud, too sharp.
A baton cracked across Stellan's shoulder.
Pain slammed into Mireya's bones at the same instant.
She gasped, knees dipping.
Stellan grunted and kept moving.
Another baton hit his ribs—right where he was still healing.
His breath punched out.
Mireya felt it like someone had driven a fist into her chest.
She clutched the edge of a table to stay upright.
Aderic watched Stellan's struggle and said, almost conversational, "You see? Your bond makes you easier to manage."
Stellan snarled, half-blind. "We can choose."
Aderic's smile sharpened. "No. You can only pretend you can."
He nodded again.
The sonic device pulsed a third time.
This one was lower. Deeper.
A bass-note that vibrated through bone and teeth.
Mireya's knees buckled.
The world tilted.
Her Silence didn't tear—it collapsed in ragged strips, leaving her with every sound at full volume, amplified by pain.
Stellan stumbled. His Pulse-sight flared white again, then cut into harsh flickers.
He swung his elbow at a guard he couldn't properly see.
He connected anyway—pure instinct.
The guard stumbled back.
Another guard stepped in and struck Stellan across the back of the knee.
Stellan dropped to one knee with a harsh grunt.
Mireya felt that knee impact in her own leg and almost screamed.
She bit it down hard enough to taste blood.
She forced herself upright, shaking, and scanned the room the old-fashioned way—eyes only.
She saw the machine.
She saw the chairs.
She saw the collars on the table.
And she saw the stranger Concord behind the slatted partition—bound, shaking, gagging on his own fear as if it were poison.
Aderic's eyes turned back to Mireya. "Still want to burn my work?"
Mireya lifted her knife. Her hand wasn't steady. Her voice was.
"You're afraid," she said.
Aderic's brows rose, amused. "Of you?"
"Of what happens when people stop believing your word 'stability' means safety," Mireya shot back. "Of what happens when they hear the screaming."
Aderic's smile didn't move. "They won't."
Mireya's Silence tried to return, out of spite.
The sonic device punished it immediately—another pulse, sharp and high.
Mireya hissed, hands flying to her ears.
The sound wasn't loud.
It was invasive.
Like something boring into the soft parts of her brain.
She staggered back into a table.
Glass clinked.
A vial rolled—tiny sound, huge in her shredded head.
Aderic tilted his head, watching her like she was a specimen fighting a net.
"You're resilient," he said. "That's why you're valuable."
Mireya forced her hands down. Forced herself to breathe.
Stellan was still on one knee, two guards holding him by the arms.
Mave stood a step behind him, calm, eyes on Aderic like he was a sun.
Mireya's chest tightened.
This was the trap in full view.
She could throw her knife at Aderic.
The guards would kill Stellan.
Or kill Mave.
Or activate the seal and make her collapse.
Mireya's options narrowed to one ugly skill: survival.
She reached for the bond again—careful, deliberate, consent-based because anything else might trigger Inversion.
"Take my hearing," she whispered to Stellan. "Now."
Stellan swallowed and nodded, barely.
"Now," he rasped.
Mireya handed it over.
For a heartbeat, she heard less—because Stellan took the load, taking her shredded audio into his own skull.
He flinched hard at the sonic residue and clenched his jaw, but it gave Mireya one clear second of quiet in her head.
Just one.
Enough.
Mireya used it to think.
Then she whispered, tight and fast, "Tell me where the switch is."
Stellan's Pulse-sight flickered through white glare, searching.
He tried to point with his eyes.
Mireya caught it—barely—because the bond translated his intent more than his vision.
Control pillar. Black lever.
"Got it," Mireya muttered.
She moved.
Not at Aderic.
At the pillar.
A guard stepped to intercept, baton raised.
Mireya ducked under it and stabbed low—not deep, just enough to cut a tendon behind the knee.
The guard collapsed with a shout.
The shout hit Mireya's shredded hearing again and she nearly vomited.
She swallowed it down and kept going.
Her knife hand shook.
Her other hand reached—
Aderic's voice cut across the room, still calm.
"Stop her."
Two guards surged at her.
Mireya couldn't Silence them.
So she did the only thing left.
She ran straight into the danger and trusted Stellan to see something she couldn't.
"Take my sight," she whispered, and meant it like a prayer she hated. "Now."
Stellan's voice came through the bond, strained. "Now."
Mireya's vision snapped—through Stellan's eyes—still bright, still smeared, but with one thing clear:
The guards' spacing.
The gap on the left.
Mireya moved into the gap without thinking.
She slipped past the guards by inches and slammed her palm onto the pillar.
Her fingers closed around the black lever—
—and pain slammed into Stellan.
Not a bruise.
Not a cut.
A spike so sharp and deep it felt like his body had been split open.
Mireya screamed, silent only because her throat locked.
The pain hit her through the bond like a blade driven under her ribs and twisted.
Her vision blackened at the edges.
Her hands lost grip.
She heard nothing but her own blood rushing.
Stellan made a broken sound—half-gasp, half-choke—as if someone had driven a baton into his spine.
Mireya's knees hit the floor.
The world went out.
—
When Mireya came back, she wasn't in her body.
Not fully.
Her eyes opened to a different angle—lower, tilted up.
She saw the machine room through Stellan's eyes.
She saw guards' boots near his knees.
She saw Aderic's coat hem, immaculate.
Stellan was on his knees.
Breathing hard.
Hands pinned.
Aderic crouched in front of him, close enough to be intimate, voice soft as a confession.
"That's enough," the Prince murmured.
Mireya tried to move.
She couldn't.
Because she wasn't the one kneeling.
And Stellan—through their shared vision—lifted his head and met Aderic's gaze like a man being forced to choose between his spine and his sister.