Chapter 1708: Strong Emotions
The hunger that had been tearing Black Fang apart since he stepped through the door surged past anything she had left to hold it with.
Her vision whited out, her muscles pulled toward him against the chains, and the discipline that had kept [Eternal Hunger] caged for days cracked down the center.
The pull went so deep she could not tell where the spell ended and she began.
Quinlan stood in the center of the cell and looked at her.
She was alive and she was in a worse state than he’d ever seen this sometimes larger-than-life, unfairly overpowered woman.
Chained to a wall, she’d cracked from the inside with veins blackened beneath skin the dungeon had spent days draining, and [Eternal Hunger] pulsed through every serpent tattoo on her body in waves that reached for him with a pull he could feel in his own chest.
Guilt and relief hit him in the same breath.
"Sorry I’m late." His voice came out quieter than he wanted it to. "Got held up."
Black Fang opened her mouth and nothing came out.
She had held through every hour the dungeon threw at her by wrapping herself in agony and willpower, and all of it was unraveling because he was here.
[Eternal Hunger] was screaming toward him from channels that knew nothing but pain, and beneath the hunger a pressure was climbing her chest that she couldn’t name or bite down on the way she’d been biting down on everything for four hundred years.
Despite what her torturers might’ve thought, going through what she had affected even Black Fang’s psyche.
A weight lifted off her so fast she almost staggered in her chains, and her vision blurred.
Not having full control of her body and emotions... She hated that more than the chains.
"Oh Goddess." Myrasyn’s voice came from Black Fang’s side, hoarse and climbing in pitch. "Oh, Holy Mother, you actually came?!"
Her ears shot upright from where they’d been pressed flat and started swiveling toward Quinlan with an excitement that had no business existing in a dungeon.
She rocked against the wall with her hands above her head, pulling at her chains like she’d forgotten she was a prisoner.
"Also, what do you mean sorry for being late?! You got to us in less than two days! That must be some kind of record! ’Fastest time a man ever rescued his secret girlfriend from a hostile nation’s hidden dungeons!’ And he also grabbed the unjustly overthrown, poor and otherworldly beautiful elven queen while at it! Double record!"
Her cheeks turned rosy, mounting with her growing excitement. "I was preparing myself for weeks of torture, and if I’m being entirely honest, I’d already made my peace with a rather miserable ending."
Her long ears began moving back and forth rapidly. Swish. Swoosh. "I just stayed stubborn, refusing to give the traitors what they wanted."
Then her ears stopped. The excited swiveling froze mid-swoosh as her gaze shifted to Quinlan, and something behind all the enthusiasm recalculated.
She was an elven queen chained to a wall, the leader of the nation that almost ruined everything for him. And he was the man who had just turned this cell into a slaughterhouse. And she had no idea what he planned to do with her.
Her ears drooped. "You... you ARE going to grab me too, yes?" The pitch of her voice climbed. "I’m completely, entirely, utterly innocent!"
She shook her chains at Quinlan for emphasis. "I’m a good elf! Humble and youthful far beyond her years Myrasyn, the devout follower of Luminara! You should see how much I donated to the shrines!"
Quinlan didn’t respond.
His eyes hadn’t left Black Fang’s since he’d walked in, and the silence that followed Myrasyn’s declaration made it abundantly clear that the elven queen’s entire performance had been delivered to a man who was not listening one bit.
Her lower lip pushed out. Her ears, already drooped, flattened further into a full pout that four thousand years of royal upbringing should have trained out of her.
"Look at these two lovebirds... This is your life Myrasyn. Your knight in shining armor is ogling another woman while ignoring your whole existence..." she muttered under her breath, her cheeks puffing. "Just because you’re having the most emotional reunion the history books of Iskaris have ever recorded doesn’t mean you get to ignore me...!!"
Her lips trembled. Her ears twitched once, twice, and the pout cracked into quiet fondness as she watched the man stare at the woman on the wall beside her with eyes that made the gore-soaked cell feel very far away.
"...Okay," she whispered. "Maybe I’ll forgive it. But you better notice me in a few seconds at the latest...!"
Footsteps echoed from the corridor, two sets. Sera came through the doorway first, heaving, golden light still flickering on her palms. "Quin, I can’t believe you ran ahead without-"
She stopped. Her gaze found Black Fang on the wall, and the lecture died before it even fully started. A grin broke across her face. "You’re alive!"
The grin lasted two breaths before it trembled and broke, and the healer underneath took over.
Sera crossed the cell with golden light already blooming from her palms, sweeping the damage on Black Fang’s body with a focus that turned everything else in the room into furniture.
The last set of footsteps entered the cell.
Aelindra stopped in the doorway.
Her eyes swept what Quinlan had left behind - the compressed knot of charred flesh and steel on the floor, the blood painting the walls in streaks that hadn’t finished dripping, Shiori’s headless body crumpled between the chains. Her plan, her dungeon, her specialist, her final act of revenge for being [Subjugated] - all of it reduced to a butcher’s floor in the time it took one man to walk through a door.
Her legs gave.
She caught herself on the doorframe with fingers that shook, standing in the ruin of everything she’d orchestrated, and understood with perfect clarity that she had lost.
Then her gaze found Myrasyn on the wall.
She pushed off the doorframe and started toward her sister. Her legs dragged, her hands found the floor in front of her, and there was no pride left in any of it as she crossed the gore-slicked stone toward the woman she’d betrayed.
Myrasyn’s ears went still.
"Sister..." The word escaped before Myrasyn could catch it, her gaze locked on the ruin of Aelindra’s lower face as her sister dragged herself across the floor toward her.
For one breath the queen was just that. A sister, seeing something no sibling should ever have to see, and the horror was genuine, raw, and carried no mask at all.
Then she remembered who had put her in these chains.
Every trace of pity left Myrasyn’s face, and what replaced it had nothing in common with the woman who’d been bouncing in her restraints a minute ago.
The Queen of all elves looked at the mutilated woman without a shred of mercy.
"I told you that you were making the biggest mistake of your life, but instead of accepting responsibility and trying to right what was wrong, you doubled, no, tripled down."
Aelindra reached for her from the floor. Her hands rose toward Myrasyn’s chains in a gesture that needed no mouth to read.
