Bass walked Sena out herself. Callahan followed as far as the outer stair, then stopped when Bass lifted two fingers. He didn’t argue. He gave Sena a look that held warning and trust tangled together, then turned his attention back to the corridor.

  The counting house annex sat heavier than the streets around it. Stone that had once meant safety now meant containment. The doors were barred. A Catherine post stood at the entry. Bass gave her name and a short instruction, and the bar came up.

  Inside the air was warm with bodies and stale with breath. The Glinnel were gathered on the floor and along the walls, veils pulled tight or shoved back, robes wrinkled from sleep taken in scraps. Some stared at the doors expectantly. A few lifted their heads when Sena entered, and their eyes tracked her antlers with the familiar mix of resentment and fascination.

  Bass stopped at Sena’s shoulder. “Which one is it?”

  Sena stared around at their faces, seeking the soft figure of Hellen, her round face and sweet eyes. But she was not among the Glinnel.

  She looked back at the guards, one of whom was sitting idly on a chair while the other leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Where is Sister Hellen?”

  The one leaning sighed as if bored, hardly glancing at Sena. “I don’t keep track of their names. Too many of ‘em.”

  Sena suppressed a wave of fury at his lack of respect. “Have you taken any from this room? Are they being held elsewhere?”

  The seated one looked up at her, then at Bass, who raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said. “They’ve brought disobedient ones to solitary rooms. Couple down the hall there.” He pointed down an aisle. “Guards down there have keys.”

  Sena strode off without thanking him. The narrow hall was lined with windowless office doors, some with ornate nameplates, others unmarked. A guard sat on a bench at the end of the hall. He looked up as Sena approached and straightened, slower than it should have been for a man on duty. His eyes went first to Sena’s antlers, then to Bass behind her, and the recognition of authority settled his posture into something more alert.

  Bass didn’t slow.

  “Key,” she said.

  The guard blinked as if he’d been half asleep. “Sergeant –”

  “Key,” Bass repeated, and the second time it was not a request.

  He fumbled at his belt and produced a ring that clinked softly against his buckle. There were too many keys on it for any one door.

  “Which door?” he asked, rolling the ring on his palm.

  “I’m looking for Sister Hellen,” Sena said. “She’s my age. Pretty. Wears a long braid.”

  The guard stood, shuffled, to the first unmarked door on the left, and tried the key. The lock resisted, then yielded with a metallic click. He drew the bar, pulled the door inward, and stepped back.

  The smell came out first. Stale sweat, damp cloth, the sour edge of excrement. Under it sat the tang of old ink and rotted paper. Sena’s stomach tightened. She moved into the doorway before Bass could stop her.

  Hellen sat on the floor with her back against the wall beneath the high window, its shutters closed and barred. There was no cot nor blanket. Someone had taken her outer robe, leaving her in a thinner layer that clung to her shoulders. Her veil lay beside her in a heap, pins scattered near it like dropped teeth.

  Her hands were in her lap. Her fingers were red at the knuckles. One sleeve was torn at the seam, and a faint stain marked the fabric near her elbow. Her lip was split the way Sena had seen it before, only now the crusted blood had been rubbed away and reopened, the skin raw again as if someone had wiped her face too hard.

  Hellen lifted her head when the door opened.

  Her eyes found Sena, and her body tried to rise on instinct, then stopped, as if the room had trained her that standing invited punishment.

  Sena crossed the threshold and closed the distance in three steps. She didn’t think about Bass, she didn’t think about the guard. She thought only about the fact that Hellen’s breathing sounded wrong, shallow and quick, like she’d been pulled into panic and then forced to swallow it breath after endless breath.

  “Hellen,” Sena said.

  Hellen’s mouth worked. She swallowed, and it looked painful.

  Sena turned back to the guard waiting outside. “Water. Now.”

  The guard glanced at Bass, who considered, then gave him a curt nod. He made off down the hall.

  “They said you wouldn’t come,” Hellen whispered. “The other Sisters.”

  “Then those fools have never known a Kelthi in love,” Sena whispered. She crouched in front of Hellen. Her throat burned for her. She made her voice steady by force.

  “Who came in here?” Sena asked.

  Hellen blinked hard. Her gaze flicked past Sena’s shoulder to the open door, to Bass’s silhouette in the hall, and she shook her head a fraction.

  Sena understood. Names were dangerous.

  Bass spoke in the doorway. “Five minutes.”

  Sena didn’t turn her head. “Give me the door,” she said, and let the words be flat enough to sound like instruction rather than pleading.

  Bass hesitated. Sena heard it in the pause. Callahan’s absence sat in Sena with weighty regret. If he’d been here, he would have taken the corridor and made Bass look away by force of sheer certainty. Sena didn’t have that. Sena had only the mask she’d already decided to wear.

  “It will be easier if she can breathe,” Sena said. “You can stand outside with the key in your hand.”

  Bass watched Sena for a beat, then nodded. She stepped back into the hall, leaving the door open a narrow span that still allowed air to move.

  Sena turned back to Hellen.

  Hellen’s hands trembled in her lap.

  Sena reached out slowly and covered Hellen’s fingers with her own. Hellen flinched at first contact, then sagged, as if her body had been holding itself upright by refusing comfort.

  In that first moment of contact between Sena and the woman she was bonded to, she felt all the pain and fear and tension Hellen had borne during their time apart. It rose through the bond and into Sena’s heart and painted a picture of abuse and thirst and fear that made Sena tremble with rage. She had spent her days as Catherine’s pet while her lover, her friend, her human charge had suffered and struggled and waited and feared that Sena would not return.

  Hellen could feel the anger, Sena knew; it would be alive in Hellen’s Glinnel Tuning, and doubly so in the bond, going both directions. So Sena breathed, and tried to relax, tried to center herself in this room, in this moment, with Hellen’s hands in her own.

  Sena leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Hellen’s temple. Hellen’s breath broke once, then again, and then she managed a fuller inhale, the first she’d taken since Sena entered.

  Sena pulled back enough to look at her face. Hellen’s eyes were swollen. Her lashes were clumped from dried tears. Her cheek held a bruise near the jaw, yellowing at the edges.

  Sena’s fingers curled around Hellen’s hand.

  “Did they strike you?” she asked.

  Hellen’s gaze dropped. “They kept telling me to sit straight,” she said. “They kept telling me to fix my veil. They kept asking where I’d been, and who I’d spoken to, and what I’d heard. When I didn’t answer the way they wanted, they told me I was making it worse.”

  Sena’s chest vibrated with fury.

  “They said I could go back to the others if I behaved,” Hellen continued, voice thinning. “They said I could be comfortable if I… if I’d stop acting like I forgot what I was.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Sena’s hand slid to the scattered pins on the floor. She picked one up and held it between her fingers, the small piece of metal suddenly heavy with meaning.

  “You didn’t forget,” Sena said.

  Hellen’s eyes lifted, the bond filling with exhaustion and shame. “I don’t know what I am,” she whispered.

  Sena’s chest tightened. She wanted to tell her a dozen true things and none of them would fit in the space they had. So she chose one.

  “You’re my love,” she said. “You’re alive. That’s enough for the moment.”

  Sena let her thumb brush Hellen’s knuckles, slow and anchoring. “I’m so sorry, Hellen, but I don’t have much time.”

  Hellen’s breath caught, the sound of it going straight to Sena’s heart. Her fingers tightened under Sena’s palm.

  “Are you getting me out?” Hellen asked.

  The question was simple, carrying the calm of someone who had already asked the question a dozen times in her own head and had run out of ways to soften it.

  Sena’s mouth went dry.

  She remembered being trapped under the dock at Lethen Bay.

  There was no one there, at first, to hear her cries. She’d clung to the underside of the dock, her legs pinned beneath a pylon, and she grew colder, and colder, and she remembered thinking how cruel, to have lived through the quake only to die like this, alone and slowly freezing to death just steps from dry land.

  “Not today,” she whispered.

  Hellen blinked, slowly, as if her mind had to translate the words into reality. The fear that rose in Hellen wasn’t her usual panic, but a soft collapse, the moment before a person’s spine gave out.

  Sena felt it in her own body. Her palms went damp. Rage returned, bright and aimless, and she pushed it down because rage made her careless.

  “Not today,” Hellen repeated, and her voice was so small.

  Sena held her gaze. “I can’t,” she said. “But I’m trying, Hellen. I’m going to try and fix what they’ve done to you. Get you somewhere safer than this room. But I can’t take you now.”

  Hellen’s eyes slid to the narrow gap of the door, to the slice of corridor light, to the boots she could not see but could feel. She nodded as if she understood, and the understanding didn’t make it hurt less.

  Sena lifted Hellen’s hands and pressed them to her own chest, right over her heartbeat, as if she could give Hellen proof that she was still real, that she still loved her. Her tail coiled gently around Hellen’s arm in a small reinforcement.

  “I came,” Sena said. “I’m here. I will come again. I promise.”

  Hellen’s fingers curled into Sena’s coat. “What if they move me,” Hellen whispers. “What if –”

  Sena cut in, low and steady. “They won’t move you without leaving a trail. Callahan will hear. I will hear. You’re not alone in this building.”

  Hellen’s gaze flicked back to Sena’s face, desperate now, not for rescue but for certainty. “You can’t promise that,” she said.

  Sena held the words anyway. There was nothing else she could give her that mattered.

  “I can promise you that I will search for you. I will not stop searching.”

  Hellen let out a shaking breath. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Sena’s shoulder, and Sena wrapped an arm around her, tight and careful, holding her low to steady her. She counted three heartbeats and then forced herself to loosen her grip.

  “I hate you,” Hellen whispered, and the bond carried the truth under it: I’m terrified.

  Sena’s throat ached. She nodded, taking the blow without flinching. “I know. You can hate me for it. You can hate me until you’re out of here.”

  “You’re leaving me,” Hellen said.

  Sena leaned in and kissed her, brief and fierce, because words weren’t holding. When she pulled back, she kept her forehead close to Hellen’s. She remembered Rhalir’s arrival, hearing her mewling under the dock, the way he’d swam for her, the way he’d gathered men to tie off the pylon and free her from what would have been her grave.

  “I’m leaving the room,” Sena whispered. “I’m not leaving you.”

  Hellen closed her eyes and nodded.

  Sena forced herself to breathe slow, forced her voice into something plain. “I need you to tell me what happened to the bell. I fear if I can only get you out if I can stop the Dagorlind.”

  Hellen’s eyes opened again. The bond shifted, the fear giving way to purpose because purpose was the only thing that kept Hellen from breaking.

  “Alright,” she whispered.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sena said again, but it would never be enough.

  Hellen’s mouth trembled. “Just don’t make me wait forever.”

  Sena reached for the scattered pins on the floor and placed one in Hellen’s palm, an absurd offering.

  Hellen’s fingers closed around the pin. She held it like a weapon.

  Hellen’s throat worked. “The Bell. I was too late.”

  “Tell me.”

  Hellen’s fingers closed around Sena’s wrist with sudden strength. “They took the bands,” she said. “They took the clapper too. It’s gone.”

  Sena held her breath for a moment, then let it out carefully.

  Hellen’s gaze went to the door, then back. She moved her hand toward her chest, and her fingers found the inside fold of her robe. The motion was small and cautious, like she expected someone to slap her hand away.

  She drew something out and placed it in Sena’s palm.

  The scale sat there with a cool, fine weight. It caught the thin light from the high window and answered it with an iridescent shift that made color look briefly alive in a room built to flatten everything into gray. A mark had been worked into it, not inked on top, a piece of a larger sigil-line shaped with intent.

  “It was under the paint,” Hellen whispered. “They buried the Kelthi craft.”

  Sena closed her fingers around it.

  “I couldn’t take more,” Hellen said, voice rushing now as if she needed to finish before the door opened for Sena. “I chose one that looked complete and pried it free. I hid it here.” She pressed two fingers to the place above her sternum. “I thought if I brought you a piece – maybe your kind, the Kelthi, I don’t know.”

  Sena tucked the scale into the deep inside of her coat. The hidden ember settled against her skin. She lifted Hellen’s hand and brought it to her mouth. She kissed her knuckles.

  Hellen’s fingers tightened. “If they find it, they’ll punish you. I’m certain.”

  Sena let herself smile, small and bleak. “They’ve been trying.”

  A boot scraped in the corridor. Bass’s shadow shifted across the door gap.

  Sena leaned in close, mouth near Hellen’s ear.

  “You listen to me, my love,” she said. “My bondmate. My braid. I will not leave you here for long. My heart beats for you every second of every day. I will come back. And I will bring you out.”

  “Time,” Bass called. The door creaked open. The guard waited outside, a glass of water in hand. Sena stood, took the cup, and brought it to Hellen. She drank thirstily, greedily. Sena gave her shoulder a final squeeze, then stood, and let Bass close the door behind her.

  She stared long and hard at Bass.

  “You said Catherine’s men were only soldiers,” she said. “Is this how your soldiers are trained to behave?”

  Bass didn’t flinch at the accusation. She didn’t look away from Sena, either. Her gaze held steady.

  Then she glanced past Sena’s shoulder toward the guard who had brought the water, and her expression sharpened by a degree.

  “Open the door,” Bass said.

  The guard fumbled with the key ring again and drew the door open.

  Hellen sat back against the wall, the cup in her hands. She lifted her head when the light fell across her and her eyes went hard, a kind of defiance that had been sanded down by hours alone and still refused to vanish.

  Bass stepped into the doorway so Hellen could see her clearly.

  “You,” Bass said to the guard. “Where is Sister Hellen’s cloak?”

  The guard blinked. “We took it for –”

  “For what?” Bass asked.

  He swallowed. “For security. To make sure she didn’t –”

  Bass cut him off. “She is Glinnel,” she said. “She’s not a soldier. Glinnel don’t carry weapons.”

  The guard’s ears reddened. He glanced at Hellen, then quickly looked away.

  Bass’s voice stayed controlled. “Return her cloak, bring her something to eat, and find her a blanket.”

  “A blanket?” he repeated.

  Bass’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think the point of solitary is to freeze them?” she asked. “Or to keep them from inciting the room?”

  The guard’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.

  Bass lifted her chin toward the corridor. “Move.”

  He hurried off, keys clinking.

  Bass remained at the threshold. She kept one hand on the doorframe, and when she spoke it was to Hellen.

  “You will be given water,” Bass said. “You will be given your cloak. You will be given a blanket. You will not be handled for sport.”

  Hellen said nothing, but the doubt on her face was clear.

  When the guard returned, with a meager plate of stale bread and cheese and a moth-eaten blanket, Bass took both and passed them to Hellen, who took them carefully in her hands. Then Bass addressed the guard.

  “Very good. Now. I will be sending rounds through this hall. They will be making rounds of all of these doors, do you understand me?” The soldier nodded. “If the Glinnel are missing a blanket or a cloak when the rounds return, or if they have any additional bruises or maltreatments, someone loses their post.”

  The guard nodded. “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “We are not Brighthand,” Bass said coldly. “Stop behaving like them.”

  Hellen wrapped the blanket about herself. The moment she did, her posture changed. She wasn’t healed; just a little less exposed.

  Bass nodded.

  Sena didn’t look as Bass closed the door, because looking back would make her hesitate, and her resolve had never been weaker.

  “I do reward good work,” Bass said to the guard. She handed him a silver bit. “Take care of this one. She’s useful to us.”

  The guard blinked, and Sena, surprised, followed Bass down the hall.

  “You got what you needed,” Bass said.

  Sena nodded. “For the most part. Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Bass gave one sharp nod. “Make the most of it.”