Stepping out of the dimly shadowed corridor brought the training grounds into view, teeming with soldiers on the move.
Ever since the unidentified raiders had struck Raedgo Castle, internal security had tightened incomparably. Defensive magical artifacts, crafted with painstaking care by high-ranking mages, stood stationed without a gap along the outer battlements, and double portcullises had been installed at every gate.
Background checks on everyone entering and leaving the citadel were enforced with unprecedented rigor. It was a measure taken against the likelihood that an insider who leaked intelligence to the enemy still lurked within the fortress walls.
Varkas, of course, had no intention of denying that his own wife was the prime suspect. He knew all too well that every thread of circumstantial evidence pointed straight at Talia.
She had already displayed overt enmity toward the Eastern Diocese. The ancient tomes preserving the lore of Tiramer, the drawings, and the talismans discovered in her chambers would hardly weigh in her favor either. Most damning of all was the eyewitness testimony placing her at a heretical assembly.
At the time, he had dismissed it as an absurd fabrication, yet now he found himself soberly accepting the chance that she had truly been swayed by heretical doctrines.
Perhaps in her aimless grief after losing the child, she had succumbed to the cultists’ temptations. She was, beneath it all, an unexpectedly tenderhearted woman. Watching them face slaughter would have been more than she could bear. The Zram had likely preyed upon her pure desire to save the heretics.
She could never have dreamed the vial handed to her contained a fatal venom. She must have believed it was merely an incapacitant, no more lethal than the draft she had once forced on Ayla…
Following that stray train of thought, Varkas let out a hollow, bitter laugh. He was losing his composure, feverishly weaving excuses on her behalf.
He dragged a hand across his face, reeling his scattered mind back in. Now was hardly the moment to dwell on her private motives. Even if she had been utterly used, her cooperation with heretics remained an unforgivable offense under the law. His only choice was to move swiftly and eradicate every scrap of evidence that could be turned against her.
He set his feet back in motion. Crossing the drill grounds and passing through the inner bailey’s gate, he entered a garden thick with midsummer green. Before he could stride through, a shrill shout stopped him in his tracks.
Looking toward the sound, he saw a maid standing outside the annex, squaring off against three or four soldiers. Recognizing her as one of Talia’s personal attendants, Varkas veered in their direction.
“What is the meaning of this?”
At his voice cutting in from behind, the soldiers berating the girl snapped around in unison.
“G-Greetings, Your Grace!”
The guards hastily snapped to attention. Looking past them, Varkas peered down at the young maid, who appeared on the verge of tears.
“I asked what is happening here.”
“T-That is…”
Pale and trembling, the girl hesitated, then set her jaw with a grim resolve, as though steeling herself for the worst.
“Her Grace is asking for Khan. I was trying to bring him out of the isolation quarters… but these men refuse to let me pass…”
Her voice withered to a whisper at the end. Varkas understood without being told. Whispers that the Grand Duke had nearly met his end by his wife’s hand ran rampant through the citadel. The guards likely feared a scathing reprimand if they indulged a prisoner awaiting her sentence by letting her summon a magical beast instead of repenting in silence.
His mouth twisting in a cold line, Varkas turned to the soldiers.
“Why have you barred her?”
“W-Well… he has been caged for so long, and his temper has grown unspeakably savage. We could not be certain it was safe to let him out. He has been thrashing inside the pen without pause…”
“Only because you neglected him! You wouldn’t even let us carry in water or feed him…!”
The maid cried out in a burst of outrage, only to shrink back the instant her eyes caught Varkas’s, swiftly dropping her gaze. He regarded her in silence, then motioned toward the guards with a tilt of his chin.
“Open the pen. I will assess his condition myself.”
The men blinked in startled surprise before fumbling a ring of keys from their doublets. They stepped up to the arched iron door and, hands shaking, turned the mechanism.
The heavy iron door swung wide with a groan, baring the ruined interior of the room. Varkas crossed the threshold without pause. The chamber, looking as battered as a battleground, unfolded before him.
The claim of a violent rampage had been no exaggeration. In the center of the flagstones lay the ragged remains of what had once been a cushion, surrounded by a drift of feathers; the carpet was shredded beyond recognition. Nor was that all. The thick stone masonry bore deep, jagged claw gouges, and shattered tiles lay strewn in every direction.
As he swept his gaze across the devastation, a rasping wheeze reached his ears, bubbling like boiling metal.
Turning toward the sound, Varkas caught the gleam of glowing, blue-gray eyes in the dark, and his hand dropped instinctively to the hilt of his sword.
Khan’s silhouette, rising from the deep shadows, had grown visibly emaciated. Eight days had passed while she was confined, and another three while he recovered; the beast had been left untended for nearly eleven days. It was hardly surprising he looked withered to the bone.
Varkas watched closely as the direwolf padded toward him. Even diminished, the beast remained formidable. That massive predator’s frame carried itself without a trace of faltering, every step taut with coiled muscle.
He eased his blade an inch from its scabbard. He knew too well how foolish it was to demand submission from a predator pushed through prolonged starvation. Tensing every muscle in his frame, he braced to cut the beast down the instant it sprang.
In that breath, the wolf pinned its ears flat and lowered its muzzle.
Varkas froze. While a chilling murderous intent churned in those pale eyes turned upward, there was no will to strike in the posture: belly pressed flat against the stone, neck extended in absolute surrender.
He saw it at once—the wolf was offering a truce. The magical beast understood that unless it proved itself harmless, it would never be permitted to return to Talia.
Even as its hollow flanks heaved—likely parched without so much as a drop of water—the beast lay motionlessly against the cold stone. Taking it in, Varkas drove his blade back into its sheath and spoke.
“Fetch water and provisions. Feed him.”
The soldiers, who had watched the standoff with bloodless faces, broke into a run toward the stores.
Moments later, a thick haunch of meat and a full waterskin were dumped onto the floor. The beast, which had been scraping the stones in restless impatience, fell upon the water and drank ravenously. Yet it turned toward the threshold without sparing the meat a second glance. The urge to reach its mistress evidently eclipsed all hunger.
Varkas drove a firm hand down onto the nape of its neck as it moved to pass. Remarkable though the beast’s intellect might be, he had no intention of sending a half-starved beast into her quarters.
“You do not leave this room until you finish it.”
The beast glared up at him with raw fury for a taut beat, then took the pig’s hind leg between its jaws. It had grasped his terms.
Having crushed and swallowed the heavy raw meat—bone and all—in an instant, the wolf let out a low rumble, licking the crimson sheen from its jowls.
Seeing that the beast’s forbearance was hanging by a thread, Varkas signaled the guards lingering at the doorway.
“Take the wolf to the Grand Duchess.”
The order had barely left his lips before the wolf bolted through the doorway. The young maid and the soldiers scrambled after it in a frantic rush.
Varkas stood watching their retreating backs for a quiet moment, then stepped out of the annex and made his way toward the fortress gate.
END