Lyria's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

The guards dragged the cloaked figure toward the arena wall. Lyria followed, wolf at her heel. She needed the killer alive. A name. Proof of who sent him. Selenya's warning still rang in her ears: someone else waited inside these trials. She would not find them without a mouth to talk. But the figure fought. He twisted loose of the guards and lunged again, this time straight at Lyria. A blade flashed from his sleeve. He aimed for her throat. She had no time to think. She stepped in and drove her sword through his chest. He dropped. His eyes went flat. The last breath left him. Her wolf calmed at once. The threat was gone. So was her only witness. Selenya reached her, breathing hard. She knelt by the body and pressed two fingers to the still chest. "Gray," she said. "Fading now. Whatever he knew died with him." She stood and looked at Lyria without blame. "You had no choice. He meant to kill you." "I needed him," Lyria said. Her hands shook. "He was the only thread to whoever's behind this." "The thread is cut," Selenya said. "We start over." A shadow fell across the body. Adrian stood there, arms folded, watching the corpse with a flat face. He was a rival recruit who had mocked Lyria for weeks over her broken sword. She braced for another jab. But Adrian did not sneer. "I saw the man before," he said. "Two nights back. Near the sanctum where the beasts go still." He spoke plainly, no boast in it. "He wasn't alone. Someone waited for him at the door. Hood up. Never went inside." Lyria stared at him. "Why tell me this?" "Because whoever it was is still here," Adrian said. "That's a problem for all of us." He glanced at the dead man. "You killed our best answer. So I'm giving you the next one." Selenya's violet eyes sharpened. "The stone sanctum. If the orchestrator stood at its door and would not enter, the building frightened them." She looked at Lyria. "A corrupted soul cannot bear that stillness. It marks them." Lyria wiped her blade on the dead man's cloak. Around his neck hung a worn collar, dark with old bloodstains. A handler's mark. He had been someone's animal, sent and thrown away. She left it where it lay. "Then that's where we look," she said. "Not for a face. For the one soul that won't step inside." Adrian nodded once and walked back toward the recruits. Selenya watched him go. "Odd," she murmured. "His soul flickered just then. I've never read him clean." Lyria filed that away. She had lost her witness and gained a place to hunt. The killer was dead. The hunter was not. She started toward the sanctum with her wolf and a plan that had teeth.