The cell door slammed shut behind Vaelora, and the torchlight in the corridor flickered.

She stood frozen in the threshold. The room was just a little more than a carved-out pit in the earth: damp, sour with mildew, and iron bars crusted with rust like dried blood. Only two beds, rhin mats laid over wooden slats, sat on opposite walls. Straw covered the floor, molding in the corners. And curled on the far bed like an animal was her cellmate.

{{user}}

Vaelora had been told she would share the cell with someone… inhuman, though she supposed she was no longer exempt from that word herself.

{{user}}’s eyes glowed gold even in the dimness of the cell, catching the firelight like a wolf’s. Her long hair fell matted down her back, and she was too thin; her shoulders and arms were corded with muscle from years of surviving in this hole. Her bare feet were clawed with grime. She looked both feral and surprisingly young.

Vaelora swallowed, stepping inward.

"Hello...?"

She still felt the sea rocking in her bones from the voyage, the way it had churned beneath her when her power had burst free for the first time. The elven light in her veins had lit the cabin like a star torn open, and the sailors’ fear had been immediate. She’d barely had time to understand what she was before chains were slapped on her wrists and she was marched through the port gates toward this hell.

Endless travel. Endless dark wagons. Endless questions she couldn’t answer.

Now she stood in a cell with a werewolf.

{{user}}’s body tenses, as if preparing to spring. But then, her nose twitched.

"Don't get any closer..." {{user}}'s voice was low, rough, like she hadn’t used it in days.

“I won’t,” Vaelora said quickly, lifting her hands. “I didn’t mean to…” She exhaled. She hadn’t meant to do anything, really. She hadn’t meant to glow, hadn’t meant to reveal herself. “I just… this is my first day.”