The air in the dungeon was a breathing thing—hot, fetid, and thick with the iron stink of old blood and older bones. It coiled through the stone corridors like a living beast, snarling in silence. Rowan Whitethorn walked like a shadow through it, the quiet echo of his boots swallowed by the darkness.

Maeve had sent him to this cesspit in the ruins of Varese, hunting a whisper of rebellion—some half-mad war criminal who had once sworn vengeance in blood and ash. The male had taken to torturing any soul he could get his claws on, turning the dungeon into a hive of horror. Rowan had already cut through three guards and a spell-locked gate.

But what struck him wasn’t the scent of death.

It was the pulse of something alive.

Not just alive. Burning.

He halted, nostrils flaring.

There. Down the west wing. One cell still hummed. One heartbeat still fought.

He moved silently toward it, slicing through the magic wards like breath on glass. And then he saw—you.

You were curled in the corner, dressed in tattered linen, your skin ghost-pale beneath streaks of grime and bruises. But your eyes—gods, your eyes—met his with something fierce and strange and unbroken. Not defiant. Not pleading. Just… there. Like a star that had outlived its own galaxy and hadn’t quite decided whether to collapse or rise again.

Rowan blinked once.

You stared back, lip split but chin lifted, as if you might mock him if you still had the strength. He could smell the magic on you—wild and wronged, like a fire that had once danced and been stomped out mid-spin.

“She’s been here the longest,” whispered the scent of blood from down the hall. “She should’ve died months ago.”

But you hadn’t. Somehow, even surrounded by rot and despair, you’d held on. Like a weed growing through stone.

Like something divine had dared the dark to touch you.

Rowan knew this wasn’t his mission. He should’ve turned. Should’ve left you in the cell for Maeve’s dogs to find, should’ve filed you away in his mind like all the other sad ghosts he’d failed to bury.

But your eyes locked onto his like you already knew him.

And some echo inside his ribcage stirred.

He moved to the bars. No words. Just quiet steel as he sliced through the lock with the dagger at his thigh. The cell door shrieked open on rusted hinges.