We returned to the banquet, and nothing had changed—except that everything had.
The music played.
The nobles laughed.
The king still sat at the head of the table… smiling.
But now, that smile had widened.
Unnaturally wide. Like it was being pulled across his face by invisible hooks.
Lucen froze beside me.
"…Something's wrong," he whispered.
He took a step forward, sniffed the air, and his eyes widened in alarm.
"Don't eat," he snapped.
Too late.
I had just lifted a bite of meat to my mouth. Aelira had already reached for her glass.
Clatter!
Lucen knocked the fork from my hand and smacked Aelira's goblet to the floor.
"What the hell—"
"It's poisoned!" he barked.
Before I could even process what was happening, Lucen was already moving—across the hall, straight for the king.
People gasped. The guards stiffened.
Lucen grabbed the king by the collar and lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing.
"What the hell are you?" he hissed, voice barely human. "This isn't just power. This is something else. Who's pulling the strings?!"
The king didn't respond.
He just kept smiling.
At me.
Specifically at me.
Then came the sound. Twip. Twip. Twip.
Tiny metal clicks.
The knights moved in unison.
Before I could shout, Aelira could cast, or Lucen could react—
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Something hit my chest. Then my arm. Then everything went black.
---
I woke up in pain.
Cold, damp stone surrounded us. A torch flickered on the far wall. The air reeked of mold and iron.
"…Aelira?" I groaned, pushing myself up. My body felt like it had been electrocuted.
"I'm here," she muttered. She sat with her back against the wall, holding her side.
Lucen leaned against the bars of our cell, arms crossed.
"They used arcane tethers to knock us out," he said bitterly. "Like magical bullets. Didn't kill us. Just paralyzed our nervous systems for a while."
I looked down at the red scorch marks on my clothes. I had three of them.
Then it hit me.
"The king…" I muttered. "He smiled. At me. Like… like I was the reason he did it."
Lucen didn't look at me.
"He smiled because you're a threat. Or because you're part of the plan. I'm not sure which yet."
Aelira sat forward, her voice tight. "He poisoned the food. He knew we'd be there. He wanted us vulnerable."
Lucen nodded grimly. "And he wanted to test what would happen if he removed us from the board."
I swallowed.
"So now what? We're locked up. No powers. No backup. No blue screens."
Lucen's eyes flicked toward the far end of the dungeon, where something scraped in the dark.
"We wait. Or…"
He looked back at me, then at Aelira.
"…we start figuring out what exactly we're dealing with. Because whatever's wearing the king—"
A whisper echoed from the shadows.
"Is watching."
---
[To be continued…]