The communications bunker was silent, the echo of Kian’s defeated voice still hanging in the air. For the rest of the world, the drama was political; for Myra, the drama was now purely magical. She had minutes, perhaps seconds, before Marcus and Octavia fully processed Kian’s public collapse and tightened their security. The psychic fog of surrender was a powerful, temporary cover, but it was fragile.
Myra moved to the center of the room where a shallow, obsidian bowl rested on a stand inscribed with ancient Fae glyphs. This was not a tool for casual magic; it was a deep scrying lens, capable of tearing through even the strongest shielding, but at a devastating cost to the user.
“Gareth, I need absolute silence. Not even the hum of the auxiliary generators,” Myra commanded, her voice already taking on the low, resonant quality of intense focus.
Gareth, still glued to the strategic feeds that monitored the growing panic outside, nodded, cutting all non-essential power. The bunker plunged into a near-total darkness, save for the faint glow of the tactical map and the flickering candlelight Myra had arranged around the bowl.
The scrying ritual was intricate. Myra drew upon her own power, mixing it with the raw, volatile magical residual left in the air by Kian’s performance. She needed to piggyback on the chaos, to exploit the noise. Into the bowl, she poured a mixture of spring water, crushed moonstone, and three drops of her own blood—a binder of profound commitment.
As she began chanting in Old Fae, the air temperature plummeted. The bowl’s water remained perfectly still, reflecting the flickering light. Her eyes, usually the calm, cerulean blue of a spring sky, deepened into a turbulent indigo. She was pushing past the standard boundaries of her power, diving through the magical bedrock of the continent to seek a single, hidden resonance: Amelia’s life force, intertwined with the violent magic of the Alpha King’s children.
Focus. Find the pain. Find the light.
The first barrier she hit was Octavia’s ward—a sickeningly dense, black weave of corrupted Fae shielding. It felt like trying to punch through iron under water. The sheer force of the protective magic jolted Myra backward, causing blood to trickle from her nose. She gasped, but did not break her chant.
“She’s heavily shielded,” Myra whispered to Gareth, who was watching her with growing concern. “She knows the risks. She’s locked down tight.”
Myra changed tactics. Instead of pushing brute force, she used a lure—a subtle, psychic echo of Kian’s surrender, laced with desperation and mourning. She sent out the wave, pretending to be a lost signal of distress looking for a similar energy signature.
The iron wall momentarily softened. Octavia, focused on savoring her political victory, had left a tiny, psychic aperture in her defenses—a place where she was receiving the flood of gloating messages. Myra slipped through.
The bowl’s surface exploded into a swirling chaos of smoky gray. Myra didn't see Amelia first; she saw the location.
The vision hit her with the visceral force of a physical blow. She saw a place of decay—a dilapidated, crumbling stone structure, gothic in its ruin, covered in creeping moss and clinging vines. It was clearly an ancestral home, but long abandoned, standing alone in a region of swampy, dense forest she vaguely recognized as part of the old Greyclaw holdings, far from the central Pack territories.
Then the vision plunged, the view tunneling downward, past layers of earth and ancient rock.
Myra’s mental focus settled in a subterranean vault. It was dank and oppressively cold, the stone walls weeping condensation. This was no modern dungeon; it was a forgotten space, smelling of mildew, dust, and something metallic—blood.
In the center of the vault lay Amelia.
Myra’s heart seized. Amelia was pale, her skin almost translucent. She was chained, not with iron, but with thick, heavy bands of silver, which prevented her Morvane shifting and amplified the agony of the silver poisoning. She was semi-conscious, her breathing shallow and ragged. She was desperately weak, fading, yet still tethered to life.
Myra then saw the reason for the tether.
Octavia Vane stood over Amelia, not administering poison, but performing a complex, stabilizing ritual. The air around Octavia shimmered with unstable, dark purple light—a color Myra knew indicated corrupted Fae magic.
Crucially, the magic wasn't focused on Amelia's pain; it was focused on her abdomen. Octavia was weaving complex energy strands directly into the Alpha-blood triplets. This dark magic was unstable and toxic, but it was being used to forcefully counteract the silver poisoning that should have killed the children days ago.
Corrupted Fae Vitality. She is using chaos to feed them life.
The realization was terrifying. Octavia wasn't just holding Amelia hostage; she was actively, magically stabilizing the high-risk pregnancy. She needed the Alpha King’s heirs alive—not for ransom, but as ultimate, devastating leverage. If Amelia died, the leverage was gone. Octavia was willing to use every ounce of forbidden power to ensure Amelia stayed alive until Kian's political destruction was complete.
The insight confirmed their worst fears: the clock was ticking, but the threat was not immediate death by neglect, but slow, inevitable magical decay and torture designed to break Kian.
Myra forcefully stabilized the image in her mind, locking down the spatial coordinates of the vault door—a cleverly hidden stone slab disguised as part of the cavern wall.
“I have it,” Myra whispered, her voice a raw rasp. She began translating the complex, subterranean spatial data, overlaying it on the encrypted tactical map for Zev’s team. “Old Greyclaw Manor, near the swamp lands. Coordinates locked. Subterranean vault, heavily warded, but the wards are designed for containment, not death. She is using Corrupted Vitality to keep the triplets alive.”
The effort of maintaining the vision and translating the complex data was too much. The obsidian bowl exploded in a cloud of thick, foul-smelling steam. Myra collapsed, her consciousness swimming in darkness, but her purpose achieved.
Gareth caught her before she hit the floor. The moment she fell, the last residual magic of the diversion failed. The bunker was just a cold room again, but on the tactical map, the coordinates for the strike team were locked in, a burning red target on a crumbling ruin. Zev’s team was already moving into the final approach zone. The diversion had worked, and the King’s plan was now in motion.