The Lower Quarters always carried danger in its air, but tonight the streets were sharper, restless. Nyasha and Zara threaded through the narrow alleys, the market's neon lights fading behind them.
"They've been watching you," Zara muttered, eyes flicking to the shadows. "Your father's hounds. Word is, he doesn't like ghosts walking around without his leash."
Nyasha smirked, though her hand brushed the Emberheart at her chest. "Let them come. I'm done running."
They didn't wait long.
Three figures stepped out from the darkness ahead, clad in black suits that shimmered faintly with wards stitched into the fabric. Their eyes glowed a pale, unnatural silver—the mark of the Oathstone's bond.
"Miss Kade," one intoned, voice flat, inhuman. "Your father requests your presence. Immediately."
Zara muttered, "Yeah, and I request you choke on your own teeth."
The nearest enforcer raised his hand, and the air warped. A whip of shadow snapped toward them.
Nyasha moved first. She let the Emberheart's fire curl through her veins, her hand blazing as she caught the whip mid-strike. The shadows hissed, recoiling from her flame.
"You're not touching me again," she said, her voice low, dangerous.
The duel erupted.
One enforcer lunged with a blade that flickered between steel and spirit. Nyasha parried with fire, the clash lighting the alley in crimson sparks. Another tried to bind her with chains of smoke, but Zara darted in, dagger flashing, slicing the tether before it closed.
The Emberheart pulsed harder, hungering. Nyasha felt it urging her—Burn them. Consume them. For a moment, she let it guide her, unleashing a ring of fire that roared outward, forcing the enforcers back.
But when the flames cleared, the men didn't scream or fall. They stood, skin scorched, eyes still silver, moving like puppets. The Oathstone's hold made them relentless.
Nyasha's chest tightened. He's enslaving them.
She struck again, this time focusing the Emberheart's flame into a single burst. Her fire didn't just burn flesh—it seared through the silver light in their eyes. One staggered, chains cracking, collapsing to his knees with a gasp of human breath.
Zara pulled Nyasha back. "We need to go! You can't take them all!"
Nyasha's fire burned in her palm, but she forced herself to release it. She stared at the freed man, trembling, weeping, while the other two retreated into the shadows like broken dolls.
The city seemed to exhale again, the danger retreating with them.
Zara swore under her breath. "Nyasha… what the hell was that? I've never seen fire do that."
Nyasha closed her hand over the Emberheart, heart pounding. "Neither have I. But I think… it's what my mother left me to do."
And far above, in his tower of glass, Adrian Kade stood at his window, watching the faint glow of fire rise from the Lower Quarters. His hand trembled once—then stilled into a fist.
"She's stronger than she should be," he murmured.
A voice, hollow and ancient, whispered from the darkness behind him:
She will either bow… or burn