Kane’s POV

The cell smells like iron and damp stone. Blood, mostly.

I stand just outside the warded circle, arms crossed tight over my chest, watching the man chained to the floor breathe like every inhale might be his last. One of the attackers. Caught alive by sheer accident—or fate, if you believe in that kind of cruelty.

His wrists are bound with silver-threaded cuffs. His ankles too. Runes pulse faintly beneath his skin, old and ugly, carved into flesh the way desperation carves into ...