Chapter 198: The Captain’s Order

Serris leaned back in his chair, the worn wood creaking under his weight. The tankard in his hand was warm now, the ale inside gone flat, but he didn’t reach for another. The celebration swelled around him—laughter, boasting, the clatter of dice on scarred tabletops but he had stopped participating an hour ago.

He watched it all with the distant patience of a man who had learned that joy was something that happened to other people.

A figure dropped into the seat across from him. Vedran, his second, his face flushed with drink but his eyes still sharp. He had been a soldier long enough to know when to drink and when to watch, and he was watching now.

“Any word from Derek?” Serris’s voice was low, meant for Vedran alone. “The capital.”

Vedran wiped a hand across his mouth, leaning closer. His voice dropped to match.

“Word came through this afternoon. Derek’s requesting we track a monster. Says it can pass for human.” He paused, his eyes flicking toward the door, toward the shadows beyond. “White hair. Red eyes. Beautiful face. That’s what he sent.”

Serris’s expression didn’t change. His fingers, wrapped around the tankard, tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Derek.” The name was flat, stripped of any warmth it might once have held. “He gives orders like he already wears the crown.”

Vedran said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“Any leads?”

Vedran’s gaze drifted toward the back of the room, toward the knot of younger soldiers who had been too quiet since the celebration began. The ones who had ridden in with the cart.

“There was an incident. At a tavern near the garrison gate. Couple of men went in, didn’t come out.” His voice was careful, measured. “Someone saw threads. Silk. Fine as spider’s work, they said. Cut through bone like it was butter.”

Serris set his tankard down. The sound was soft, final.

“And this someone thought to mention it to our young friends over there.”

Vedran’s jaw tightened. “They think—”

“They think they can prove themselves.” Serris’s voice was quiet, but there was something underneath it. “They think they can bring a trophy to a dying king and be rewarded for it.” He pushed back from the table, the chair scraping against the floor. “Fools.”

He rose, and the men around them fell silent. The celebration faltered, laughter dying, voices fading, as Captain Serris moved through the room.

He stopped beside the young soldier’s table.

“You saw the girl in the cage,” Serris said. “And now you’ve heard about a monster in the city.” His voice was not loud, but it carried. “And you think it means something.”

The young soldier’s mouth opened. Closed.

Serris leaned closer, and his voice dropped to a whisper meant for one man alone.

“Whatever you think you know, forget it. Whatever you think you saw, you didn’t. Whatever monster you think you’ve found, you leave it alone.” He straightened. “Is that understood?”

The young soldier nodded, his face pale, his hands trembling against his mug.

Serris turned. The room parted for him, as it always did, and he walked toward the door with the slow, deliberate steps of a man who had earned the right to move at his own pace.

Vedran caught up with him at the threshold.

“Captain. If Derek’s monster is here—”

“Then Derek can come get it himself.” Serris’s voice was flat. “I don’t hunt other people’s quarrels.”

The young soldier, Dale, watched Captain Serris disappear into the night, the door swinging shut behind him with a finality that felt like a door slamming in his face.

’Fuck him.’ His fingers tightened around his mug, the ceramic warm against his palm, the dregs of his ale sour on his tongue. ’He only thinks of himself.’

Around him, the celebration was finding its rhythm again. Someone had started a song. Someone else was boasting about a wound that would scar nicely, about a demon he’d killed with a single thrust.

Dale heard none of it.

’If I stay like this—following orders, waiting my turn, letting men like Serris decide when I’m ready—I’ll never rise. Never be anything more than a name on a roster, a face in the crowd.’

“That’s what you get for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

He turned. The soldier beside him—older, heavier, his face already slack with drink—was grinning at him with the particular condescension of a man who had long ago made peace with his own mediocrity.

Dale’s jaw tightened. ’What would you know? You’re the type who’s content to rot at the bottom. Happy to be a cog, a tool, a thing to be used and discarded. You could never understand.’

He said nothing. He simply turned back to his mug, his silence a wall the other man was too drunk to climb.

The conversation shifted. Someone mentioned the vampire—the one in the cage, the one the captain had forbidden them from seeing.

“She’s young, I heard. Barely more than a child.” A soldier across the table—blond, good-looking, with the easy confidence of a man who had never been refused anything—leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I heard she’s beautiful.”

Another man laughed, low and appreciative. “A vampire, though. Can’t imagine what it would be like to—”

“To what?” Dale’s voice cut through, sharper than he intended. The table went quiet, and he felt their eyes on him, felt the weight of their attention. He forced a laugh, easy, dismissive. “You’d probably wet yourself the moment she looked at you.”

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then the blond soldier’s expression shifted. The easy confidence didn’t fade—it hardened, crystallized into something sharper. His smile didn’t waver, but the warmth behind it drained away like water through cracked stone.

“What did you say?” His voice was soft. Too soft.

Dale’s pulse quickened, but he didn’t look away. “I said—”

“I heard what you said.” The blond soldier leaned forward, his forearms resting on the scarred wood, his pale eyes fixed on Dale with an intensity that made the air feel thin. “You think I’m afraid of a caged animal?”

The other soldiers shifted. A few glanced at each other, One man—older, his face lined with campaigns Dale had only read about—reached for his mug and found it empty. He set it down with a soft clink and said nothing.

Dale’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t implying—”

“You were.” The blond’s voice was still soft, still measured, but there was an edge to it now, a thin blade of steel beneath silk. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? Trying to sound clever. Trying to make yourself look like the one who sees things clearly, while the rest of us are just… what? Animals? Brutes?”

Dale’s hand curled around his mug. The ceramic was warm, slick with condensation. “That’s not—”

“Enough.”

The word came from the older soldier—the one with the empty mug. His gaze moved from the blond to Dale and back again, patient and tired, the way a man looks at children who have forgotten they are not the center of the world.

“We’re not doing this.” He reached across the table, took the blond’s mug, and pushed it toward him. “Drink. Let it go.”

The blond’s eyes lingered on Dale for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then he laughed—a short, sharp sound that might have been genuine or might have been something else entirely.

“Fine.” He took the mug, raised it in a mock toast. “To the vampire, then. May she rot prettily.”

Dale sat very still, his heart still hammering, his hands still wrapped around his mug.

’A vampire. A creature of power.’ His pulse quickened. ’And she’s trapped. Alone. In a cage that any fool could open.’

He thought of Serris’s warnings. Of the captain’s cold eyes, his flat voice, his refusal to see what was right in front of him.

’He’s just afraid of what we could become if we stopped listening to him.’

His hand was steady when he set down his mug. His voice was easy when he excused himself from the table.

The corridor outside the common room was empty. Dale’s boots made no sound on the stone floor. He had learned to move quietly years ago, in the forests around his father’s farm, tracking game that would vanish at the first wrong step.

The door to the storehouse loomed ahead, the iron lock gleaming in the torchlight. The guard who was supposed to be watching it was nowhere in sight.

Dale’s heart hammered against his ribs. His hand, when he reached for the lock, was not quite steady.

’She’ll thank me. When I free her. She’ll see that I’m not like the others.’

Dale’s fingers brushed the lock. His hand was steady now, the brief tremor gone.

Then the air changed.

A pressure against his skin, his lungs, his thoughts. The torchlight at his back seemed to dim. The corridor behind him, so empty moments ago, felt suddenly very far away.

His hand froze on the lock.

Something was watching him.

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