There was something rotten in the Queen's Court.

Kayla Starr pressed her lips over a bitter smile. Her head was bowed. The lords who stood above her could not possibly see her face or any expression it bore, but it was not for their sake that she sought to hide her ill mirth. Kayla breathed slow and deep, shifting her focus inward. A trick taught to every Amith Capil trainee – one among many meant to patch them up in a pinch, get them moving, keep them pushing on until they reached safety.

All hoaxes, in the end. There was no safety for the likes of them.

The floor was cold and hard under her knees. Kayla shifted minutely to relieve the pressure. Some time had passed since she was summoned. A quarter hour at least. Kayla had kept still much longer for the sake of a mission, a chance to catch a target off-guard. But not like this. Not with her forehead pressed against cold stone, body tense with the effort of balancing much of her weight against one hand.

A movement at her periphery had Kayla's head snapping to the side. The Council did not notice the breach of etiquette. Their attention was similarly caught by the monster rising to its feet some steps away. The sudden silence in the room left Kayla's neck prickling with cold sweat.

Kayla took a breath, and raised her head.

The monster stood at the very back of the hall. A black veil covered its body. The fabric was thick, with no slits to allow the monster sight or others a glimpse of its face. If the veil's purpose was to mask the creature's presence, then it fell woefully short of its goal. Kayla had been aware of the shadow sitting at the foot of the Queen's throne from the moment she stepped into the Court. Her hand itched for a blade. The monster did not belong in a place of honor. It belonged to a hole in the ground, like all of its kind.

The monster considered the throne for long seconds. Kayla ground her teeth. If it dared stain the Queen's seat with its presence, she would cut it down, whatever it took.

A gust of cold wind rolled over the room and set the large chandeliers swinging. Crystal shards rang ominously and the light flickered, growing dimmer as several dozen candles lost their flames. Kayla got up on her knees. The pain and stiffness were gone, her body numb with a sudden surge of adrenaline.

The monster walked around the throne. A large mirror hung on the wall behind it, almost completely hidden by the throne itself. The monster stepped up to the mirror – then stepped through it, and disappeared.

Kayla stared. Her eyes darted around the room, seeking other mirrored surfaces. There were none.

"Soldier."

Kayla dropped back into a low bow. The Council had graced her with their attention at last.

"Your Lordships. I was called," Kayla began.

"We are quite aware of the reason you're here, Ms. Starr," Lord Greoff interrupted.

Kayla bit her tongue. Three weeks under the Council's direct supervision has made her familiar the particularities of its members. Greoff's rudeness was yet to lose its sting.

"We wish to speak with you regarding your current task," Lady Kiku said.

Kayla nodded once. Lady Kiku's soft voice grated worse than Greoff's entitled drawl. Kayla was not some wild, stupid thing that needed to be prodded and coaxed in turns.

"Stand," Lady Kiku bid.

Kayla staggered up. The right side of her torso burned. The muscles there were still weak due to weeks of bedrest and her injury, and the prolonged strain of keeping still had stiffened them into tight knots. The most minute of movements pulled on her flesh, threatening a painful cramp. It hurt to breathe.

Lady Kiku's eyes flicked briefly, sliding down Kayla's body before returning to the soldier's face. Kayla pulled her shoulders back, ignoring the resulting burst of pain. Her left hand clenched into a fist. Her right sleeve was rolled up and clipped close to the jut of her shoulder, empty.

"You appear to be having difficulties with your subject, Miss Starr." Lady Kiku began. "Your last report contained no new information. Its brevity was most disappointing."

"I am confident he will break soon," Kayla said.

"Three weeks have passed!" Lord Greoff exclaimed.

Kayla kept her tone even with some effort. "The subject is a trained soldier. His resistance to torture is higher than that of a civilian and although his body is restrained, his mind is far from defenseless. Nonetheless, I believe –"

"You misspoke, Miss Star."

Kayla swallowed her words and hurried to bow her head. Lord Barton's voice was particularly pleasant to the ear, low and rich, the kind of voice she might have imagined for a prince as a child listening to fairy tales at her grandmother's knee.

The man never failed to scare Kayla stiff.

"The boy was a Soldier," Lord Barton corrected. Kayla heard the smile in his voice, and her stomach twisted. "Now, he is a traitor on death row. Fortunes change rather quickly, do they not, Miss Starr?"

"Yes," Kayla said.

"We expect results by the end of the month," Lady Kiku said after a short, tense pause.

"Yes," Kayla repeated.

Lord Greoff harrumphed. He waved at the door, dismissing Kayla from his attention. Kayla bowed three times, for each Council member. Lord Barton's eyes followed her out, their weight disappearing only when the door closed at Kayla's back.

The large hallway that led to the Court was heavily guarded. Kayla kept her eyes forward and her steps steady. Two years ago, the men and women stationed along her path would have been fellow Soldiers. She would have known them by name, stopped to chat and relieve boredom born from hours of inaction.

The empty eyes that bored into Kayla's back were unfamiliar. Interaction with Zero was forbidden outside missions. Even if it were not, Zero's members did not seem interested in socializing beyond their ranks. In full uniform and with their characteristically blank expressions, they looked more like unpainted statues than men of flesh and blood.

The way through the Court to the outer buildings was long and winding. Kayla breathed easier once she descended the marble steps that led up to the palace proper. The pain returned, weighing her limbs. A warm bath and salve would ease the ache to bearable levels, if applied in time.

Kayla caught a flash of silver in her periphery. She turned, just in time to see a Zero soldier disappear through an unassuming gate that led into a stout, flat-roofed building. Kayla knew there were guards on the other side of the doorway. She knew, too, what lay hidden in a maze of tunnels some miles beneath the ground.

Kayla cursed quietly and changed her course.

The prison guards greeted Kayla with nods of recognition. "Why was Zero allowed inside?" Kayla asked, and watched the men's expressions twist with distaste.

"Orders," one of them grunted.

"Whose orders?" Kayla pressed.

"You know," the guard made a vague motion upwards, speaking of the Court without words.

"Bastard's got a token of passage, same as you," the second man offered.

Kayla charged into the building. She took a sharp right as soon as she crossed the doorway into what was, by all appearances, a disused training hall. There was a second door tucked in an unlit corner that required a key and opened to a cramped hallway. It ran around the building, tucked between the outer and inner wall. Kayla followed its length for thirty-nine steps, then fell to her knees and grappled with the trap door hidden beneath the floorboards. It required a key as well, the heavy lock unwieldy and difficult to make out in the dark. Kayla got it open through sheer stubbornness. Her fingers were going numb with pain, but she barely felt the sting, too angry to mind her body's complaints.

The trap door opened to a narrow, iron-wrought staircase. The stairs were steep and many, going down at least three floors with no landings in between. Kayla clung to the railing. The ceiling pressed close overhead, and with no light to guide her way it would be easy to grow disorientated and miss a step.

Kayla paused to breathe when she reached the bottom. A soft glow permeated the dark, illuminating a cavernous hall. The stone walls rose far above Kyla's head, their ceiling lost to shadows.

There were tunnels dug into the stone – a few dozen of them, each one marked by a lantern. Kayla oriented herself north and counted four lanterns right from the center. The path would twist a few more times before it reached its destination, but Kayla thread it often enough to keep her course true. She stood before a heavy metal door soon enough.

The smell of blood pervaded the air, thick on the tongue.

Kayla unlocked the door and strode inside, mouth pressed in a thin line. "Out!" she snapped.

The Zero soldier raised his head. He was young, his features clear and still, as if carved into his flesh. The blood on his hands sat dark over his pale skin and the cuffs of his white uniform.

The man chained at Zero's feet did not move.

Kayla jerked her eyes away. The Zero soldier advanced readily, unconcerned by Kayla's glare. He passed her by without a word. Kayla stood in the doorway until the man's steps disappeared. She walked back inside and slammed the door shut with a hot curse.

"Is it true?" the prisoner asked in a soft, rasping voice.

Kayla relaxed her hand, only now noticing it had clenched into a fist. The man's eyes were open. One was swollen, the lashes crusted with old blood. The other bored into Kayla with great intensity.

Kayla's throat grew tight. "What did Zero have to say?" she asked.

The man watched her. "You don't know," he said, and let his head hang. His arms stretched above his head, pulled tight by heavy chains. His feet were fettered to the floor in a similar fashion.

Kayla moved close despite her better sense. "Tell me," she bid.

The man laughed, a croak of a sound. "Better not to know. Isn't that how it goes around here?"

Kayla ground her teeth. She almost turned on her heel and left, but it felt too much like a defeat. "You betrayed us first, Dimitri."

"So I did," Dimitri said. He sounded amused, beneath the pain.

It was infuriating.

"You dare make light of this?" Kayla hissed. She got on her knees so she could look the man in his eyes. "Innocents died. Many more will perish to sate that monster's thirst. The man you were two years ago would not have stood by and watched."

Dimitri was quiet. Kayla tried to calm her breathing, sharply aware of her own fraught state.

"Tell me, what did she offer? What did Hale promise you, to have you turn from your duty?"

It was not the first time Kayla had asked. She expected no answer, but could not help prodding. Dimitri's defection was a blow she had not expected and it smarted still, as badly as her missing arm.

Dimitri licked his lips. They were dry; the cracked flesh filled with blood when he spoke. "The Captain did nothing. I acted on my own."

Kayla did not bother reminding Dimitri that Ira Hale no longer held a rank, or a future in the kingdom beyond the gallows. Dimitri would turn cold and distant, as he had in the past, and refuse to speak for the remainder of the visit. It was a display of loyalty fitting of a high-ranking soldier. To see it twisted for the pleasure of a traitor and a monster left Kayla feeling ill.

"Hale had a reason to help Beaufort cover his crimes, and his tracks." Kayla reminded. "Were you aware of their connection?"

Dimitri stared at the wall. Kayla bit back a snarl.

"The Court will have you killed," she spat.

Dimitri's broken lips quirked in a smile. "I'm already dead. As soon as they pull this... thing outta me."

A crystal dagger was buried between Dimitri's ribs, to the hilt. Kayla swallowed and looked away.

"You've got even less reason to keep secrets, then," she said. "Tell me. Let me in, and it'll be over, one way or another."

Dimitri licked the blood off his lips. His eyes slid to the stump of Kayla's right arm. Kayla let him look. She wanted the man to ask. Wanted him to ask after her sister, the team he'd left behind in a fit of temper so many years ago.

"It's not just me, Kayla," he said.

Kayla's breath stuttered in her chest. Old anger burned through her, budding out of a festered wound. "You didn't have problem fucking us over."

Dimitri's eyes slid shut and regret washed over Kayla like it was her own. She grabbed for the stray emotion – the first to bleed through the steel walls surrounding Dimitri's mind. Kayla's Spark flared to life. She pressed her advantage, following that thin link and using it as a channel to burrow through Dimitri's defenses.

Dimitri's face screwed up in pain. Blood trickled from his nose and ears. He was fighting, but battles of this kind were not his expertise. Excitement built in Kayla's chest. She would have him soon, she was certain – all of his memories, all of his secrets, laid bare for the taking. Kayla pressed on ruthlessly. She refused to be swayed by old friendship and the ache in her heart, for Dimitri no longer deserved her regard.

The last of the man's defenses shattered under her onslaught.

Then, there was fire.

Kayla fell back with a hoarse scream. Her knees cracked over the cold stone, a distant pain. She patted at her face and torso desperately with an open hand, trying to smother ghostly flames. The fire was not real, she told herself, yet it burned still, the memory of it like acid under her skin.

"Damned hellcat," Dimitri croaked, laughing with blood in his mouth. "Can't admit h-he's lost."

Kayla rose to her feet. "Dimitri," she began, but the man had already slumped, face slack.

Kayla forced her eyes down, to the dagger buried in Dimitri's chest. She thought of tearing it out, only half in anger. Death would be a kinder fate than whatever the Court planned for the man. In the end, she left without a word, leaving Dimitri to his fevered dreams.

It was not her place to be kind.