Captured 18 Captured

• She woke to stone walls and firelight, wrists bound in front of her with something that itched against her skin — not rope, something colder, silver-threaded, humming faintly against the poison's last lingering traces still moving sluggish through her blood. Her head throbbed, memory fragmenting into disjointed pieces — the infirmary, the shattered window, a hand clamped hard over her mouth before darkness took her entirely.
• The room was small, windowless, lit only by a low fire in an iron brazier, stone walls old enough that moss had crept into the cracks between them. Nothing about it looked like the Blackthorn compound, and everything about it felt colder, older, more deliberate — a place built to hold things securely, not a room repurposed in a hurry. She counted one door, no visible windows, and the faint sound of voices somewhere beyond the wall to her left, too muffled to make out words.
• "Ah," said a voice from across the room, unhurried, almost pleased. "Awake. Good. I'd hoped to talk to you properly this time, without an audience insisting on interrupting us."