Chapter 10

N Y X A R A

They don’t put me in chains. That’s the part that stays with me. I’m left in a narrow room off the corridor, stone walls, a bench set into one side like it’s meant for waiting. No door is locked. No one tells me to sit. No one tells me anything. The wolves pass by the opening without looking in, but I feel them register me all the same. Like a number that’s already been counted.
I test the space without meaning to. One step forward. No reaction. I stop there. This feels deliberate. A pause while something else settles. Back in the chamber, there was no verdict. Just a shift. Heads angled. Eyes measuring. Whatever they decided didn’t need to be said out loud. It’s already recorded somewhere I can’t see.
My thoughts keep circling back to the vial. Not the moment I slipped it into the cup. That part was clean. Routine. I’m thinking about what came after. Or what didn’t. There was no recall order. No sharp command through the channel. No handler voice cutting in to ask what went wrong. I remember waiting for it. Counting breaths. Watching for the correction that always comes when you fail.
It never did. At the time, I told myself the Guild would review it later. That silence meant confidence. Now it reads differently. Like there was nothing to correct. Like the outcome had already been logged. The lab memory comes back without warning.
White room. Metal table. My arms laid out straight, palms up, as if positioning matters. Someone adjusts the straps at my wrists, not tight enough to cut circulation. Just enough to keep me still. A voice to my left asks if I feel dizzy yet. I say no. They write it down.
The first dose barely registers. A warmth behind my eyes. They wait exactly two minutes before increasing it. I know because the clock is mounted high on the wall, red numbers I can see if I tilt my head. They talk over me while it works its way through my system. Not about me. About thresholds. About averages. One of them says I’m trending ahead of schedule. That’s the closest thing to praise.
When my stomach tightens and my vision blurs, they note the response time. Someone presses two fingers to my neck and counts silently. Another voice asks me to recite my name. Then the date. Then a sequence of numbers I’ve memorized for situations like this.
I don’t throw up. That’s written down too. By the fourth dose, my hands are shaking. I focus on keeping my breathing even because uneven breathing gets flagged. There’s a mention of tolerance curves. Of adjustment periods. No one asks if I want to stop.
When it’s over, they flush my system and leave me alone to recover. Recovery is measured, not assisted. How long until my pulse stabilizes. How long until I can stand. Someone says I’m cleared for field exposure with minimal risk.
No one explains what that means. The memory settles, and something clicks into place that I don’t like. The poison didn’t fail. It did exactly what it was meant to do. It moved through a body that had already been prepared for it. Mine.
He drank it, and nothing happened because nothing was supposed to. Not yet. The variable wasn’t his resistance. It was my proximity. My reaction. What would change once the line was crossed. That’s why the deployment was rushed. Why I was sent alone. Why no one checked in when the result didn’t match the briefing.
They weren’t watching him die. They were watching me continue. There were notes in the lab I didn’t understand at the time. Words that didn’t belong with poison or endurance. Influence. Environmental factors. Proximity concerns.
I remember one handler saying wolves complicated things. Not because they were violent, but because they interfered. With what, he didn’t say. Just that extended exposure created variables the Guild couldn’t fully isolate. That’s why interrogation was forbidden. Not for my safety. For theirs.
Information moves differently around wolves. They ask questions. They notice inconsistencies. They don’t accept prepared answers. If I stayed close long enough, something was supposed to surface. Something the Guild had worked hard to bury under training and chemicals and silence.
Sitting in this stone room, I understand it now. I wasn’t sent to kill a wolf. I was sent to see what would happen if I stood beside one. I slow my breathing and run through the checks I’ve used since training.
Feet first. Ankles. Knees. No swelling. No heat. My hands move on their own, steady and familiar. I check my ribs where the straps would have left marks if I’d been restrained. Nothing there. My shoulders feel stiff, but that’s from holding still too long.
I pause at my left arm and roll the sleeve back out of habit. I’ve cleaned and dressed every injury I’ve had since arriving. I would have noticed something new. That certainty is still there when my fingers stop. There’s a faint line just below my inner elbow and it’s darker than the rest of me, like something pressed from beneath rather than cut from above.
I turn my arm under the light. The mark doesn’t change shape, but it deepens slightly, like it’s responding to attention. I rub at it with my thumb. It doesn’t hurt or fade. I know every scar on my body. I know where they came from and how long they took to heal. This one doesn’t fit anywhere in that record. I don’t remember anyone touching me there. Which means either my memory is wrong or it was never meant to be mine to keep.