BLOOD OF THE LAST KINGDOM

Chapter 3: Fire in the Quarters

"Pays what how?" Gad's voice came out low, though nothing about him felt controlled anymore.

"I don't know yet." Doran's admission surprised even himself, judging by the way his face tightened after saying it. "I've spent years trying to understand what I agreed to. All I know is it doesn't forget, and it doesn't forgive unpaid debts."

Mira stepped forward, ignoring the blood still soaking at the back of her shirt. "You're saying whatever's inside him is going to keep growing."

"I'm saying it already is."

"Then stop it," Gad said. "Whatever you did, undo it."

"I can't." Doran looked straight at his eyes without flinching this time. "There's no undoing a deal like that. There's only managing it. Which is what I've been trying to do since you arrived here."

The pieces clicked into place slower than Gad wanted. "That's why you made me chief slave. Why you kept me close instead of selling me off to the mines like the others."

"Yes."

"You needed to control me."

"I needed to control it." Doran gestured vaguely at Gad's chest, like the thing living inside him had a shape he could point to. "The angrier you get, the more it feeds. Keep you contained, keep the suffering measured, and it stays quiet."

"Measured." Gad's voice cracked with disbelief. "You've been deciding how much pain I get to survive."

"I've been keeping you alive."

Before Gad could respond, the door burst open and a guard staggered in, blood on his sleeve, breathing hard.

"My lord, the slave quarters. There's a riot."

The corridor outside the manor gave way to chaos the moment they stepped into the courtyard.

Fire had already caught on one of the storage sheds, orange light casting long shadows across the yard where slaves and household guards clashed in uneven numbers.

Someone had broken into the armory. A guard went down under three men swinging makeshift clubs.

"Kestrel," Mira said under her breath, spotting a wiry man directing the chaos from near the gate, shouting orders clearly a plan that had been initiated for weeks.

"You knew about this?" Gad asked her.

"I knew people were angry. I didn't know he'd come tonight."

Doran's guards moved past them toward the fighting, and Doran grabbed Gad's arm before he could follow. "This works in our favor. Let them see what happens to slaves who rise up. It buys us time before word reaches Vantrell."

Gad pulled his arm free. "Those are my people."

"They're property causing a fire in my courtyard."

"They're prisoners of a war that ended years ago." Gad's voice rose over the noise around them. "You've had me punishing my own for a household that destroyed everything they had left."

Doran's expression got tough. "Then prove where your loyalty sits. Go out there and end it before it spreads to the eastern wing. Do that, and I'll reconsider everything you just said."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I stop managing what's inside you and let it burn through you unchecked, right here, in front of everyone." Doran's voice dropped, quiet enough that only Gad could hear it. "You saw what it did to that guard's wall. Imagine what it does to you if I stop holding it back."

Rennick appeared at the courtyard's edge, sword drawn, watching the standoff instead of joining the fight, waiting for Gad's answer more than Doran's order.

Mira grabbed Gad's sleeve. "Don't do this for him."

"I'm not." Gad's eyes stayed on the burning shed, on the men fighting for something that wouldn't save them tonight. "I'm doing it because more people die if I don't."

He moved before Doran could respond, jumping straight into the chaos, grabbing the first swinging club before it hit a guard's skull and wrenching it from the attacker's hands.

He didn't fight to kill. He fought to separate, to pull bodies apart before blades found flesh, shouting names he recognized from the slave quarters, men who'd shared food and silence with him for months.

Kestrel spotted him crossing the yard and abandoned the gate to intercept him directly. "You're helping them?"

"I'm stopping a slaughter."

"This was supposed to be the start of something."

"It's the start of a grave if it keeps going." Gad grabbed Kestrel's collar, no surge this time, just raw strength earned through months in the pit. "Call them back. Now."

Kestrel's eyes flicked past Gad's shoulder, toward the manor, toward Doran watching from the steps with Rennick beside him. Something calculating appeared in his face.

"You're protecting the man who enslaved us."

"I'm protecting them from getting killed for nothing."

Kestrel shoved free of Gad's grip and raised his voice over the courtyard, calling the retreat toward the tunnels beneath the slave quarters, the same escape route Gad hadn't known existed until this exact moment.

Men scattered into the dark, dragging wounded with them, leaving the fire to burn itself out against stone that wouldn't catch.

By the time the guards regained control, half the courtyard stood empty, and Doran descended the steps slowly, surveying the damage with an unreadable expression.

"You stopped it," Doran said.

"I stopped a m******e. That's different from stopping them."

Doran studied him for a long moment, something moved behind his eyes that hadn't been there before, not quite trust, but the beginning of a calculation.

"You held back tonight," Doran said. "The power stayed quiet the entire time."

"I didn't need it."

"No." Doran's voice dropped low enough that Rennick, standing several feet away, couldn't hear it. "You didn't need it because you chose restraint. That's the first time anyone carrying that thing has ever done that in front of me."

Gad frowned. "Meaning what?"

Doran's expression turned grim, the calculation behind his eyes finally settling into something like dread.

"Meaning it's going to notice," Doran said. "And it's not going to like being denied.”