He Who Unmakes Kings

CHAPTER 4

The servant’s passage was a narrow, suffocating path made up of just stone that Drek had memorized when he was a boy. Back then, it was how he hid from his father’s relentless, judging gaze. 

Tonight, it was the only thing keeping us from the executioner's block. We emerged into the merchant quarter, the air thick with the smell of wet grain, coal smoke, and cheap oil.

We moved fast, like ghosts in the darkness. But one thing about the Syndicate was that they didn't just hunt with brute force; they hunted with intent. Every shadow seemed to stretch toward us, and every alleyway felt like a trap waiting to snap shut.

The street ahead of us collapsed suddenly and we were met with a force that neither of us was sure we could reckon with. Maren Voss was there, one of the Order’s most skilled hunters. She shifted into a heavy, reinforced form, her muscles bulging like iron cables beneath her skin.

She tore the upper timbers of a building down in a split second, tons of beam and plaster crashed into the street, a perfect, calculated wall that cut us off in four seconds flat. It was clean and deliberate, like a door closing on our lives.

She was as efficient as she was dangerous. She shifted again, moving into a low, ground-hugging form that devoured the space between us. She was a predator who understood and knew every possible way to kill a man—or another beast.

"Get back!" I shouted.

I threw my hands out, forcing the Null pulse forward. It hit the air like a hammer, but it scattered. It lacked the anchor of a physical target and lost its bite before it could reach her. Maren suddenly smiled and took a cautious step forward. She was dancing on the edge of my reach, keeping the distance precisely where I was useless. She was playing with us, her movements fluid and making sure she didn’t waste any effort.

She funneled us into a grain alley and we had no choice but to retreat. Two soldiers blocked the far exit, their eyes glowing with the hungry light of the hunt. They were already shifted, hardened, and ready for a kill. They didn't see a human and a broken prince; they just saw two bounties to be collected.

Drek didn't hesitate as he snatched a broken piece of wood from the mud. He moved with the desperate anger of a man who had suddenly decided that being human didn't make him prey. He went for the nearest soldier, ducking a heavy claw and driving the wood into the creature’s thigh.

It was a messy, brutal exchange, but it bought us the only thing we had: time. He was fighting for his life, and for the first time, he wasn't using a title or a bloodline. He was using sheer grit.

I closed the distance between the second soldier who lunged, his claws whistling through the air, and I let the cold inside me open wide.

I caught his armor with both hands. The pulse didn't scatter this time but It slammed into him like a landslide. He dropped, his shifting skin sloughing off as he hit the ground a broken, human mess, gasping for air he didn't know how to use anymore.

The path was open and as if our minds were synced, we decided not to fight. We ran.

We found a drainage channel—a narrow, filth-ridden slit in the base of the alley—and dove in without thinking. We crawled through the dark, the sludge pressing against our skin, our breath hitching in the tight, freezing space. 

I could feel the grit in my mouth and the damp cold of the sewage seeping into my clothes, but I didn't care. I kept my hand on the wall, dragging myself forward until the sounds of the pursuit turned into a dull, distant thrum.

We finally dragged ourselves out into the lower ward. We were covered in mud, shivering, and gasping for air.

Drek leaned against the brickwork, one hand pressed to his ribs. He counted the damage in the silence. He was breathing hard, his face pale in the light of a flickering streetlamp. The mud made him look like a commoner, a stark contrast to the silks he’d worn in the vault.

"She did not follow," Drek said, catching his breath.. He was staring at the mouth of the channel as if he expected her to emerge at any second.

I wiped the muck from my eyes. "She’s the best hunter in the sector, isn't she?"

"She has eleven years of completed contracts," Drek replied. He leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes searching the darkness of the alley. "Not one left open. She had us, Salvatore. We were dead in that alley. She played the game, she cornered the prey, and then she walked away." He looked back at the dark, gaping maw of the channel. "She chose to let us go."

The gravity of his words settled over me, heavier than the cold.

"She was told to track, not finish," I realized. "Someone wants to know where we’re going before they decide what to do with us."

Drek didn't say his father’s name because he simply didn't need to. The silence stretched between us, filled with the weight of the Order’s secrets.

My mind raced back to the stronghold, to my journal sitting on the desk, waiting to be read. I was only four pages from the end of the cipher. Whatever my father had found—whatever horror he had unearthed that cost him his life—it was tied directly to the source of the Syndicate's power. It was tied to what Drek’s father was protecting.

The Syndicate wanted us to reveal our destination. They wanted to see if I would lead them back to the source, back to the secrets that could topple their entire hierarchy.

"If she’s following us," I said, my voice cold, "then she’s going to lead us straight to what we’re looking for."

Drek straightened his coat, his eyes hardening into something that looked less like a prince and more like a survivor. He wiped the slime from his hands with a scrap of fabric.

"Then let her follow," he whispered. "If they want to see where we go, let's show them exactly what happens when you corner a Nullifier and a prince."

I gripped the mud-stained wall, still feeling the cold deep in my marrow, pulsing in time with my own heartbeat. I was no longer an invisible man nor was I a victim. I was the key to their collapse, and I was finally starting to understand why they were so afraid to kill me.

The hunt had shifted. We were the bait, but we were the ones holding the trap. I looked at the dark street ahead, my heart hardening. My father’s death wouldn't be in vain. I was going to finish what he started, and I was going to burn the Order to the ground for it.