Victor didn’t move.

He stood his ground with the quiet resignation of someone who had already made peace with whatever came next, his eyes meeting Damon’s without flinching for the first time since the door had opened.

Damon stopped directly in front of him, the grip on his sword so tight that any metal that wasn’t a relic would’ve crashed.

He stared directly at Victor for a long moment before loosening his grip and lowering his weapon slightly.

"How do you get in contact with them?" he asked.

Victor blinked. Whatever he’d been preparing himself for, it wasn’t a question.

"Fire," he said carefully. "I light a fire on top of an old warehouse, then they come and seek me out once they see it. Why?"

Damon looked at him steadily.

"Because you’re going to betray me," he said, "and we’re going to save your sister while we’re at it."

Victor stared blankly at him. "What?"

"Tell them that we’re planning to strike them and that if they wish to know where from, they have to release your sister."

"What if they refuse?"

"They won’t," Damon said confidently. He saw the look on their faces when he mentioned the deaths of their five lieutenants. They wanted revenge, and this was their chance at exactly that. "Once you have your sister, you bring her back to our citadel."

"What about you?"

"You give them my location, and I will be sure to give them a warm welcome."

Victor lingered in silence for a moment, his eyes getting a little watery as emotions began crashing over him. "Why are you helping me? I betrayed you, I betrayed the people of this citadel."

Damon looked at him methodically. "I already killed my family, I don’t wanna kill yours too."

Although they weren’t related by blood, Kade was the only person in the world Damon considered family, and the images of his lifeless body slipping down onto the ground beneath him still visited him from time to time.

As much as he wanted to blame Victor for his behaviour, he couldn’t. Damon could still remember how blindly he wished to believe that Kade wasn’t evil, how he could’ve done the things that he did.

Victor said nothing.

There was nothing to say that wouldn’t have made it smaller than it was.

He stood in the pale lamplight of his room and looked at Damon with the expression of someone who had just been handed something they hadn’t earned and didn’t know how to carry yet.

"We leave at sunrise," Damon said, turning toward the door. "And Victor..."

Victor looked up.

"If you as much as take a step in the wrong way..." Damon spoke in a tone that carried heavily across the room. "You will die alongside your sister."

"I know," he replied, having experienced how ruthless Damon can be firsthand.

Damon looked at him for one final moment.

Then he left, pulling the door shut behind him, and walked back through the empty corridor toward his room. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

The castle was completely still around him. Everyone was asleep, unaware that the entire plan had changed drastically.

He didn’t go straight to his room. With the sudden change of plans, he had one stop he needed to do, and as he arrived at the final floor of the tower, he turned away from the door leading to his room and approached the other room.

He only had to knock once before Ivy opened the door.

She stood at the threshold in only her nightgown, her crimson hair cascading loosely across her slender shoulders, her eyes heavy with the exhaustion of the day.

"Damon?" she asked, slightly surprised to see him but definitely not complaining as she quickly stepped aside to let him in.

The second he entered, she pushed the door closed and took two small steps toward him, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him in.

Her lips met his for only a moment before he suddenly pulled away.

"There was a slight change of plans," he said, and in that moment, a quick realisation flashed across Ivy’s face, realising that it was that kind of a visit and not what she had in mind.

"What happened?" she asked.

And Damon began to explain everything.

***

It took almost twenty minutes to go through everything from start to finish, leaving nothing out.

Ivy’s expression shifted only once when he mentioned keeping knowledge of a traitor from everyone, including her, until he was certain who it was.

It was a slight frown, the particular expression of someone who had expected complete trust by now and found the gap between expectation and reality mildly offensive. She didn’t say anything about it, at least not out loud, as her expression said enough.

The new plan took the longest to convey.

Their original approach had been straightforward. Surround the enemy citadel and reduce their numbers over time, sieging only when the odds were comfortable. It was a methodical and very deliberate plan, one that Ivy put her trust in.

What replaced it was considerably less clean.

Victor’s sister changed everything.

The enemy believed they held leverage over him, which meant they believed he would do anything to protect her, including sell out Damon’s location. They would not turn down a chance to kill him and end the quest, definitely not after he admitted to killing five of their lieutenants. They would come, and they would come with their very best.

Which was exactly what Damon needed them to do.

While they arrived expecting an ambush, Ivy and everyone capable of fighting would be moving on the citadel itself. Stripped of its strongest fighters, caught between the siege and the news of what had just happened to the people they sent.

Ivy was quiet for a long moment after he finished.

"It could work," she said carefully.

"It will work," he replied.

"Are you certain you can take on anyone they sent?"

"Yes," he replied without skipping a beat.

There was no hesitation in his voice, no doubts, just pure certainty of his capabilities.