Chapter 21
Daed
Before her. I watch from the ruined heights of House Maledannan as the Sundered Kingdoms burn.
Villages smolder in the distance. Forests, once sacred, crackle with flame.
This Legion of Saints, these rebels, these ungrateful humans, have summoned their own doom.
Did they truly believe the Mordorin would show mercy?
That we would share our power like beggars at a feast?
Fools. This blood is on their hands, not mine. And we will fight until only the Mordorin stand.
I walk the cold, silent halls of this once-proud house, and even here, high above the chaos, I hear the wails of the dying and the wind-fed roar of fire.
House Maledannan’s green banners lie torn and filthy, trampled under boot and soaked in blood.
Shattered windows gape like wounds. The tapestries have been ripped from the walls.
The Fae who guarded this place lie slumped in corners, blades still lodged in their bodies, their blood now dark and tacky on the stones.
The doors to the throne room, battered and barely on their hinges, groan as I push them open, the sound low and feral like a beast disturbed from sleep.
A painting topples from the wall as I enter, ancient and priceless, and crashes to the floor in pieces.
The twin thrones of Lord Eryndor and Lady Elyss lie overturned, discarded like the corpses of their house.
The banners of the white lotus have been torn from their moorings, and near one toppled throne, a child’s toy, a small doll, lies smeared with blood.
I move to the wall veiled in heavy vines. I cannot command them as Lord Eryndor once did. So I summon Death Singer. Smoke curls from my fingers as the blade takes shape in my palm, silver glinting as it settles into being. I strike the vines with a single cut. They fall away, revealing… nothing.
The scrying mirror is gone, stripped away like everything else in this place. Death Singer vanishes from my grasp, and for a moment, I sag beneath the weight of what isn’t here.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t come to this devastated castle hoping to see her again in the mirror’s glass. Even with war tearing the world apart, she haunts my every thought.
The missing mirror is for the best.
If I knew Amara Tyne lived, if I saw her again… I would only want her more.
A scent rides the air. Smoke. Blood. Steel. It slinks in before him, curling through the empty halls just ahead of the heavy clomp of Arax’s boots on stone.
“My Prince,” he says, entering with a fist to his chest. “I bring word from the front. The Legion has been driven back in the east, but we’ve lost Greenmist Gorge.”
I turn, just slightly to glance at him over my shoulder. “How?”
“The reinforcements from House Taramethos never came,” he answers. “An entire order of Ebon Flight… gone.”
My breath hisses through my nose. My jaw clenches. Fingers curl into fists, gauntlets straining around them.
“I will go myself,” I say.
“You cannot, Rook,” Arax replies quickly. “It’s too dangerous. The gorge is narrow, and they hold the high ground. Their numbers…”
“I will flood that gorge with their blood,” I snap. “I did not ask for your counsel, Arax.”
He nods. “Yes, my Prince.” A beat passes, and I hear the thick bob in his throat.
“They’ve found the bodies of the Lord and Lady of House Maledannan,” he says at last. “On a bonfire in the plains near the forest.”
His eyes flick to the overturned thrones, to the smear of blood trailing toward the shattered door.
“Lady Ilyra’s spies report the Legion passed through here several days ago.”
Another pause and for a warrior as blooded as Arax, who has watched fields rot under corpses, this next truth cleaves clean through his composure.
“It seems the young ones were burned with them.”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. The sharp crack across my chest is answer enough.
“There was a mirror,” I say, voice low. “Do you remember it?”
He nods. “Yes, Your Highness. The Legion must have taken it when they raided the castle.”
“Perhaps.”
“I’ll assemble the Reapers and await your command,” Arax says, already turning, his armor clanging with the shift.
But I stop him.
“I heard about Estra.”
He halts.
“My condolences, Arax.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” he says. The words don’t tremble. They land like stone.He hides his grief the way I do. Deep and silent.
I listen to his footsteps retreat down the hall as I remain fixed on the wall where the mirror once hung.
Whoever took it now holds a key to great power.
Too great. I don’t believe for a breath it fell into mortal hands.
The Sundered Kingdoms are burning, yes, but both sides are lighting fires.
And in war, I trust my own kind even less than I trust the human traitors.
Then, footsteps again. Arax, doubling back.
“Your Highness,” he calls. “We’ve found something. A deserter.”
I turn, my brow lowering, curiosity tightening into suspicion. We stride together through the corridor, pushing through the cracked doors onto the stone terrace where vines creep through every fracture.
The sky above us is choked with smoke, glowing orange, the air hangs heavy with ash and the stink of burning men.
An order of Blades stands ready outside, the line of Reapers behind them rigid as stone and at their feet, on his knees, trembles a lone male.
His dark hair is thick with blood and soot, his body shuddering with each sob as he stares at the ground. His armor is scorched, his blade discarded.
But it’s unmistakable.
House Taramethos.
Crafters of relics. Masters of transmutation. The forge-born. His dusksteel breastplate, though battered and burned, still bears their mark. A single anvil wreathed in flame.
The Eternal Forge.
And now, its loyal son kneels in the mud.
“They caught him trying to flee into the mountains,” Arax says.
I step forward, casting a long shadow over the trembling figure. He shivers, shoulders hunched, spine bent beneath shame.
“You desert not only your prince,” I snarl, “but your house?”
“Mercy, Your Highness,” he gasps, daring to lift his gaze, but not quite meeting mine, as if he knows what lives behind them will be his undoing. “My family. My wife and children. I was only trying to protect them.”
Arax leans in, his voice low at my ear. “We found them with him. A female and three young ones. They’re in the camp, down in the valley.”
“Please,” the deserter whispers, his voice cracked and raw. “Do what you must with me. Just let them live.”
I raise my hand. Smoke coils between my fingers and in the next breath, the hilt of Death Singer nestles into my palm, its silver edge humming with hunger.
“You are a coward,” I growl, dragging the blade’s tip across the stone until it screams, “and a traitor. For such things, you forfeit your life.”
He nods. Not in defiance, but acceptance.
The sobs still, hollowed out. He looks up, finally, and though his eyes are slick with tears, there’s a brittle calm in them.
“As you wish, Your Highness. But my family… please.”
But the void stirs in me.
Tendrils of shadow crawl up my spine. My vision darkens. My eyes roll black.
Death Singer arcs.
One clean strike.
His head topples from his shoulders with a wet thud, rolling across the stone. His body slumps after it, like a puppet whose strings were cut mid-beg.
I stand over what remains, breathing hard.
Then I lift my hand, and with a flick of my wrist, a veil of smoke rolls over the corpse, swallowing it whole.
Meat for the beast.
The Father Below, Gygarth, stirs inside me. That ancient, hungering dark that no offering can ever satisfy. Even now, after the kill, he leans close to my soul with clawed talons and a low, insatiable whisper:
Feed me, Favored One. Feed your master.
My jaw locks. Eyes squeeze shut. I fight to surface, to tear myself free from the abyss that claws at my ribs and would gladly drown me.
Then I hear Arax’s voice at my ear. “Your Highness. The family. What do you want done with them?”
Death Singer fades from my grasp, vanishing into ash.
My silver eyes snap open.
“Give them food and water,” I say at last. “Keep them safe.”
Arax slams his fist to his chest, his head bowed in submission, but my reply startles him as much as it does me. Still, he does as he is commanded.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
***
After her. I never believed I was worthy of love. Not once.
A wicked, cursed thing, born of death, wrapped in shadow and regret.
I thought that was all I was. What I would always be.
No light could touch me, no warmth could thaw the ice that had wrapped itself around my soul.
I didn’t deserve the simple joys that others had.
The quiet moments, the laughter, the softness of a kiss, the feel of a child’s hand curling around your finger.
Not with the things I had done, the mistakes that haunted me, the blood that stained me, the deaths I had caused.
And yet, somehow fate has thrown my curses aside and given me blessings I could never have imagined.
A wife. A daughter.
For the first time in my life, I am a part of something good and pure.
I had never imagined this. Never thought I could have this.
The feeling of Amara beside me, her soft breath, the warmth of her skin against mine.
The tender gaze she gave me, the way her smile lit up the dark.
And then our daughter. Our perfect daughter, so tiny, so fragile, her small hand curled in mine.
Her soft, dark hair, her little eyes, gray like mine, her skin the perfect shade of tawny like her mother.
She is our love made flesh, a promise between us, a child of two worlds, a princess of both.
I can’t even wrap my mind around it. The three of us, together.
I gaze at them both now. Amara’s peaceful form, our daughter resting in her arms and for the first time, I feel something more than guilt, more than despair. I feel whole.