Chapter 4
We stepped out of a massive hearth. For a wild, impossible moment, I thought we’d returned to Solmire. The vaulted ceiling, the soaring fireplaces, the long sweep of the space all mirrored the Great Hall so precisely that I blinked to anchor myself.
But this was not Solmire.
It was smaller. Darker. Rougher around the edges.
And it was packed to bursting.
Bodies filled every stretch of floor, hundreds of them slumped against walls or lying shoulder to shoulder on hastily assembled pallets.
The air pulsed with suffering. Moans and ragged breaths rolled through the space.
Someone was keening, a long, unbroken sound that scraped against my ears.
Above it all rose the thin wail of a baby, piercing straight through my chest.
Everywhere I looked, there were wounded—those who had escaped the fall of Solmire.
The heat hit next. Every hearth along the walls was blazing, flames leaping high and painting the ceiling in restless color. Whatever magic Solmire had used to keep its hall cool was not being used here. Sweat pooled at the base of my spine. My head swam.
White-hooded females moved through the bodies like ghosts—healers, I realized—their robes streaking blood across the floor, hems darkened with soot and smeared red where they brushed the stone.
Orbs of light drifted beside them, dipping and swaying as they knelt beside the wounded.
I watched one healer’s hands tremble from strain as she bent over a Fae with a fatal-looking gash in his abdomen.
Her lips shaped silent spellwork, as the glowing orb sank into ruined flesh and coaxed it together inch by inch.
Those scorched by blue fire—the same unnatural heat that had torn through me—lay untouched by magic. They were given water. Blankets. Soft voices. No healer directed orbs to their blackened wounds. They were beyond saving.
Soldiers staggered in through the hearths in a constant stream, their charred leathers stamped with the Flame emblem.
Some carried the wounded slung across their backs, passing them into waiting arms or lowering them carefully onto the marble before turning and stepping back into the fire without a word.
Most returned empty-handed.
Their eyes were hollow and unfocused, faces drawn and gaunt beneath layers of filth, sweat, and ash. In the firelight, their skin seemed almost textured, shadows writhing across their soot-streaked faces.
They moved on without hesitation or pause, vanishing back into the fire again and again, relentless in their mission to pull whoever they could from the wreckage of Solmire.
The scale of the devastation crushed the air from my lungs. I pushed away from Malec, my knees threatening to give beneath me as I turned in place, trying to make sense of it all—the bodies, the blood, the unending pain. The hall seemed to stretch forever, every inch claimed by suffering.
Beneath the cries and commands and low moans, another sound rolled like thunder beneath the din. A constant rumble from somewhere outside, deep and tireless, like a distant waterfall.
At the far end of the hall, double doors opened to a terrace. Even that space was overflowing now, Fae laid out across the stone where there was nowhere left inside for them to lie. Beyond, night pressed thick against the world, a darkness so complete it swallowed shape and distance alike.
A steady orange glow pulsed up from below the balcony, too bright and too constant to belong to torches or lamplight.
A healer hurried toward us, white-faced beneath her hood, her lips tight with concentration. She dragged a pallet behind her and set it before us, and Hamish eased Aedric down onto it carefully.
Her eyes widened.
“Is that—” Her voice cracked as she knelt, gaze locked on Aedric’s ashen face.
“It is,” Hamish said, gruff and short.
But she was already moving—shoving her sleeves up her arms, flexing her fingers, summoning her orb. The light hovered over Aedric’s chest, bathing him in pale radiance.
She looked him over quickly, then lifted her gaze to Hamish, puzzled. “Where is he wounded?”
Hamish hesitated. Glanced to me. “His mind.”
The healer blanched. “Wounds of Firstborn magic cannot be healed.”
My stomach lurched. Had Rìan shredded Aedric’s mind? Had he done something permanent? My heart squeezed so hard it hurt to breathe.
“Do what you can, Saerena.”
She nodded once beneath her hood and turned back, bracing herself.
She lifted the orb and let it hover over Aedric’s upturned face. At her touch, its glow rippled and expanded, unfurling like liquid light across his features before slender ribbons poured downward, slipping into the parted curve of his lips.
Her mouth shaped a whisper too soft to catch, guiding the magic. The tendrils brightened, then dimmed, and slowly pulled back the way they had entered, gathering once more into the waiting orb. Its glow had dulled, thinned by the effort.
Aedric groaned. His hand jerked up and pressed hard against his forehead.
I dropped to my knees beside him, gripping his free hand in both of mine. Nausea rolled through me. His skin was cold. Aedric was never cold.
Tears blurred everything as I pressed my lips to his knuckles and breathed his name.
His eyelids fluttered. His gaze slid to me.
“El…” he murmured, and slipped under again.
Saerena rocked back on her heels and stood.
“No lasting harm.” Relief filled her voice. “He will recover. He is fortunate.”
Hamish dipped his head in thanks, but she was already moving on to the next wounded Fae. The dimmed orb drifted after her like a weary moon.
Malec dragged a hand down his face, looking as if he might fold where he stood. “I don’t see Errol—”
Hamish stiffened. His expression remained carved from rock, but something in the set of his shoulders told me he was bracing for impact. I followed his gaze through the crush of bodies.
A male was forcing his way through the crowd, flanked by two guards. He was tall and broad, nearly Hamish’s equal in size, his scalp balding and his neatly trimmed beard streaked with gray and fading red. Ornate golden armor covered him, catching the firelight in vicious, unforgiving flashes.
He leaned over each wounded Fae he passed, shoving others aside without apology, his raptor-like eyes searching—only the women, I realized, only their faces.
He was looking for someone.
And then he saw Hamish.
His spine snapped straight, his mouth twisting into a vicious line as he stormed toward us, his guards close behind.
He skimmed a glance over Aedric’s unconscious form as he passed, assessing him in an instant, then barreled forward and crowded in close to Hamish, jabbing a finger hard into his chest.
“Where… is… she,” he hissed, stabbing with every word.
And for the first time, Hamish flinched. He drew breath to answer, but before the words could form—
“Warden!”
Her voice rang over the crowd, cutting straight through the noise and sending a cold shiver down my spine.
Calantha stepped from a hearth nearby, Errol close behind her. Her circular lens covered her ember eye as she moved through the hall, weaving between bodies, not slowing to look at the dying or the dead.
Errol shadowed her steps, the ragged scars across his face pulled tighter than I’d ever seen, transforming his already battle-hardened features into something genuinely fearsome. Malec let out a long breath beside me, his shoulder easing as he spotted his friend.
Calantha came to a halt before the golden-clad male and bowed low at the waist. “Father.”
When she straightened, he pulled her stiffly into his arms and pressed a dry kiss to the center of her forehead. “Thank the Vein.”
I blinked slowly as understanding caught up to me.
This was Calantha’s father.
Hamish’s father, too.
Only then did the resemblance stand out in stark relief. The breadth of their shoulders. The squared, soldier’s stance. The firm set of their mouths beneath their beards.
But where Hamish’s eyes held a flicker of warmth—something kind, something almost human—his father’s gaze was stripped bare. Cold, shrewd, calculating.
He had turned his back on his son to greet his daughter, and as he released her he did not turn back. It was as if Hamish had vanished from his world the moment Calantha appeared.
Calantha stepped neatly out of the embrace and moved past him to stand at her brother’s side. Hamish was rigid, shoulders locked back, his expression drawn into something impassive and unbreakable. She reached out and gripped his forearm; only then did he drag his gaze down to her.
They held each other’s eyes for a quiet heartbeat—no words, just that subtle, unmistakable exchange of power and awareness that passed between twin minds—confirming they were both standing, both here, both still themselves.
She squeezed his arm once and let go, then dropped to her knees beside her lord.
“Aedric,” she breathed. But he did not stir. “Where did you find him?” Her gaze flicked up to Malec—and that was when she noticed me.
I swallowed as her eye swept over me, narrowing when she registered the healed skin along my left side.
Her brow furrowed as she slowly rose, and despite the lens shielding her magical eye, I could almost feel the ravenous heat simmering behind it, pressing outward like a caged inferno.
It took everything I had not to step back as she advanced, towering over me.
“Why aren’t you dead?”
No hatred in her voice. No concern, either. Just cool, surgical interest, as though she were studying a strange specimen beneath glass.
Sharp pain speared through me. We’d shared wine. We’d teased and gossiped and dressed for Kyndralis together. She’d braided my hair with her own hands.
And yet now, she looked right through me, hollow and detached. The absence of anything resembling feeling was more frightening than any threat she might have spoken aloud. My mouth dried. A tremor ran through me, impossible to stop.
She’d been my friend once. Before she tortured me.