CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
Thalia felt a momentary surge of gratitude—Thrum'kith would provide far better accommodations than the prison camp, and the Wardens' connection to the living vessel would strengthen their resolve. Then she remembered the black waters she’d seen, the strip of ink across the landscape at the fjord’s mouth.
The Deep Tide, which would soon make its way into the fjord, meter by meter, moving inexorably inland toward Frostforge’s docks—and toward the fortress-whale.
***
The Howling Forge had transformed since the War Council's decree, its cavernous expanse now alive with constant activity as smiths worked in rotating shifts to produce hybrid weapons.
The familiar symphony of hammers striking metal had taken on a new rhythm—more urgent, more desperate—punctuated by the distinctive crackle of storm magic being channeled into heated glacenite.
Sweat streaked Thalia's face as she hung her leather apron on a hook near her workstation, her muscles aching from twelve straight hours at the anvil. Despite her exhaustion, satisfaction thrummed through her veins. Twenty more blades completed today. Twenty more chances against the darkness.
Throughout Frostforge, similar transformations had taken place. The training grounds now hosted mixed groups of mainland fighters and released Warden prisoners, tentatively learning to work together under the watchful eyes of both Northern guards and Naj's stern guidance.
The mess hall buzzed with conversations in multiple dialects as people who had been enemies mere days before now shared tables and tactical theories.
Even the mine tunnels beneath the academy had been repurposed, their abandoned passages now serving as additional forging spaces to meet the frantic production schedule.
Thalia wiped her brow with the back of her hand, feeling the gritty mixture of soot and sweat smear across her skin.
Wolfe had relieved her of custodial duties the day after the Council meeting, recognizing that her skills were better utilized in the forge.
For that small mercy, Thalia felt almost pathetically grateful.
Despite the crushing workload, shaping metal was infinitely preferable to scrubbing floors while the world prepared for its potential end.
She rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the knots that had formed after hours bent over the anvil.
With the forge working at full capacity, she could finally justify taking a few hours to rest before beginning again tomorrow at dawn.
The thought of her narrow bed in the apprentice quarters—where she'd been reassigned after her demotion—had never seemed so appealing.
"I thought I'd find you here."
Thalia turned at the familiar voice, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten as Roran stepped into the forge's amber light.
He looked better than when he'd arrived at the Council chamber, though shadows still lingered beneath his eyes and his wild curls remained untamed.
Someone had tended his wounds and provided clean clothes, at least.
He moved toward her, arms outstretched, but Thalia held up a hand to stop him.
"I smell like mineral coal and quenching oil," she warned, suddenly conscious of her disheveled state. "And I haven't bathed properly in—" She did a quick mental calculation. "Actually, I've lost track."
Roran ignored her outstretched hand, closing the distance between them and enfolding her in an embrace that felt like coming home.
For a moment, she resisted, all too aware of her grimy appearance, but his warmth broke through her defenses.
She melted against him, her arms encircling his waist as she buried her face against his shoulder.
"I've missed you," he murmured into her hair. "We've barely had a chance to speak since I got back."
Thalia nodded against his chest, inhaling his scent—pine and frost and something distinctly Roran. "The Council has kept you in debriefs almost constantly," she said. "And I've been here, trying to arm as many fighters as possible before the Deep Tide reaches us."
"Just over two weeks from now," he said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of that knowledge. "If the scouts' estimates are correct."
She pulled back enough to see his face, studying the new lines that seemed to have formed around his eyes in the weeks since he'd departed for the North. "I still need to hear how your mission went," she said. "The full story, not just the report you gave the Council."
A shadow crossed his features. "It was fine," he replied with a shrug that didn't quite achieve the casualness he seemed to be aiming for.
"Roran," Thalia pressed, her hand coming up to cup his cheek. "I can see there's more. What happened out there?"
He closed his eyes briefly, leaning into her touch.
When he opened them again, something vulnerable showed in their depths.
"It was... difficult," he admitted. "In the North, I was either a Southerner or an Isle Warden, depending on who I encountered and what threats I faced.
And neither identity earned me any welcome. "
He guided her to a bench near one of the dormant workstations, both of them sitting with shoulders touching, hands entwined.
"Northern patrols treated me with suspicion.
Refugees who'd fled the coastal fortresses accused me of being a Warden spy when I asked too many questions about the Deep Tide.
And when I was finally captured after using storm magic against the void-creatures. .."
He trailed off, his grip tightening around her fingers.
"They saw you as the enemy," Thalia finished for him.
"They saw me as a monster," he corrected, bitterness edging his words. "The same way I used to see Wardens, before..." He hesitated. "Before we met Cassia. Before I learned the truth."
Thalia waited, giving him space to continue.
"I've been struggling to reconcile everything since our encounter on Thrum'kith," Roran confessed, his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry to the few smiths still working across the forge.
"My whole life, I was taught that Isle Wardens were savages—raiders who attacked coastal villages for sport, who wielded forbidden magic with malicious intent.
I grew up believing those stories. I believed them so deeply that I hated the part of myself that carried their blood. "
He ran a hand through his tangled curls.
"But Cassia wasn't a savage. She was a captain trying desperately to save her people from the Deep Tide.
The 'raids' weren't random acts of violence—they were desperate attempts to find sanctuary on the mainland.
" A humorless laugh escaped him. "And I, with my Warden blood, knew absolutely nothing about any of it.
I'd accepted so many assumptions without question.
The product of an upbringing on the mainland. "
"You couldn't have known," Thalia said gently. "None of us could."
"I should have questioned it," Roran insisted. "I, of all people, should have wondered if there was more to the story."
"You were a child raised on the mainland," Thalia reminded him.
"And later, a student at an academy literally built to fight Isle Wardens.
" She squeezed his hand. "What matters is that you're questioning it now.
That your storm magic has saved us on multiple occasions.
And that it might save Frostforge once more. "
A small smile touched his lips, though his eyes remained serious. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Thalia," he cautioned. "The weapons haven't been tested against actual Deep Ones yet. We still don't know if it's even possible to hold the line, let alone drive them back."
Thalia felt a flicker of frustration at his words, not because they were wrong, but because they echoed her own doubts—the ones she'd been fighting to suppress beneath layers of desperate optimism. "We have to try," she said simply. "What other choice remains?"
Roran didn't answer. In the silence that followed, the steady rhythm of hammers and the hiss of quenching metal filled the space between them—the sounds of Frostforge preparing for a battle that might be unwinnable, against an enemy that had never been defeated.