Chapter 9
ELARA
Iwoke before the bells, before the servants stirred, before Ashenveil decided whether it would let the day begin. I lay still, staring at the ceiling, listening to my own breath and the quiet pressure in my chest.
The memory of kissing Valen was haunting.
It sat heavy in my body now, an echo that made my skin feel wrong. I had not meant to betray anyone. Not Aeliana, whose death ruined me in the worst ways. Not Rhydian, who had been stealing chipped pieces of my grieving heart.
And yet I had.
I couldn’t help but compare him to Rhydian.
With Rhydian, nothing ever felt like a test. He simply stayed, steady as stone, as if my presence required no justification.
I missed the way he made silence feel companionable instead of loaded, the way he would have known what to say now, or known not to speak at all.
Thinking of him left an ache behind my ribs, the kind that did not fade with breath.
Had I betrayed him?
Had I betrayed myself?
There was only one correct answer, and I hated admitting it.
Seraphine found me as the first gray light crept over the peaks, her presence announced not by sound but by inevitability.
“You will train again today,” she said, as if the decision had never been in question.
I got dressed anyway, because what else was I supposed to do, argue?
But the unease was already there, coiled low in my stomach.
The same stupid, crawling dread I used to feel in the deepest parts of the crypt, where the ice got too thick and the air got too quiet and some part of me always expected a dead noble to open their eyes and decide my face looked punchable.
Only this time, the thing waiting to kill me wasn’t dead.
And it didn’t need permission.
The training yard felt wrong the moment I stepped into it.
Not louder. Not more crowded. Just heavier. Heat rose from the stone in slow, measured breaths, clinging to skin and metal alike. Sweat and iron thickened the air, familiar scents twisted into something watchful.
Movement slowed.
Blades hesitated mid-swing. Conversations thinned, then died. One by one, bodies turned toward me, not openly hostile, but not curious either. Assessing. Recounting.
I walked toward my doom anyway.
As I passed, fragments reached me, traded low and close, reshaped with every mouth that touched them.
Handmaiden.
Impostor.
The one who struck the dragon.
The one who made the Dominus bleed.
Seraphine walked ahead of me, unhurried. When we reached the center of the yard, she stopped and turned, her expression already fixed into something formal and final.
“There will be no ice today,” Seraphine said.”
I stared at her. Blinked once. Twice.
“Do you wake up like this?” I asked. “Or do you have to stretch first?”
Her gaze was flat and unreadable. “Do you want to live?”
“Obviously not,” I muttered. “That’s why I’m standing barefoot on molten rock getting threatened before breakfast.”
“Hands,” she ordered.
I lifted them. Slowly. Like I was showing a guard I wasn’t hiding a dagger.
Which was hilarious, considering the real weapon was apparently my entire existence. She tossed me a practice blade that I caught clumsily.
“Yesterday,” I started.
“Yesterday,” she cut in, voice carrying without effort, “you lost control and struck a creature older than this city.”
I exhaled through my nose. “That’s dramatic.”
“That’s accurate.”
Her eyes swept the ring of watching warriors, then pinned me again. “You drew blood in front of witnesses. Do you have any idea what that means here?”
A low laugh came from somewhere behind us.
I shot a glare over my shoulder, because if I was going to be publicly humiliated, I at least wanted faces to attach to it.
Then I looked back at Seraphine. “For the record, the dragon started it.”
Seraphine’s mouth didn’t move. But her eyes did something like… twitch.
Not amusement.
More like disbelief that I was still capable of talking.
“He taunted me,” I said. “He practically dared me to. What was I supposed to do, curtsy?”
“Yes,” Seraphine said flatly. “That would have been a start.”
“Oh, sorry,” I snapped. “Next time the murderous king with the world’s biggest ego decides to toy with me like I’m entertainment, I’ll remember my manners.”
“That is not relevant,” she said.
“It’s literally the only relevant part.”
“Intent does not matter when the mountain is watching,” Seraphine said, low now, the words cutting cleaner than her blade. “In Ashenveil, fire is law. Blood is covenant. Dragons are not targets. And kings do not bleed for handmaidens.”
I gripped the practice weapon tighter, knuckles whitening. “I didn’t ask to be a handmaiden. And I didn’t ask to be here. And I definitely didn’t ask to be tossed into dragon training like it’s a hobby.”
Seraphine stepped closer, voice dropping, not kinder, just more dangerous.
“Stop pretending your enemy is Ashenveil.”
I let out a bitter laugh. It came out too loud, too ugly. “Everyone is a frostdamned enemy here.”
“No,” she said immediately. “They’re angry. They’re grieving. They’re looking for weakness.”
Her gaze slid over the warriors again, then back to me.
“But Icespire is the enemy.”
“My enemy,” I said, “is whoever decides I’m disposable today.”
Seraphine’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what Icespire taught you to believe.”
I opened my mouth.
Shut it again.
Because the worst part was, she wasn’t wrong.
She continued, relentlessly. “Icespire didn’t just steal our dead. It stole your life too. It put you in chains and called it duty.”
I swallowed, my throat burning. “Spare me the sermon.”
“I’m not preaching,” she said. “I’m warning you.”
She shifted, just slightly, the way a soldier did before the world went violent. “Valen is leaving for the battlefield today.”
For a half second, relief hit me so hard I almost laughed.
At least I wouldn’t have to dodge dragon fire that may or may not decide to cook me for sport.
Seraphine watched my expression change and looked disgusted by it.
“Do not relax,” she said. “He won’t be here to stand between you and the people who think his patience has gone too far.”
I stared at her. “You think he was standing between me and anything?”
Seraphine’s mouth finally curved.
“Yes,” she said. “Whether you noticed or not.”
I hated that.
Hated that I believed it.
“I will not be the one training you today.” She slid her own blade back into its sheath with a final ringing sound. “You’re angry, but it’s useless anger. Loud. Unfocused. The kind that lashes out sideways.”
“Then who will?”
“Fortunately,” she added, “someone else believes you need to learn how to direct your anger appropriately. I feel as though you will find a target for your hatred very soon.”
The watching warriors parted.
And I felt the mountain shift.
Footsteps crossed stone.
Soft. Unhurried. Intentional.
The air changed before I saw her.
Lady Isolde stepped from the shadowed archway as if the mountain itself had parted for her.
She wore Ashenveil colors now, dark and muted, cloth chosen to swallow light rather than reflect it. Black hair spilled down her back in a smooth, unbroken fall, framing a face that revealed nothing it did not intend to.
Her eyes found mine immediately.
The betrayal came back in a rush so brutal it stole my breath. The night I had woken to her standing over me like an executioner. The way her hand had closed around my wrist, iron-strong and merciless. The certainty in her voice when she told me she knew who I really was.
And the worst of it…
Rhydian, crumpled against the wall. Unmoving.
Alive, she had said. For now.
Isolde had handed me to Valen and his dragon without hesitation, without apology, and watched as my life split cleanly in two.
She met my stare with that same cool composure, as if nothing in the world had shifted.
No guilt. No fear. Not even the arrogance of victory.
My fingers curled at my sides, nails biting into my palms. For one stupid heartbeat, I waited for something human to flicker across her face.
Some betrayals were loud, messy things born of panic or love. This wasn’t that. Isolde’s had been chosen. Measured. Executed with the calm of someone who had done worse and slept fine after.
Seraphine stepped aside without comment.
“Lady Isolde of Vireth,” Isolde said, her voice smooth and measured. “You know her as the wife to King Ciaran of Emberfall.” A pause, deliberate enough to let the title settle. “But she is Ashenveil’s Night Consort.”
The yard went still.
Seraphine’s mouth tightened, like she’d tasted something bitter.
“Night Consort,” she said, loud enough for the ranks to hear, “is a station granted by Ashenveil itself. A privilege earned, then bled for. A Night Consort speaks with the Dominus’s sanction when darkness falls and the mountain watches closest. She carries authority over the inner guard, the intelligence routes, the sealed corridors beneath the keep.
She has the right to enter places even Talon Generals are barred from, and to give orders that cannot be questioned twice.
“In Ashenveil, a crown can be inherited,” Seraphine finished, “but Night Consort is chosen.”
Her gaze slid to me.
“And that means if she stands in this yard, she stands with permission to do whatever the mountain requires. Even if that means killing you.”
Seraphine’s speech made me turn ashen. I’d been trying to make sense of Isolde as a person. A woman. Someone with reasons I could hate or understand. But Seraphine’s explanation stripped that away piece by piece until all that was left was something brutal.
“Elara,” Isolde said. Calm. Almost warm. “You look well.” Her eyes dipped briefly to the practice weapon in my hand, the leathers clinging to my arms. “I see Ashenveil has dressed you for honesty. Fighting leathers suit you better than dresses ever did.”
Something inside me broke.
“You don’t get to comment on anything I wear or how alive I look after what you did. We aren’t friends,” I said.
Her expression didn’t change.
“I want to know why,” I demanded.
A beat passed.