Chapter 28
VALEN
Ihated the fucking Shadowlands.
It was nothing more than a scar between kingdoms. A place the maps pretended didn’t exist because admitting it did would mean admitting borders could bleed.
Hamburg sat at its mouth like a parasite, fattened on secrecy. Smugglers, merchants, priests with clean hands and dirty pockets. The “neutral” city everyone used when they needed something moved quietly.
Bodies. Relics. Dead nobles stolen and then hauled across the ice like cargo.
Icespire had built an entire economy on stolen remains, and Hamburg had made itself useful.
They didn’t ask questions. They just opened their gates, took their cut, and let the wagons roll through the mist toward Marisella’s collectors.
As if bones were just another commodity.
As if bloodlines were something you could barter.
They’d called it trade.
I’d called it theft.
So I burned Hamburg until the snow turned gray and the river ran black with soot. I made the Shadowlands swallow its roads and break its paths, turned the space between kingdoms into something hostile and hungry.
I didn’t regret it.
Not once.
Because if the world insisted on moving corpses like coin, then I would make sure every step of that journey hurt.
But right now, the Shadowlands’ eerie nature only made my anxiety raise.
Fog clung to everything, thick as breath caught in a dying throat. Snow drifted without wind, lazy and wrong, as if the sky was shedding skin. Sound didn’t travel cleanly here. It snagged on broken stone and bled into silence. Even my footsteps felt muted, swallowed before they could become real.
I stood at the boundary and stared at it until my eyes burned.
It didn’t look like anything at all. No wall. No gate. No shimmer of magic for a man to strike and feel satisfied about it. Just air. Just fog. Just that thin, invisible line where the world decided I was allowed to exist on one side and forbidden on the other.
But my body knew.
The closer I stepped, the heavier the pressure became, like the air had turned to packed snow and someone was pressing it down over my skull.
My lungs tightened. My teeth ached. The essencelinking inside my chest stirred, restless, pulling toward Icespire with a violent insistence that made my hands curl into fists.
I lifted my palm toward the space where the boundary hid.
The cold didn’t bite my skin.
It bit deeper.
It slid beneath flesh and went straight for my bones, the kind of chill that didn’t belong to weather. It belonged to will. To a kingdom that had decided its borders were sacred and its enemies were not.
I pressed closer anyway.
The boundary answered at once.
Not with sound. With resistance.
A dense, unyielding force that met my hand and pushed back, firm as stone, like the world itself had grown a spine and planted its feet.
I exhaled slowly, trying not to show the way it rattled me.
Because I’d shattered walls before.
I’d split cliffs. I’d called flame from the earth and watched cities kneel under it. I’d broken men who thought crowns made them untouchable.
And yet this… this was different.
This wasn’t something I could burn.
It wasn’t something I could kill.
It was a rule written into the air, and I could feel Marisella’s design in it, the precision of her cruelty. She hadn’t built a barrier. She’d built a sentence.
I’d spent the entire night searching for weak spots.
Circling. Testing. Pushing dragonfire against it until the essencelinking in my veins ached like an old injury reopened. The dragon had taken to the sky hours ago, spiraling high through the mist, hunting for the same flaw I was.
We found nothing.
No soft seam. No thin place.
No mercy.
Break it.
The dragon’s voice scraped through my mind, low and furious, like stone grinding against bone.
I swallowed hard, jaw tight. “I tried.”
The boundary held. Stronger than before. Cleaner. Reinforced.
Icespire had sealed itself like a tomb and called it protection.
Behind me, Isolde’s boots crunched over a mixture of sand and snow. She moved like she always had, quiet and deliberate, a blade disguised as a woman. The fog tried to swallow her outline. It failed.
She stopped at my side without asking permission, gaze fixed on the empty air where the boundary waited.
“I heard rumors at an Emberfall camp that Icespire’s winter is getting worse,” she said.
Isolde had been sneaking into soldier’s tents, listening and waiting for any information that would be useful.
I didn’t look away. “It was already worse.”
“It’s beyond worse.” Her voice stayed level, but I heard the edge beneath it. “The king of Icespire has unleashed a freeze unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”
My stomach tightened.
Was it the king? Or was it Elara? The way she froze all of Ashenveil terrified me, and my people were still recovering from it.
Marisella was no longer containing the king’s power.
I’d heard the rumors long before Elara ever wore a crown.
Whispers that slipped through Hamburg with the smugglers.
That the king of Icespire wasn’t weak, he was muzzled.
That Marisella kept him docile with tinctures and powders disguised as “tonics,” fed to him in gilded cups by servants too terrified to refuse.
Not because she feared his temper.
Because she feared his magic.
Because if the king ever woke fully, if he ever stopped swallowing whatever she pressed to his lips, his power would surge out unchecked.
A freeze without restraint. A winter that didn’t stop at Icespire’s borders.
Frost that would climb into the lungs of the south and choke the world until even fire went quiet.
Marisella kept him sedated so she could wear the crown without sharing it. So she could rule without his will interfering. So she could point his power like a blade when it suited her and sheath it again the moment it threatened her grip.
But now the cold was spreading.
Now the winter had teeth. Which meant either the king was waking…Or she had decided to stop holding him back. Either way, it told me the same thing.
She was weaponizing his cryomancy.
Isolde’s gaze narrowed as she studied the invisible line in front of us. “At least the boundary is keeping the ice in.”
I exhaled a bitter laugh. “Wonderful.”
She glanced at me once. Her eyes flicked over my face like she was taking inventory of the damage.
Not the physical kind.
The kind a man carried when he didn’t sleep because someone he needed was missing.
Isolde and I had grown up in the same shadowed corridors.
Her parents thought they were giving over some grand sacrifice, but they gifted me a friend.
We grew up learning the same lessons. How to smile while bleeding.
How to obey while planning your exit. How to love nothing that could be used against you.
She’d survived court the way I’d survived war.
By becoming dangerous enough that nobody dared touch her twice.
And yet here she was, in the Shadowlands, helping me tear at the edges of a world that wanted Elara dead.
“Valen,” she said quietly, “you need to rest.”
I turned my head, slow. “If I stop moving, I’ll go mad.”
Isolde’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “You’re already close.”
My hands curled into fists. The essencelinking in my chest pulsed, tight and restless, my dragon furious. I could barely control him.
Our queen is in chains.
The dragon’s voice surged again with impatience, with hunger. Not desire. Possession. Instinct. My throat tightened. “I know.” The guilt sat in my gut.
I’d done this to her.
Not the capture. Not Marisella’s cruelty. But the part that mattered most.
I’d taken a broken girl and made her impossible to ignore.
I’d tied her to power she never asked for.
I’d forced the world to notice her, to fear her, to hunt her.
I’d lost control of the dragon half of me, and his instincts ruined her life.
And now she was in Icespire’s hands.
Isolde shifted. “I’m talking to smugglers.”
I dragged my gaze back to the boundary. “And?”
“They’re terrified,” she said. “They say the boundary is reinforced stronger than ever. Ciaran’s dead nobles are fueling it at a rate we have never seen before.”
Something hot flared behind my ribs. Ciaran’s pride was a religion. He would burn entire kingdoms to feel like a victor for one more day.
Isolde continued, calm as if she were discussing a trade route. “They’ve tightened patrols too. The only ones getting in and out clean are Icespire soldiers.”
“We have to find a way inside it,” I said.
Isolde’s gaze slid to me. “Do you have a plan?”
I laughed again. This time it was worse. “I have rage. Does that count?”
The dragon shifted overhead, a low drag of air through fog, wings beating slow and massive like a threat the sky itself had to endure.
Find the door.
“There isn’t a door,” I muttered.
Isolde’s voice stayed steady. “There is.”
My jaw tightened. “Then say it.”
She didn’t hesitate. “The Warden Lords carry the only true access. Tokens that break the boundary’s seal.”
Not tokens. I knew what she meant. The name tasted like old fear. “The Rime Sigils,” I said. Isolde nodded. “Yes.” A Rime Sigil wasn’t a key. It was authority carved into ice. The boundary listened to it like law.
I’d seen one once, held in a Warden Lord’s glove like it was holy.
It shimmered faintly, cold enough that the air around it looked brittle.
And I’d seen what happened when one touched Ashenveil skin.
It rejected. It turned to slush instantly, like the magic refused to be handled by anyone born under fire.
I exhaled through my teeth. “So they won’t work for us. ”
“They won’t work for Ashenveil citizens,” Isolde corrected. “The sigils only respond to Warden Lords, or dignitaries visiting from kingdoms Icespire recognizes as allies.”
“Perfect,” I said, bitter. “Let’s just invite that prick Ciaran to come open the door himself.”
Isolde rolled her eyes, patience thinning. “Or one of his wives.”
My gaze snapped to her. “Why would a wife matter?”
“Because the sigil doesn’t care who you are,” she said. “It cares who Icespire says you’re allowed to be. It answers rank. Court authorization.”
My pulse hitched. “So you’re saying you can use one.”
“I could,” Isolde corrected, voice flattening. “When I was his wife.”
The words landed like ice in my chest.
“If Ciaran has severed our marriage vows,” she continued, “then I’m not recognized by his court anymore. Which means the sigil won’t answer to me. It’ll reject me the same way it rejects any Ashenveil citizen.”
I stared at her. “Then what are you suggesting?”
“We steal a sigil and capture someone the boundary will still obey,” Isolde said. “A wife. A Warden Lord. A sanctioned dignitary. Anyone who can hold it long enough to step through. Preferably unconscious because every sigil has a safe word that can be used to melt it.”
Someone who could carry the authority.
Someone the boundary would recognize just long enough to open.
My mind started pulling names like knives from a sheath.
And then sound cut through the fog.
A single caw.
My head lifted.
An icehawk glided low through the Shadowlands, pale wings slicing the mist, eyes bright as cut glass. It circled once, then dipped toward the ridge beyond the boundary line, landing with the ease of something that belonged to winter.
Isolde straightened.
“That’s mine,” she said.
I stepped forward without thinking. “Your bird?”
“My informant,” she corrected. “The hawk is only the courier.”
The dragon’s attention spiked in my skull, heat and urgency surging like a flame kicked higher.
I watched Isolde move with smooth precision, lifting her arm slightly. The icehawk hopped closer, a small scroll bound to its leg. Isolde removed it quickly, fingers nimble, practiced, then tucked the bird back into the fog with a soft motion.
I didn’t bother with patience. “Who is it?” I demanded.
Isolde glanced at me. And for the first time, her mask shifted, revealing a flicker of something that looked almost amused. “The scholarly wife,” she said. “Therynne. The only king she serves is knowledge, and she… cares for Elara.”
My blood went still.
“Therynne,” I breathed.
Isolde nodded once. “She’s been watching. Listening. Collecting information like she collects dust.”
Elara had always had that effect on people. She made them pick sides. Even if they didn’t want to. “Can she wield a Rime Sigil?” I asked, voice tight.
Isolde’s eyes narrowed, considering. “Yes.”
The dragon surged so violently in my skull it felt like a roar.
Then take her. Bring her.
I stared at the boundary, then at Isolde, and the world narrowed into one singular purpose.
“Summon her,” I said.
Isolde didn’t ask why. She only nodded, already turning the plan over in her mind like she’d been waiting for the command. She would send word back to her informant. We had a way in.
Above us, the dragon screamed.
Not with sound.
With fury. With demand.
With the kind of hunger that only came from a bond that had already chosen its queen.
And I realized, with cold certainty, that I would burn the world to reach her.