Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“A lack of war should not beget a lack of preparation, soldier. And war has a way of breaching every shore at some point. Knowledge of how the world works is not the same as experiencing it,” Teddy challenges.
He doesn’t intend to intimidate, but it happens anyway. All six foot five of him, every honed muscle, every sharp edge stands before the round-bellied man like a reminder of what war looks like in the flesh.
The man’s hands shake in fear, but he clenches his fist as if he can will the tremor away. As if he can contain it. He swallows thickly, but doesn’t back down. Doesn’t look away.
“Knowledge is power, General,” the man counters, voice trembling.
General Ashborne huffs a humorless laugh. “So in addition to no training, you also have no coherent thoughts of your own, only that of your kingdom. Tell me, sir, what will you do with that knowledge when a blade is poised at your throat?”
The clearing fills with sharp inhales.
The man doesn’t answer, but he lifts his chin all the same. Refusing to cower.
“Forgive me, General, I mean no disrespect…” he trails off, waiting for the General to interject, but Teddy only waits—a General listening to his soldiers.
The man stands a little straighter. “I do not believe our shores will be breached. Queen Ilyra has made our shores impenetrable, and has given us repeated assurances.”
The General backs away, stalking through the lines, his gait measured, even. A force.
“And yet your Queen is the one who asked me to train you,” he muses. “Do you think she would ask that if she has complete faith in her wards to do the job of an army?”
The question hangs in the air like a noose. An undeniable truth.
The General uses the silence.
“Leaders must give assurances, but Generals of War? We give unignorable facts,” he declares.
“If Caeloria use their machines—their advanced weaponry—to take your kingdom, will you hide behind your wives? Or your children?”
Seren sucks in a sharp breath at the self-loathing laced through Teddy’s words.
At the sharp wound he carves into his own soul for his failings.
Murmurs rent the air.
He stops, eyes panning across the ranks. “So will you learn to fight? To protect? Or will you wait to see how quickly metal pierces flesh?”
The clearing erupts in a collective battle cry.
And the General leverages it, carving through their cheers with intent. “Today we learn to attack! War is not won by defending. Victory belongs to the force who can exploit weakness and twist it to their advantage.”
The army roars.
The sound tears through the clearing like a blade splitting hide—raw, hungry, uncertain, but alive. Not the polished thunder of seasoned soldiers. Rougher. Civilian throats straining to sound like warriors. Fear disguised as fury.
Teddy lets it crest, masterfully shaping the men and women into warriors.
Then he lifts one hand.
Silence falls so fast it feels like the space between breaths.
His gaze sweeps the ranks—measuring, weighing, dissecting. Not looking at people. Assessing moving parts. Evaluating structure. Calculating failure points before they reveal themselves.
Gods, he is magnificent like this.
She understands with horrifying clarity why armies would follow him into death.
Seren hates that her chest tightens every time she sees him fully inhabit command. Hates that something inside her thrills at the precision of him. The certainty. The brutal clarity of purpose.
He knows exactly how to move forward in war.
He just refuses to move forward with her.
“Fear lives at the boundary,” Teddy says, voice carrying effortlessly across the clearing. Not shouted. Projected. Directed. Like a weapon placed exactly where it will do the most damage.
“Where impact is anticipated but has not yet arrived. Where imagination outruns reality. Where the mind invents suffering before the body experiences it.”
He begins to walk. Slowly. Measured strides between the lines of soldiers. Boots crunching over gravel. Over packed dirt. Over the fragile remains of whatever these people once were before he began reshaping them.
“If you stand at the edge of force… you will fear it.”
He stops beside a young man whose knuckles have gone white from his fisted palm.
“But if you enter force—”
Teddy steps forward suddenly. Closing distance. Invading space. The young man flinches backward instinctively.
The General does not strike him. He simply looks at him. And the shame that floods the boy’s face is worse than any blow.
“—fear loses power.”
The clearing is so quiet Seren can hear the wind dragging through the trees beyond the training grounds. Can hear leather creak as shoulders tighten. Can hear hearts hammering behind ribcages not built for war.
“Today,” Teddy says, turning so every soldier must see him, “you learn to run into the fray.”
Run into the fray.
Seren knows immediately why Teddy wants to teach this. Knows immediately that it is her who has refused to run into the ocean’s ferocity. Instead, she has withstood it at the boundary.
The exact place he stands with her.
A ripple of unease moves through the ranks.
He doesn’t acknowledge it.
“Seren,” Teddy says.
Her name is not loud. But it lands like command anyway.
She steps forward before her mind catches up with her body. Before she can question why her chest aches. Why her throat tightens. Why his voice still has the power to pull her in like gravity.
He does not look at her the way he did in his quarters. Does not look at her like she might disappear if he blinks. Does not look at her like she’s fragile.
He looks at her like a weapon he intends to sharpen.
Good.
Better.
Less painful.
“Stand here,” he instructs, gesturing to meet him at the front of the ranks.
She makes her way to him, lifting her chin and pulling her shoulders back as she walks.
All eyes are fixed on her, and murmurs hum through the ranks.
“The witch,” they whisper.
“She killed a man with a magic lasso,” someone says.
“She bleeds black,” another breathes.
She brushes her braid behind her shoulder, stalking to the front, impervious to the mutterings of men who are afraid of their own shadows.
The General positions her so her body stands opposite him, at least ten paces away.
His face angles to the ranks, as he walks toward her, stepping behind her, and dragging his heavy boot through the packed dirt to draw a line in the earth.
“You will partner up,” he commands. “You will draw a line in the dirt behind each of you, and you will not retreat behind it. You will enter the fray. Move into the space between you, and do what you must to keep your feet, and claim the territory of your opponent. Your instincts will scream at you to defend your own territory, to wait, to root down. You must move anyway.”
Murmurs of agreement ripple across the soldiers.
“In the fray, you will not be told what to do. You will not be instructed. War is not loyal. It does not care who leads, who falls, or who you once followed. In war, the mission outlives the commander,” he announces, and the words feel like a warning. Gooseflesh snakes up Seren’s spine.
The General strides slowly back to his position opposite Seren, his eyes still dragging across his army.
“If command breaks, formation holds. If leadership falls, the objective remains. If strategy fails, instincts must lead. So, our training is about sharpening your instincts. About what happens inside the fray.”
He pauses.
One heartbeat.
Two.
The silence breathes like a living thing, gaining power with every inhale.
“There is a calmness that descends upon a person in the midst of calamity,” his voice breaks through the silence.
“The kind of peace that comes from presence, from instinct. At the boundary of chaos, there’s only noise, distraction—a hundred reasons to run, a hundred possible strategies.
But in motion, there are no more questions. Only answers.”
He turns to Seren, eyes locking on her.
Her chest tightens, fear gripping her.
Instinct screams: defend.
Mind screams: run.
Muscles scream: freeze.
Teddy smiles—a feral, menacing thing.
Every nerve ending zings with aliveness that calls to a part of her she does not yet know.
“Fight!” he cries, and he stalks toward her with reckless delight.
Fuck.
But then her heart screams: fight back.
So she moves.
She strides from her line in the dirt, dropping into a low, predatory crouch.
Teddy closes the gap in one stride.
Another.
She braces herself for impact, holding her breath, softening her knees.
He sees it before she even feels herself do it.
The bracing.
The subtle locking of her shoulders. The tiny backward lean through her hips. The instinct to receive rather than claim.
Teddy shifts mid-stride.
He doesn’t collide with her head-on.
He angles.
The movement is almost invisible—a slight rotation through his torso, a change in foot placement, a redirect of force—but the impact hits her off-center anyway. Not crushing. Not overwhelming. Just enough to show her exactly where she’s vulnerable.
Her weight shifts to compensate.
Her heel drags half an inch through the dirt.
Behind her, the line waits.
Silent.
Witnessing.
“Reset,” he says calmly, already stepping back to his mark.
Heat floods her face. Not from exertion—from the knowledge that he felt that hesitation ripple through her body like a signal flare and used it to his advantage with little more than a bump.
She steps back to her line.
Draws breath.
Again.
He comes faster this time.
No warning.
No pause for anticipation to bloom into strategy.
Just motion.
This time she doesn’t wait for him to reach her. She moves first—stepping forward, shoulder angled, intending to drive into his center mass before he can establish full momentum.
But she over-commits.
He pivots, fluid as water slipping around stone, and her forward drive meets nothing but empty space. Her foot lands too hard, too far. Her balance pitches forward. His palm presses lightly between her shoulder blades—not a strike, not force—just guidance.
Enough to send her stumbling backward.
Fuck.