Chapter 17 River #2
He takes the note from my lap, reads fast. His expression darkens with every line.
“Shit,” he mutters.
The word lands like a blade in my chest.
Veeto leans in. “Tell me it ain’t Skeela.”
“She’s alive,” I say, voice flat. “But not for long.”
“What happened?”
“The ball was a setup,” I whisper. “Or maybe it just went bad. Doesn’t matter. Laertiez has her. And now he knows there’s a rebellion.”
“Of course he does,” Kragna growls. “No one stays secret from that prick for long.”
I close my eyes. Skeela’s face flashes behind my lids—sharp jaw, cold eyes, the way she’d looked when she said I’m not here to save humans. I’m here to rule.
And now she might not even live long enough to try.
Toad Knight stands with a wheeze. “Then we ride to her defense! We lay siege to the gates! We paint the stones red with tyranny’s blood!”
“Sit down, wartface,” Veeto grunts. “Ain’t no siege with five freaks and a drunk spider.”
“Seven,” Charen slurs. “If you count Bruce. And me. And my webs.”
Kragna doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at the fire like he wants to punch it into submission.
I feel my heartbeat in my wound. A dull, hot throb that reminds me how close I came to dying. How easily everything could unravel again.
“She didn’t deserve this,” I say softly.
“You need to finish this,” Kragna says, as if realizing it for the first time himself.
I nod. My eyes burn.
“This ain’t your fight alone,” he adds. “We all go. Or none of us.”
I look around the fire—at the hydra tracks in the dirt, at Bruce’s slow blink, at Veeto sharpening a blade for no reason other than nerves.
They’re monsters. All of them. Misfits, killers, things that should’ve been put down by any decent army.
But they’re mine now.
And if Skeela’s dying in the city that broke us both?
Then I guess it’s time to break it back.
The guilt sits heavy in my gut, a stone I can’t cough up. Doesn’t matter that I’m alive, that my wound’s healing, that the monsters around me still laugh and drink and howl at stars. Skeela’s in chains. Or worse.
And I walked away.
I lie under a canopy of swaying branches, the wind threading through the leaves in soft, rhythmic whispers, like the forest’s trying to sing me to sleep. But my thoughts are louder. Ugly. Relentless.
“You should’ve dragged her out,” I mutter to no one. “You should’ve noticed the setup. You should’ve—”
“Blaming yourself won’t change shit,” Kragna says behind me, voice low and raw.
I don’t turn to face him. I know the look he’s giving me—half pity, half fury.
“She knew what she was doing,” he goes on. “She walked into that fire with her eyes wide open.”
“She walked in because I asked her to,” I shoot back, finally twisting to face him. “I made the deal. I brought her that crate. She trusted me.”
“She’s a captain of the goddamn guard, River. Not some wide-eyed street rat. You think she didn’t know what kind of game this was?”
I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper. “Still feels like I lit the match.”
Kragna’s crouched beside me, his shadow stretched long in the firelight. He’s cleaned up since the city—fresh bandages around his forearm, hair pulled back from his face—but his eyes are wild, still stained with the echoes of battle. The rage hasn’t left him. Just gone quiet.
“She was ready to burn,” he says, softer now. “You think she’d flinch from the consequences?”
“No,” I admit. “But I still have to do something.”
He sighs, long and slow. “Figured you’d say that.”
“I can’t sit here while they gut the rebellion,” I whisper, voice cracking. “While they turn her into an example.”
“I know.”
“And you can’t stop me.”
His mouth quirks. “I didn’t say I would.”
We stare at each other a long moment, tension coiling in the silence between us. Then I push myself up onto my good leg and limp toward the fire, where Toad Knight is furiously scribbling something on a stained sheet of hide with what looks like charcoal and ambition.
“I need a map,” I say, dropping beside him.
Toad Knight doesn’t even blink. “Of Kyrdonis?”
“Of the underlevels. Catacombs. Old servant tunnels. Anything not on the noble records.”
He nods, flipping the hide over. “They call me mad, you know.”
“I’m aware.”
“But in my madness, I remember. I drew them once. When I was still Sir Valthros of the Sewer Guard, Third Rank.”
I blink. “You were a guard?”
“Briefly. Before the war. Before the toad.”
I don’t ask. He starts sketching with trembling fingers, lines snaking like veins across the parchment, marking exits, watchtowers, possible bolt-holes.
I peer over his shoulder, correcting where I can, adding names of dead nobles and collapsed corridors.
It feels good—horrible and necessary and good—to focus on something I can control.
Kragna looms behind me, arms crossed, face tight.
“You almost died,” he growls.
I don’t look up. “That’s how war works.”
“You think I give a shit about the war?”
His voice is sharper now, like shattered bone. I glance up at him and find him glowering, barely holding himself together.
“You think I care about coups and rebels and cities full of corpses?” he says. “I care about you. And I’m not letting you go back in just to bleed out again.”
“I’m not asking your permission.”
“I know,” he snarls. “That’s what scares me.”
I stand slowly. My leg still aches like it remembers the arrow lodged in it, but I force my spine straight.
“Then come with me.”
Kragna blinks.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“River—”
“I’m not doing this alone. But I’m not backing out either. So if you’re scared, stay here. If you’re tired, stay here. But if you meant it—if you’re with me, then come.”
His eyes blaze with something I don’t dare name—something heavy, ancient, terrible and beautiful.
“Always,” he says.
The word lands like a promise carved in stone.