Enzo
Three days from the ridge above the stream to the walls of Tharros, and every mile was worse than the one before it.
By the first night, we had cleared the corrupted woods. By the second, we should have been riding through clean country.
We weren’t.
The wrongness had followed the road south.
It waited in villages that had gone too quiet.
In fields that should have been stubbled gold, and instead, lay patchy and gray beneath the autumn sun.
In shuttered windows at noon. In inn yards with three horses where there should have been a dozen.
In men who came out to bow and couldn’t make themselves meet my eyes.
I sent riders back with orders for food, healers, ward-stones, and soldiers. Then I rode on.
Every order felt like a bandage pressed over a ripped-open throat. The country between the ridge and my seat had been bleeding for weeks, and the closer we came to Tharros, the more I understood that the bleeding hadn’t begun at the edges.
It had begun near the heart.
Nadia rode in front of me on Sugar through most of it, quiet in the saddle, her body held with that careful stillness I’d learned meant pain, thought, or murder. Sometimes all three. The mark on her cheek had settled into a thin pale line from beneath her left eye to the corner of her jaw.
It wouldn’t fade. Wraith wounds left what they left.
I had put my mouth on it twice on the road.
Once at the second night’s camp, while she sat beside me beneath the blanket and pretended she hadn’t leaned into the touch.
Once on the third morning, when she’d woken half-curled against my chest and the first light had caught the scar like a blade drawn across her skin.
Both times, something moved through the bond.
Not pain. Not grief. Or not only those. It was something older. Quieter. A word she hadn’t yet said aloud, held behind her ribs like a breath she wasn’t ready to release.
I didn’t ask. She’d tell me when she was ready. If she was ever ready.
We crested the rise above the lower city at the end of the third day, and Tharros came into view in the last gold of the dying sun.
I stopped Sugar. Nadia went rigid in front of me.
The seat rose above the lower city as it had for centuries: outer walls dark against the hill, middle gate set into old stone, the keep at the center with my banner flying above the tower in green and gold.
Mine.
My city. My people. My failure.
The streets below the walls should have been bright at this hour. Market stalls closing. Bakers banking their ovens. Children darting between carts. Temple bells calling the sundown chime from Evara’s lower shrine.
Instead, the bells were silent.
Lanterns had been lit too early along the main road, the way people lit them when they didn’t trust the dark to stay where it belonged. Smoke rose thinly from too few chimneys. The market squares were half-empty. Shutters were closed against the evening before evening had fully arrived.
My city was afraid.
I’d ridden into fear before. Besieged cities. Plague cities. Border towns after raids had cut through their watch and left blood in the wells. I knew the shape of fear when it took hold of a place.
But I’d never seen it wearing Tharros.
Nadia’s hand covered mine where it rested at her hip. Only that. No words. No comfort so soft it insulted the wound. Just her hand over mine while the city I had spent centuries defending watched me from behind closed shutters.
I touched my heels to Sugar, and we started down the rise.
The lower gate was held by my household guard, not the city watch. That told me enough.
Geren’s rider had reached the seat ahead of us, and the keep had responded by pushing inner forces outward. The watch had been folded into household command. The defensive posture had changed in my absence.
The captain at the gate saluted as we passed. His face was tight, his eyes shadowed with too little sleep. I gave him a nod and rode on.
The horses’ hooves rang too loudly on the cobblestones. A few people came to their doors to watch the column pass. They bowed. They didn’t cheer. The children who usually ran beside my horse calling for sweet cakes and copper bits didn’t appear at all.
Then a woman in a doorway saw me and crossed her hands over her chest in an old warding gesture. My grip tightened on the reins. She held the sign until we had passed three houses beyond her.
I hadn’t been warded against in my own city in two hundred years.
Nadia didn’t turn her head, but I felt her take it in. Every closed shutter. Every empty doorway. Every face that looked away. Every place a child should have been and was not.
Then came the anger, but it wasn’t mine. It was hers. Cold, precise, and quietly vicious. Not the anger of a prince whose city had changed while he was gone. The anger of a woman looking at what had been done to something that belonged to me.
It moved through the bond and struck with such unexpected force that for one breath, I couldn't draw air.
I put my hand over hers. She threaded her fingers through mine, and we rode on.
The inner gate opened at the end of the long climb.
The household had assembled in the courtyard to receive us.
Protocol, as ever, didn’t give a shit whether the world was ending.
My chief steward stood at the head of the staff.
Behind him, the keep guard, the chamber service, the laundress, the cook, the stable hands, the footmen, the junior maids, all arranged by rank and years of service, all in household colors, all wearing the posture of welcome.
They’d been waiting.
I dismounted in the center of the courtyard. The steward bowed and welcomed me home with the same formal words he had used for forty years. I answered with the same courtesy.
All of it tasted like ash.
Nadia stayed mounted. Quiet. Watching. Then the bond sharpened. My attention followed hers before I’d fully understood the shape of what she had found.
A maid stood in the second rank of the chamber staff, dark-haired and young, with a basin of water held carefully in both hands.
She must have been on her way to prepare my chamber when the column arrived, and the steward called the household below.
Now she stood in perfect posture, eyes lowered, the water in the basin barely trembling.
At first glance, there was nothing wrong with her. Then she shifted, and the lamplight struck her face.
There.
Faint dark lines spreading from the inner corners of her eyes across the tops of her cheekbones. Delicate as veins beneath glass. The same webbing I’d seen beneath Marra Holfen’s eyes.
Alive beneath her skin.
Something cold and violent opened inside me. She was part of my household. She stood twenty paces from me with the working under her skin, holding water meant for my chamber, and I didn’t know her name.
The shame landed under the fury.
Nadia didn’t move. Didn’t look again. Didn’t draw attention. But I knew her well enough that her assessment settled between us without a single word.
If one is visible from here, there will be others. Assume contact spread until proven otherwise. Don’t frighten the household. Don’t alert whoever is listening.
I finished the formal reply. I commended the household for its service. I asked after the keep.
The steward reported that the seat had been quiet. The wards sound. No incidents within the walls. Three sendings received from the south road and waiting in my study.
Quiet. No incidents. A maid with death webbed beneath her eyes stood behind him holding my wash water.
I thanked him. Gave orders for the column. Asked for food to be brought to my chamber for myself and Nadia.
Then, as he turned to dismiss the household, I caught his arm. “That maid in the second rank with the basin,” I said quietly. “Her name.”
The steward followed my gaze. His face didn’t change. “That’s Mireya, my prince. Chamber service. Two years.”
“Has she been well?”
His eyes tightened and he paused before answering me. It was small but damning. “She’s been tired,” he said. “The chamber staff has been short-staffed, and she has taken extra duties. I meant to give her a day to recover before sending her to the healers.”
“Don’t.” I kept my voice low enough that only he heard. “Bring her to the household healer in the morning. Full examination. Lady Voss will speak with the healer first. Don’t tell Mireya why.”
Worry settled into the lines of his face. “Yes, my prince.”
He bowed and dismissed the household. Mireya left with the chamber staff, basin steady in her hands, eyes on the cobbles, the working faint and patient beneath her skin.
Nadia’s grief brushed mine, full of understanding where pity would have been easier to bear.
Aldric dismounted at the edge of the courtyard with the rest of the officers. He performed every protocol correctly. Bow. Request for orders. Brief report on the column’s condition. His face arranged into loyal competence, his voice level, his hands clean.
I gave him the courtesy expected of his rank. Told him the column was dismissed. Told him to take his usual quarters in the captain’s wing. Told him I would speak with him in the morning about the next week’s deployments.
He accepted all of it without a flicker. He believed me. He believed I was furious with the road, furious with the villages, furious with the delay in the woods. He believed I was still the prince he had served for fifteen years—angry, yes, but trusting him to stand where he had always stood.
The lie held.
Geren moved into position at my shoulder the moment Aldric turned away. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The captain’s quarters would be watched tonight. If Aldric moved anywhere but toward his bed, Geren would know before his second step.
I gave him one small nod. He vanished into the work.
I turned back to Nadia. She was still on Sugar, looking past me now to the keep itself. The bond had shifted from fury to focus, cold and clean. An operator beginning an audit.
“I need an hour,” she said.
“Take the keep first.”