Chapter One Hundred One
For You
Some vows do not end in battle. His was written past the veil—for her.
Stormlight crested the mountains sooner than expected, a soft roar thundering against the far side of the peaks. Viktor had pulled the storm down with a thought, and the ridges bowed beneath it.
“You’ve stolen dawn from the storm,” The Midnight said.
“The sun will be yours when dragons come.”
His voice rode the first flashes of lightning, quiet as snowfall.
“Well done, Tory.”
Viktor exhaled, loosening the hand he didn’t realize was clenched inside his glove. A rough laugh rumbled beneath his mantle.
“Tory,” he muttered, shaking his head.
The Midnight’s words came quiet.
“That is what they call you. Your kin.”
Viktor nodded, eyes sharp to the Sagittarii moving below in disciplined silence.
“What am I to call you? Father never told me your name.”
He drew in a breath, cold, cedar-smoke on the air.
“I could give you one. An Eillish name would suit—”
“No.”
The Midnight’s voice cut sharp.
His presence waned, then returned, softer.
Something like fear. Something like regret.
“The only name I ever wanted was the one she gave me.”
Their mother.
Viktor’s eyes fell shut. He didn’t reach for the memory. He set the ache like a stone on the bank and came back to command.
No shouted orders carried—he didn’t need them. Commands moved thought to thought, steady as breath.
—Viktor: “First Bow—check your line.”
—Carys: “Six strides, Commander. Wind veers from the north. Feindoran, your signals ready?”
—Gabriel: “Bow strung. Missiles primed. Waiting on you.”
The voices pressed in, fifteen at once, but Viktor held them like reins—loosening what he didn’t need, keeping only his anchors: Gabriel on the ridge, Samson with the horses, Carys at his right hand.
“Loose.”
On the slope below, Gabriel raised one arm. A rocket shrieked into the dusk, arcing fire into the violet sky before bursting in gold. Trails lingered, then faded into the oncoming dark.
“Hold until my word,” Viktor sent, steady in every mind.
“Eat if you can. Sleep if you can. Before dawn, we rise.”
The thoughts withdrew one by one until he kept only Gabriel’s.
“Walk with me, Feindoran.”
Boots, grit. Their shadows stretched across the flats. Above them, the stars swallowed the fading trails of fire.
“The Midnight watches Ashakar,” Viktor said, grim. “Legion breaks on the full moonrise.”
“How many?”
“More than our line can hold.”
A breath.
“Which is why we thank our queen for reinforcements. A scout from Vykenra just ran in—Amerei secured three Sagittarii cohorts. They’ll be here at dawn.”
Gabriel stopped dead, bracer leather creaking.
“Three cohorts? From Vykenra? Dask, what did she promise them?”
Viktor’s jaw flexed.
“I don’t care.” His voice was rough as stone. “We live.”
They walked until the ridge fell away and the west bled out behind the teeth of the mountains. The last stream of light unstitched itself, leaving only the hush of rain on the far side of the peaks.
For a long while they said nothing. Gravel ground under boot, wind whispering between them like a promise neither wanted to keep. Viktor tipped his head back, finding the single star burning above a sky of clouds.
“Remember our last night in Irongate?” he asked.
Gabriel huffed.
“I try not to. I promised at least two she-elves I’d be back.”
“Dask.” Viktor laughed under his breath. “So did I.”
He scraped his heel across the dirt.
“Never thought we’d end up serving together. You and I.”
Gabriel shrugged, laced his hands behind his head, then dropped them again too fast.
“I knew the elves would take you away from Aerdania. You’ve always fought like one of us.”
Silence pressed.
He exhaled hard.
“It’s time we said it.”
Viktor nodded once.
“I’ve overseen everything this year,” Gabriel went on. “Father’s estate. Marriages for my sisters. Neither is happy about it. Maybe they’ll take it better from you. You’ve got that way about you.”
His voice caught.
“If I fall, you’ll see my ashes to Vykenra?”
“You have my word.”
“And if it’s you…”
Gabriel forced a laugh.
“You’ll need me to tell Issachar. And the dog.”
Viktor shook his head.
“Jaems already came. Asked to be the one to tell Father—if I fall.”
Gabriel’s breath snapped. Relief and dread tangled in the sound, ugly as it broke. He scrubbed a hand over his face, bracer leather rasping.
“Dask.” He laughed once, too raw. “Good. Good. I couldn’t have—” His jaw worked. “Issachar should hear it from a brother.”
“He won’t hear it,” Viktor said at last. His voice was quiet steel. “Not from anyone.”
The ridge held them. Wind. Rain whispering across the peaks. The violet gone.
Two brothers standing at the edge of night, saying everything that mattered, and nothing at all.
Gabriel turned back toward camp, shoulders squaring as if the night itself were armor.
He swung into Faerin’s saddle and vanished toward the ridge fires.
His men were small shapes in the dusk—checking bowstrings, stirring coals, passing bread without talking much.
The kind of quiet that comes before a storm.
Viktor took the slope alone. Camp moved softly around him.
Samson jogged the horse line, testing knots.
Balian paced beside him, counting halters.
Farther south, Storne’s banners stood like posts in dark water while riders settled saddles and checked girths.
Ivan rode along that edge, speaking low to each captain, making sure the southern front would turn when the horns called.
Viktor nodded to the gate guards and slipped inside his tent.
The brazier glowed. His mantle waited on a chair—the same one Amerei had draped her black dress the night before. If he closed his eyes, he could feel her: combing her blonde hair, climbing into his bed, whispering—
“I want to sleep like this every night.”
He breathed into the silence.
“Dask, Ami. We will.”
His hands went to the first clasp.
Click.
Leather parted at his throat. The scar there—half-moon and pale—forever marked by the Vykenraven.
Click.
Another latch.
The collar fell, revealing a rake across his shoulder: four white lines like claws dragged through snow. He could still taste smoke when he looked at them. He pressed his thumb into the deepest one, steadying his breath.
Click.
The tunic slid from his arm.
His chest was a constellation of stripes where fire had lashed and failed.
He heard Amerei’s voice from the night she first kissed him.
“What have I done to you?”
“You saved me, Amerei.”
Click.
The last clasp freed.
The breastplate came away.
There—over his ribs—the worst of it: a rope-raised scar daring to edge his raven-wing tattoo. He watched it a moment, then bowed his head.
“Let me save you, Amerei,” he whispered. “Let me give you peace.”
He lit the candle, set quill to parchment, and wrote:
Ami,
I aimed into the darkness
and struck the most beautiful star.
Let love rise from the ashes of what was.
Give him your heart.
Give our son his name.
I will love you past the veil.
-Your Tory
He dried the ink, folded the page, sealed it with the small stamp he’d carried since Westport. His thumb lingered against the wax, tracing the heat until it cooled—until it felt like touching her from afar.
He blew out the lamp and lay on his back, the tent’s hush settling over him. His fingers found the place she lay, the air still faint with her perfume.
He closed his eyes—and felt her.
A small, steady current across the flats, over the palisade, through the forests of Elváliev, up the cliffs of Amethyst, through the open lattice of the consort’s suite.
There she lay.
Alone.
His wedding band on her finger.
Their braided vow in her hands.
Tears stained her pillow.
She trembled in her sleep.
“Ami,” he sent. “I’m here.”
The air slipped beneath her blanket, pressed the mattress the way his weight would. Her body folded into it, hand reaching in the dark.
“Live… or die… Amerei—”
the vow pressed raw across distance, storm, fate—
“for you.”