Chapter Ten Ashes Between Us
The first crackle of flame sounded like a whip.
Morna stood frozen at the edge of the yard, the torchlight turning the spilled oil to a slick black sheen before it caught.
For a heartbeat she saw every detail with unnatural clarity: the shine of the puddle, the rough grain of the wooden wall, the way smoke began as a thin ribbon and then thickened, hungry, curling upward as if the camp itself exhaled poison.
Then the fire took hold.
Shouts rose at once. Boots hammered the ground. Buckets clanged. A guard swore and shoved past her, nearly knocking her into the mud. Another ran the opposite way, calling for water and more men, voice sharp with panic.
And in the center of it all, Fergus lay crumpled in the muck, his limp leg twisted wrong, his cheek pressed into the ground as if the earth might swallow him and spare him the rest.
Morna’s stomach heaved.
Morna had known this was coming. She had stood close enough to hear Caelan tell Ivor he would name Fergus, close enough to feel the decision harden inside him.
Knowing it in a shadowed corner had been one kind of sickness, a thing she could still argue against in her mind, a thing she could pretend might change at the last breath.
But watching it unfold in the open was different.
A plan spoken quietly could still feel like a threat.
A lie delivered to Valerius, with Caelan’s voice steady and his face unreadable, became a blade that had already fallen.
She had treated men after battle. She had seen blood, bone, fever, and rot.
She had watched bodies fail when the body had no more strength to give.
None of that felt like this. Battle had its rules, even when they were cruel.
This was cruelty with a calm hand, delivered like a lesson, then discarded like waste.
She forced herself to breathe through her nose, shallow and quick.
Caelan stood near the platform, rigid as a post. He did not move toward Fergus. He did not shout. He did not lift a hand as if to stop what he had started. He only watched, face blank, fists clenched.
He looked like a man who had cut his own heart out and set it aside so he could finish a task.
Morna’s chest tightened until it hurt. She tried to take a step toward him, then stopped. Her legs felt wrong, as if they belonged to someone else. Her hands curled into her cloak, fingers searching for something to hold onto, but there was nothing solid enough for what she felt.
The guard who had struck Fergus moved away, drawn toward the smoke and the shouting. Valerius barked orders, the smooth calm gone, replaced by a sharp efficiency that made him even more frightening. He did not look at Fergus again. The example had been made.
Morna stared at the broken man in the mud and heard Caelan’s voice from earlier in her mind, quiet and measured, telling her that fear kept you sharp.
She had believed him because steadiness had always meant restraint.
She had told herself that even if he crossed a line, he would look like a man in pain while doing it.
Instead he stood there as if he had rehearsed the moment, as if naming Fergus were no different than counting tools in a shed.
The calm was what undid her. The calm meant this could happen again.
A bucket of water splashed against the store wall. Steam hissed. The fire flared anyway, licking higher, spitting sparks into the dusk. Smoke rolled across the yard, thick enough that men coughed and cursed. Guards pushed prisoners back, shouting for them to clear the space.
Morna felt Elara’s small hand clutch her cloak. The girl’s grip was desperate, knuckles white.
“Morna,” Elara whispered, voice shaking. “What is happening.”
Morna forced herself to look down. Elara’s eyes were huge, reflecting flame and fear. Behind her, Ewan stood trembling, lips pressed tight as if he were trying not to cry.
Morna swallowed hard. “Stay close,” she said, her voice steady only because she made it steady. “Do not run. Do not speak. Follow me.”
Elara nodded, breath hitching. Ewan did not speak, but he stepped closer, as if her words were a rope he could hold.
Morna’s gaze flicked back to Caelan.
He finally moved, not toward Fergus, but away from the platform, angling toward the shadowed space between the barracks and the tool shed.
His steps were controlled. His shoulders were squared.
If anyone watching did not know the truth, they might think he was simply obeying orders like everyone else.
Morna felt something inside her tear loose.
She could not stand in the open and scream at him. She could not drag him into the yard and demand he explain himself while Valerius watched and weighed reactions like coin. But she also could not swallow it. If she swallowed it, it would poison her.
She tightened her grip on Elara’s hand and took Ewan by the wrist. “This way,” she murmured.
They moved with the press of bodies, keeping their heads down, letting guards shove them where they wanted. Smoke gave cover, and Morna used it, slipping into the narrow passage between buildings where torchlight thinned and sound dulled.
Caelan was there, half hidden, back against the rough plank wall of the tool shed. His face was shadowed. His eyes were fixed on the yard, tracking movement, measuring distance, listening to shouts.
He looked at Morna as she approached, and for an instant something flickered in his gaze, a tightness that might have been apology, might have been fear. Then it vanished behind the same blank control.
“Morna,” he said, voice low.
Her chest rose and fell too fast. “Do not say my name as if it means anything to you,” she hissed.
Elara startled, eyes darting between them. Ewan’s grip tightened on Morna’s sleeve.
Caelan’s jaw clenched. “Keep your voice down.”
Morna’s laugh was sharp and ugly. “Keep my voice down,” she repeated, barely louder than a whisper. “As if the volume is the sin.”
Caelan took a step closer, hand lifting slightly, as if he meant to steady her. Morna flinched back so fast her shoulder struck the wall.
“Do not touch me,” she said, voice shaking.
Caelan froze. His hand dropped slowly, as if the air had turned to ice around it. “We have no time,” he said.
“You stole time when you stole his life,” Morna snapped.
Caelan’s eyes narrowed. “Fergus is not dead.”
Morna stared at him, disbelief turning hot. “Not dead,” she repeated. “Is that what you tell yourself. As long as the heart still beats, your hands are clean.”
Caelan’s mouth tightened. “My hands are not clean.”
“Then why did you do it,” Morna whispered. “I knew you were going to,” she said, the words shaking, “but I did not know you could do it with that face. With that voice.”
Elara’s breath caught. Ewan’s eyes widened. The children did not understand the words fully, but they understood the tension, the way the air felt like it might shatter.
Morna forced herself to soften her tone, just enough. “Elara, take Ewan and stand there,” she murmured, pointing to the deeper shadow behind a stack of broken crates. “Do not move unless I tell you.”
Elara hesitated, then nodded. She led Ewan away, both of them silent, fear turning them obedient.
Morna turned back to Caelan. The fire’s glow flickered across his cheek, highlighting the bruise under his jaw and the hard line of his mouth.
“Answer me,” she said.
Caelan’s voice came out rough. “Because it was the only way to make Valerius look where we needed him to look.”
Morna’s throat tightened. “So the plan matters more than the man.”
Caelan met her gaze. “The plan is the only thing between us and a slow death in that yard.”
Morna’s eyes burned. “Do not speak to me about death,” she whispered. “I have spent my life fighting it. I have dug graves with my own hands. I have watched children die while their mothers begged me for a cure I did not have.”
Her voice shook, the memory slicing through her composure. “And now you stand there and tell me you chose to do this because it was efficient.”
Caelan’s shoulders tensed. “Do not call it efficient.”
“What do you call it,” Morna demanded.
Caelan swallowed. The silence stretched, filled with the distant roar of fire and shouted orders.
“I call it necessary,” he said finally, voice low. “And I hate that word.”
Morna’s lips pressed together, trembling.
She remembered his body under her cloak, the warmth of him, the desperate tenderness of their night, the way he had looked at her as if she were the only true thing left in Blackwood.
She had trusted that look. She had given him her choice.
She had believed that even if he bent, he would not break into cruelty.
She had been wrong.
“You did what Valerius does,” she whispered. “Not because you were forced in the moment. Because you chose it, and you did not even have to pretend it hurt.”
Caelan flinched, a small movement, but Morna saw it. She saw the way his eyes tightened, the way his breath caught for a fraction of a moment.
“I did not,” he said.
“You did,” Morna insisted, the words sharp because she could not let them be soft. If she let them be soft, she might forgive too quickly, and then what would she be. “You used a man as a tool. You pointed and said a name and watched him fall.”
Caelan’s jaw clenched. “I watched because if I looked away, I would pretend I did not do it.”
Morna’s stomach twisted. That honesty should have mattered. It did, somewhere deep, but it did not make her less sick.
“You told me once not to make myself the excuse,” she said, voice low. “You said if you did, you would never stop.”
Caelan’s eyes held hers. “Aye.”
“And now,” Morna whispered, “you want to tell me you did it for me.”
Caelan’s mouth opened, then closed. His throat worked as he swallowed, as if the words were there and he could not force them out.
Morna laughed again, quieter this time, full of pain. “You cannot even say it. You know it would be another theft.”