19. Sabine
SABINE
The war sounds like the mountain is eating itself alive.
Steel against stone. The crack of gargoyle wings snapping under enemy weight. Human screaming that cuts off too fast, too clean. I've stopped flinching at the sounds. That should probably terrify me more than it does.
Inside the command tent, the air is worse than outside. Out there, at least death has the decency to be honest about what it is. In here it wears Tovian's face—rigid and controlled and incandescent with something that hasn't decided yet whether it wants to be fury or grief.
He's staring at the casualty scroll like it personally offended him. Three of his Ashwing patrol leaders. Eleven human soldiers from Velka's eastern flank. I watch him read the names twice and I know, I know, what's coming before the scroll even hits the war table.
"You don't leave the perimeter."
"Excuse me?"
"No scouting." He doesn't look up. "No perimeter walks. No supply runs past the outer tree line. You stay inside camp."
"You don't get to do that."
Now he looks up. His eyes have gone cold as though the decision is already made and he is simply waiting for my surrender. I have never once accepted anything from him quietly, and I'm not starting now.
"Three attempts in six days, Sabine."
"I survived three attempts in six days."
"Because I was close enough to intervene." He moves around the table and I hold my ground, which I've learned is the only language he respects. "The next time, I may not be."
"Then that's a risk I'm entitled to take—"
"It is not."
The two words drop like slabs of stone and the indignation that explodes through me is so white-hot it almost blinds me.
"You don’t get to decide that. I’m not one of your warriors you can order into a hole and cover with rock. I’m not—" I stop. Breathe. "You are choosing your fear over my freedom and calling it protection."
"I am choosing your life over your pride."
"That's not what this is." I step closer, tip my chin up, and meet those terrible gold-threaded eyes.
"Your casualty counts are getting worse and you are terrified, and instead of sitting with that like a rational being, you're building a cage and putting me in it so at least one loss feels preventable.
That's not protection, Tovian. That's cowardice. "
He doesn't move. Doesn't blink. His hands are flat on the table and I can see the stone patterning rising through his knuckles the way it does when he's working very hard not to lose control.
"The strategy meeting begins in ten minutes." His voice is stone. "You are forbidden from attending."
He walks out.
I stay in the silence for several seconds, then I follow him.
The war council tent is thick with bodies and worse with tension. Velka has her arms crossed and Father Corren is gripping his walking cane hard enough. Tovian stands at the end of the map table like a thunderstorm.
Every head in the tent turns when I walk through the flap.
Tovian stiffens.
I don't look at him. I keep my gaze on the map.
"The western ridge formation," Velka says, her voice already frayed. "He wants to push our third human battalion through the narrow canyon pass as a diversion while aerial units sweep from above. That's a kill corridor, Sabine. Tharros will slaughter them—"
"He won't." I move to the table. I pull the cave blueprint from beneath the tactical overlay—the one I've spent three weeks memorizing until the tunnel lines feel like the lines of my own palm.
"Look at this ridge." I trace it. "This collapsed section from the old Ashwing network runs directly beneath the canyon floor.
It's hollow. A gargoyle diversion force doesn't sweep from above—they come up through the ground directly behind Tharros's flank.
The human battalion doesn't advance into the kill zone.
It positions at the mouth and holds. Tharros turns to deal with the aerial threat and walks into Ashwing coming out of the earth beneath him. "
Father Corren leans over the map. His tired eyes travel the blueprint lines slowly.
Velka looks surprised, "That's actually—"
"Sound," Father Corren says quietly.
I finally look up. Tovian is watching me. Not the map. Not the council. Me. His expression is raw in a way I have never seen on him before — cracked open around the edges.
The meeting disperses into tense, grudging motion. Velka is already issuing modified orders under her breath as she pushes through the tent flap. Father Corren squeezes my shoulder once, wordlessly, and follows.
I step out into the freezing night air and breathe.
The cold hits like a hand against my face. Above the tree line, a fire is burning. Orange light pulses against the fog. I stare through it, eyes fixed and empty.
"Sabine."
Leif's boots crunch through the blood-dusted snow. He catches up to me a few steps from the tent, and when I turn to look at him, the expression on his face makes my chest seize. He looks like he’s spent a long time choosing silence and has finally run out of road.
"Leif—"
"Why do you always choose him?”
“Leif, what are you talking about?”
"You've been doing it for weeks. You finish his sentences in meetings. You position yourself between him and anyone he doesn't trust yet. You look for him first when there's a sound outside the tent." He pauses. "Sabine. You move around him like he's your north."
The wind cuts through my coat.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
All roads lead to him.
The thought arrives without warning—map lines converging, every argument, every infuriating decree, every moment of sitting beside him in the dark while he stares at casualty scrolls and won't let anyone see that it's hurting him.
Every time I've hated him. Every time I haven't.
The terrifying arithmetic of it all suddenly resolves into a single, undeniable sum.
I love him.
Not the bond. Not the silver markings climbing my wrists. Me. Sabine. I love this monstrous, wounded, insufferable creature who builds cages out of panic and calls it devotion, and I am completely, catastrophically lost.
"Oh." The word comes out very small. "Oh, that's—that's a significant problem."
Leif lets out a breath, reaches out, and squeezes my hand once, hard.
The heavy canvas flap of the command tent lifts and Tovian steps into the moonlight.
He stops.
The distant war sounds continue—steel and stone and wind through pines. None of it touches this moment. He stands in the cold with his wings tucked and his massive chest rising and falling in a rhythm that gives him away completely, and his face—
His face is ruined.
Every line of the warlord stripped away.
Every layer of the dominant Alpha, the territorial beast, the creature who locked me out of meetings and decreed my movements like I was his to command.
Gone. What's left is a rawness enormous enough to fill the room, and underneath it, a creature quietly overwhelmed.
He heard us.
He heard me.