Chapter 2 Landon
The north valley stretches before me in the dying light, my squadron’s wyverns settling into their new roosts among the cliff faces.
I should be with them, ensuring the caves are defensible, checking the hunting grounds, establishing perimeter watches.
Instead, I stand alone on an outcropping, watching the distant lights of Volundr flicker to life like earthbound stars.
Somewhere in that city is my mate.
The thought sends a strange hum through my chest, a warm pull that grows stronger every time I allow myself to think of her.
Rhianelle Wiolant.
The Elven Queen. My enemy who gave us sanctuary when my own king ordered our deaths.
I close my eyes, trying to reconcile the impossible contradiction of my existence.
For seven hundred and thirty years, I’ve served Eirik Bloodhound with absolute loyalty.
I’ve led his hunts, commanded his aerial forces, burned entire cities at his word.
That loyalty is more than just duty. It’s the very foundation of who I am.
Eirik saved me when no one else would.
The memory surfaces vividly as if it happened yesterday instead of centuries ago.
I was seven years old, a street child in the outer districts of Avalon, trying to steal bread from a baker’s window. The baker caught me easily because my hair was like a beacon even then, red as fresh blood in sunlight.
“Devil spawn!” he had screamed, and the crowd had gathered quickly.
Everyone knew red-haired children were cursed.
They were said to be born from unions between fae and demons, marked by the underworld and destined to bring misfortune wherever they went.
The mob had dragged me to the town square, piling wood for the pyre.
I can still smell the smoke starting, feel the heat beginning to build, hear my own voice as a child screaming for someone, anyone, to help.
The crowd’s faces had been twisted with righteous fury. They were doing good work, removing a curse from their midst.
Then he appeared.
Eirik Bloodhound had ridden into that square on his great black wyvern. The crowd had parted before him, falling to their knees, but he’d only had eyes for the pyre where I stood tied to a stake, flames beginning to lick at the wood beneath my bare feet.
“What crime has this child committed?” His voice made the ground tremble.
“He’s devil-marked, my lord,” the baker had stammered. “The red hair—”
“Is hair.” Eirik dismounted and walked through the crowd. “Release him.”
No one had moved. The fear of a curse ran deep.
That’s when Eirik had done something that changed my life forever. He’d reached into the flames with his bare hands, snapping the ropes that bound me, and lifted me out of the pyre himself. His skin had blistered from the heat, though it healed within moments.
“This child is under my protection,” he’d declared. “Anyone who harms him will answer to me personally.”
Eirik could have simply ordered my release and left.
Instead, he’d taken me with him, brought me into his household, trained me himself when no one else would dare touch the devil-marked boy.
The Fae King gave me purpose, status, power.
He made me Commander of his aerial forces when others said red-haired fae could never be trusted with such responsibility.
I owe him everything.
My mate is everything he is fighting to destroy.
Our bond pulses again and I can almost feel Rhianelle’s presence across the distance. She’s thinking of me. It should be disturbing but instead it sends warmth flooding through my chest. When I saw her in that healing house, everything I thought I knew about myself shattered.
How can I be loyal to my king while I’m bound to his enemy?
The attack on the western borders feels like a lifetime ago, though it’s been mere days. I can still see the flames consuming the elven capital, hear the screams of their people.
“You’re welcome in Aelfheim as long as you need shelter.”
She could have demanded our swords or forced our cooperation. Instead, she gave freely and asked for only basic courtesy in return.
It’s not what an enemy should do. If the positions were reversed, no fae lord would have done the same.
The wind shifts, bringing the scent of cooking fires from the valley below where my squadron has made camp.
They’re adjusting to exile better than I expected.
But I can feel their unease. We’re warriors without a war, soldiers without a nation.
Everything we’ve known has been stripped away because we refused one order from the fucking witch.
My warriors refused to slaughter civilians. Members of other legions did the same once the villages were taken and the fighting was done.
Was that truly such a crime that it warranted our execution?
The Fae King I thought I knew would have said no. Eirik was hard but fair, brutal when necessary but never wasteful. The order to kill elven civilians and the order for our deaths do not align with the king who pulled a devil-marked child from a pyre.
Unless Eirik is no longer the one making these decisions.
My thoughts turn to his mistress. Every courtier calls her beautiful. I call her what she is, a serpent dressed in silk. She appeared at court five years ago, and since then, Eirik’s decisions have become increasingly erratic.
The enchantress personally led the attempt on my life. She turned our own wing brothers against us.
Did Eirik know? When she sent those three riders to kill me mid-battle, was it at his command or on her own initiative?
Then there is Finnbheara, my closest friend among the nobility and the only prince who argued against the hasty attack on Aelfheim.
Where does he stand in all of this? At the last war council, he kept glancing toward his father as though he were watching a stranger wearing the king’s face.
If anyone at court has noticed what Eirik is becoming, it will be him.
I need answers. But I’m in exile, branded a traitor.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Rhianelle’s face. Her lilac eyes, steady and unafraid, even standing in a field of wyverns that could swallow her whole.
She doesn’t remember her husband, the vampire.
A shameful part of me is relieved. The bond is difficult enough to bear without knowing she is consciously in love with another.
I see how she touches that ring on her finger sometimes, unconsciously, like her body remembers what her mind doesn’t.
She loves him still, even if she can’t recall why.
I am the enemy commander Blight has chosen for her. I don’t know why the Unyieldings concern themselves with Rhianelle’s fate. It’s fucking terrifying.
“You’re brooding again.”
I don’t turn when Kieran approaches. The veteran has an uncanny ability to move silently despite his size.
“I’m keeping watch,” I reply.
“From here? You can barely see our camp, let alone any approaching threats.” He moves to stand beside me, his weathered face thoughtful. “You’re thinking about her.”
Everyone in the squadron can sense the thread of fate that binds me to Rhianelle. They know what it means, the pull it creates.
“I’m thinking about many things,” I say carefully.
“But mostly her.” Kieran pulls out a flask, takes a swig, offers it to me. Fae wine, probably the last we’ll have for a long while. “I’ve seen mate bonds before, Commander. They’re impossible to ignore.”
“This one needs to be ignored.” I take a drink, letting the wine burn down my throat.
Kieran is quiet for a moment. “She reminds me of what the Fae Royal Bloodline was like before the blood feuds. When honor meant something more than victory.”
What Rhianelle did today was like something out of the ancient tales, the ones my mother used to tell me, before she abandoned me to the streets rather than endure the shame of keeping her devil-marked child.
“It doesn’t matter what she is,” I say finally. “I owe everything to King Eirik. That debt doesn’t disappear because of a mate bond.”
“Even if he ordered your death?” Kieran asks quietly.
I say nothing. The question settles between us. I have no answer that does not feel like a betrayal, either of my king or of myself.
“Get some rest,” I tell Kieran. “Tomorrow we need to establish patrol routes and hunting schedules.”
He studies me for a moment longer, then nods. “Don’t stay up here all night, Commander.”
His footsteps fade down the slope, leaving me alone with the wind and the distant glow of Volundr. I remain on the outcropping, turning Kieran’s question over in my mind. I think about my centuries of loyalty and one thread of gold that unravels all of it.
Below, the fires of our camp burn among the cliffs. My warriors have lost their home, their purpose, and nearly everything else because they followed me. Brooding alone will do nothing to help them. I push away from the stone and head down the slope to join them.
Laughter reaches me as I approach the camp. I recognize Alys’s tinkling laugh immediately, followed by Eacharn’s rougher chuckle.
I pause in the shadows beyond the firelight, listening.
“Did you see how she could barely look at Nightshade without trembling?” Alys is saying, her voice dripping with amusement. “The great Elven Queen, terrified of a wyvern. How does she expect to survive this war when she can’t even face our mounts without cowering?”
“She’s soft,” Eacharn agrees, taking a long pull from a flask. “I give it a week before flight training breaks her completely.”
“A week?” Alys laughs again, that same mocking sound that grated on me earlier. “You’re generous. I say three days before she’s sobbing. Did you notice how she kept touching that ring? She’s like a child with a comfort toy.”
“It’s pathetic. They say she lost some of her memories,” Eacharn adds with a snort. “Though I suppose when your mind is that fragile, it doesn’t take much to shatter it completely.”