Chapter 24 #2
A gust of heat struck his face as he stumbled forward, nearly pitching into the fire. Sparks leapt upward in protest. A man sat beside the blaze, a knife in one hand and a strip of meat held over the flames. He jerked upright, eyes wide.
“Blessed Mother,” he yelped, half rising. “Where in the fuck did you come from?”
Ivan dropped onto the nearest log before his legs gave way. His heart slammed against his ribs, a wild, uneven rhythm that made the world tilt. The bark bit into his palms. Don’t move. Don’t take another step.
The fire’s light wavered across his vision, bright one moment, receding the next. His arms ached; a cool pressure throbbed behind his eyes, and his feet still burned faintly as if he’d run for miles. When he breathed in, the air carried a bitter taste—metal, frost, something gone to rot.
The fire crackled. A voice cut through the static in his ears.
“Gods, are you deaf?”
Ivan flinched at the sound, blinking toward it. The soldier across the flames had shifted, knife lowered but not forgotten.
“What?”
The man stared at him, the firelight carving his face into hard lines. “You’re the prisoner.”
The world came back through his senses one breath at a time. The grit of earth beneath his boots. The uneven rhythm of his own breathing. A hiss from the fire as sap caught and burned. He let the air out slowly, the sound rough in his throat, then gave a single nod.
“So I’ve been told.”
The soldier frowned. “Aren’t you meant to be under watch?”
Ivan turned his shaking palms toward the flames, letting the warmth seep in, testing whether the world would solidify around him or fade again. “Watch me, then,” he murmured, eyes on his hands.
The dark current beneath his skin had moved him.
He had known, in the way a man knows a thing he has refused to look at directly, that it would eventually come to this.
But fuck. His thumb moved to his bare finger and stopped.
The frost-killed grass at the edge of his boot's reach sat gray and brittle at the periphery of his vision and he did not look at it.
The shadows quieted further as he timed his breath. Whether it was the heat of the fire or the man across it or the simple fact that he was no longer trying to go anywhere, Ivan could not yet tell.
The rebel was speaking to him again.
“What?” Ivan snapped.
“I—” The man hesitated, then frowned. “You don’t recognize me?”
Ivan studied him properly this time. Up close, he saw he was younger than he’d first appeared from a distance.
Not a boy, but close enough to it that the war had not yet carved its full price from him.
Seventeen, perhaps nineteen at most. A narrow scar ran from the corner of his mouth down his neck, pale against wind-burned skin.
His mind offered nothing but the vague sense that he had seen a thousand faces like this one—the offspring of a broken kingdom, born to carry its sins like inheritance.
“You Legion?”
The boy gave a single nod. “Once.”
Ivan tilted his head. “Runner,” he guessed, “or traitor?”
The boy huffed a soft laugh and rubbed his jaw. “Depends who’s telling the story,” he said. “Some say one. Some say the other.” He shrugged. “Truth is, I was both.”
Ivan dipped his chin once in acknowledgment. “What’s your name?”
“Rolfe.”
The name settled somewhere familiar in Ivan’s memory. “You were the one who helped the Hallowed.”
Rolfe’s gaze fell to the coals. “I tried,” he said after a moment. “Wouldn’t say I helped much.”
He remembered the talk that had followed—the yard at dawn, stone darkened with blood, a soldier dragged past the gallows.
Ivan’s gaze slipped lower, finding the man’s collar where his shirt hung loose, and only then did he notice the scar that continued down his neck.
It was an ugly mark—jagged, puckered, running from jaw to rib.
The sort of wound left by a whip soaked in brine.
Salt lash.
“You paid for it,” Ivan said quietly.
Rolfe gave a short bark of laughter, brittle as the kindling between them. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I’m surprised you lived.”
Rolfe leaned forward and fed another stick into the coals.
The wood caught slowly, smoke curling upward before the flame found purchase.
“A lot of people were punished after that night. Servants. Guards. Anyone fool enough to be seen after she was found.” His mouth twisted.
“I just happened to take the brunt of it.”
Ivan could picture it easily enough. Osin liked his punishments public. Fear worked best when everyone had a clear view of it.
Rolfe glanced up again. “I heard she tried to blind you.”
Ivan’s mouth twitched. “She gave it her best effort.”
“Hard to blame her, after everything she’d been through.” His voice softened. “Still wish I’d done more. Maybe then she wouldn’t have had to take such measures.”
Ivan said nothing. The fire popped; Rolfe prodded the meat skewered over the coals, then tore off a piece with his teeth.
For a while, the only sound was chewing.
When he finally looked up, his gaze flickered, as if reminded he wasn’t alone.
Another strip came loose; he held it out across the flames.
“You’ll eat?”
Ivan shook his head. “Keep it.”
A shrug, then another bite.
His eyes dropped to Rolfe’s wrist—something there had caught the firelight. The sleeve of his cloak had slipped back, exposing the totem that seldom saw air. It glimmered faintly through grime and scar tissue, ink long faded from black to gray, but the lines still clear, still definite.
Bravell.
His brow lifted. “You’re a long way from home.”
The placidity in Rolfe’s posture vanished, ease draining from his face like wine from a cracked cup. “Home’s gone,” he said.
The coals shifted with a soft collapse, sending a few sparks drifting up into the dark. They died before they rose higher than the wardposts. He stared into the fire for a long time before speaking again. “Were you there?” Rolfe asked. “When Bravell fell.”
Ivan leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, letting the heat brush the backs of his hands.
The shadows inside him seemed to settle in that warmth, somehow dulled by it.
He looked up, meeting Rolfe’s gaze across the flames.
“No,” he said after a time. “I wasn’t there.
I was still in the King’s Yard, training. ”
The words felt foreign in his mouth—relics from a life he could barely recall.
Pale stone courtyards. The ring of steel on shields.
Dark banners hanging heavy, even when the wind tore at them.
Boys with bloodied knuckles learning how to kill cleanly, how to stand again when they failed.
And beyond the yard, a girl with black eyes, watching.
“I almost was,” he added. “Orders were being drawn up. They meant to send me south with the second wave.”
Rolfe leaned forward slightly. “What stopped it?”
He gave a quiet breath through his nose. “The Lord Sovereign decided I wasn’t ready.”
“You’ve heard what happened that day?”
“I’ve heard stories.”
“They’re true,” Rolfe said. “All of them—except one. People say we chose wrong, that we sided with the Legion. That’s the lie.
There was no choice. By the time Ulrith’s banners reached the outer fields, half the city was already fleeing.
Bravell’s council sat in their hall, blustering over whether to bar the gates or burn them. ”
His mouth pulled in something close to a smile, bitter and small. “None of it mattered. The kingdom was already lost.” He looked up, and the fire caught the scar running along his throat. “Osin’s men didn’t ask us to join the Legion. They took us.”
Ivan raised a brow but kept silent.