50. The Valiant Rebellion
The Valiant Rebellion
Mariana
Bodies jostled me to and fro, with jabbing elbows and rough shoves.
Each point of contact was a strike of lightning to my magic, filling me with an edgy, electric energy as I forced my way through the crowd.
Up ahead, the young Lothgaimian noblewoman was curled on the tile, cradling her head protectively in her arms as people clambered, kicked, and tripped over her as they fled the clash of monsters and knights.
It took considerable effort for me to get to her, pushing my way through as if I were wading through whitewater.
When finally, I reached her, I hauled her roughly to her feet. Her cheeks were pink, and a bruise was already swelling on her forehead.
“Are you dizzy?” I asked.
She blinked at me, rocking on her feet as people continued to knock into us—two stones in a raging river.
“Are. You. Dizzy?”
“No, but…” Her light brown eyes widened as she trailed off, glancing at the battle with a sob.
“Focus on what’s ahead.” I grabbed the pale green fabric of her skirts mid-thigh and forced them into one of her shaking hands. “And try not to trip on your hem. Hurry, now.”
Her mouth dropped open, but then she was caught in the current of the crowd, swept through the door and out into the hallway from which I’d come.
I continued forward, forcing my way against the flow of frantic nobility and into the Great Hall. When I broke free from the masses, I barely had a chance to take in the combat before I collided with a wall of golden armor.
Steadying hands found my upper arms, firm and warm even through the fabric of my shirt. “Ana.” Before I could react, Faren cupped my face in his palms. The kiss was hard and fast, and then he was looking into my eyes. “Are you harmed?”
Stunned, I quickly took him in. He stood squarely, not favoring his injured leg—though I wondered how much he was dulling the pain of it, as it must still be healing.
His breastplate had new etchings around the edges and was draped with a ceremonial sash.
His face was clean-shaven, hair messy, skin flushed with adrenaline.
Compared to the last time I’d seen him…Fates, he was alright.
The knots in my stomach slackened—
—then pulled taut again. I needed to get far away from him.
Belatedly, breathlessly, I confirmed, “I’m unharmed.”
The set of his shoulders dropped an inch. “I was beginning to fear something had happened to you,” he continued in a rush, giving me another quick peck. “But you’re here now. And you saved Eva—thank you.”
“Eva?” I realized he meant the noblewoman. “That was your sister?”
A quick smile. “Listen, the plan—”
I was already shaking my head. “Faren, I can’t. I—”
“We can still thwart them,” he insisted. “Heris and the Lord. Together, we can—”
“No. Listen.” Emotion clogged my throat. The metal of his breastplate was cool beneath my hand. “I won’t put you at risk.”
Battle waged around us with the harsh sounds of clanging metal and guttural screams. Yet Faren was looking at me like I was the only thing that existed. You have become my guiding star, he’d said in Brine. If this is doom, then I welcome it.
But I refused to be his doom.
“I won’t put you at risk,” I repeated, my voice weak and watery.
Light brown eyes widened with understanding. I expected to see hurt in his expression, but the only thing there was stubborn determination. “You think you can scare me off?”
My vision blurred. “You die at Castle Might. You die in this hall, don’t you?”
“Not today.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I refuse to die today.”
I shook my head again, swayed by the vivid memory of black claws opening Grinnick’s belly. “Associating with me makes you a target to both tyrants. I would never forgive myself if I—”
“I am not Grinnick,” he said firmly. “Mariana, I will not allow anyone, past or present, to stand between us, and—”
A horrible roar ripped through the room, rattling the windowpanes. I tore my gaze from Faren, truly taking in the mayhem for the first time since I cleared the crowd of nobles.
Past the upturned banquet tables and broken chairs, the spilled food and broken dishes, far at the other end of the Great Hall, three strange-looking Morta were advancing in spite of an onslaught of human resistance.
Unlike the Morta of the Western Wood, these were not wild and rampaging, but calculated; their movements were as strong and precise as highly trained knights.
They must’ve been the culmination of Lord Haron’s scheming—Volume 8—and though I’d half expected to see something like this, the proof still turned my blood cold.
The abominations were slashing and snarling at a myriad of fighters: Valiant knights, former Morta, castle guards, and Lothgaimian Mighty. The Fenriran knights were split: either fighting the Valiant or hunched over their own knees, vomiting on the floor or clutching their heads in pain.
To our right, a nervous-looking retinue of guards were crowded around a lone table, atop which stood Lord Haron, his face nearly as red as his robes as he screamed commands.
I couldn’t hear him over the din, but his words seemed to be slowing the Valiant’s army of former Morta, the remaining threads of their Oaths breaking as they defied the Lord’s orders and snapped their magical leashes.
The rebels were lucky they could defy their Oaths more easily than the Mighty.
This was as close to no consequences as they’d ever get—and it was clear by their vigor that they would not waste the opportunity.
Heris himself, however, was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t communicated much of his plan to me—not beyond steal the Ledgers—but I knew he hadn’t accounted for these new Morta. With more resistance than he must’ve anticipated…where did that leave me?
I met Faren’s eyes again, my heart galloping in my chest. “The fuck is going on?”
“Chaos,” he replied. “Do you trust me?”
My attention darted to where a lone Mighty Knight was racing toward the Lord—no, past the Lord, toward a pair of cowering ledgermasters.
They were huddled behind the Lord’s dining throne, which rested on its side among a scattered mess of decorative pillows.
The weight of the Ledgers in my satchel seemed to grow heavier on my shoulder.
Faren shook my arm, getting my attention. “Ana, do you trust me?”
“I trust you,” I replied.
“Then we fight together, sweetheart,” he said. “You and me. Got it?”
There was no time to think, to doubt, to worry. All I could do was nod as Faren’s hope became mine again, ours—bold and determined and ours.
With my confirmation, he took my hand, yanking me in the direction of the ledgermasters.
“Heris has rightful claim,” Faren told me as we ran.
“Of the throne?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
I’d heard the rumors, but I’d never believed them. “My job was to steal the Ledger; I wasn’t made privy to the rest.”
“Do you have it?”
“We can’t swear him in,” I said through panting breaths. “We can’t let him rule over Fenrir, he’ll—”
“We aren’t swearing him in,” Faren said.
Somewhere behind us, I heard the distinct sound of a Morta’s death call.
I glanced back in time to see it collapse, crushing a handful of knights and slumping over the body of another slain monster.
There were two Morta left: one currently swamped by fighters, and the other tearing free, heading our way.
I ran hard, the exertion stealing my breath, cutting our conversation short. When we reached the huddled ledgermasters, Faren dropped to his knees, sliding across the marble the rest of the way. I skidded to a halt beside him, nearly colliding with the Mighty Knight who had gotten there before us.
Faren’s introduction was curt. “Warner. Mariana.”
So this was Faren’s hapless friend. We shared a perfunctory glance, and based on Warner’s smirk, I got the sense that my reputation proceeded me, too.
“Pleasure,” he said, and his tone had an unexpected lilt of teasing.
I didn’t know what to make of it and didn’t have time to ask.
The two ledgermasters were tucked between the Lord’s toppled throne and the wall, holding each other in a terrified embrace.
Their dusky brown robes were stained with purple pie filling and who knows what else, and with their ceremonial cowls thrown back, the fear on their faces was plain.
These were high-ranking Arcane Adepts, middle-aged, with hands heavily tattooed—proof of their superior power—yet they were quivering like children, vacant-eyed and immobilized.
“What now?” I asked Faren.
His hair fell across his forehead as he regarded me. “You’re going to let me call the shots for once?”
The Morta was only thirty feet away from us now, and it let out a vicious hiss that rattled my bones. “Not really the time for jokes, is it?”
“Wasn’t a joke,” Faren replied.
“Quit flirting,” Warner said.
“We’re going to die,” one of the ledgermasters—a man with a short gray beard—whined. “We’re going to die.”
“Mariana, the Ledger,” Faren said.
The marble was hard beneath my knees as I shifted, removing my satchel from my shoulder and opening the flap. When Faren spotted the two additional spines within, he swore. Warner’s face went slack.
I removed the Ledger of the Sovereign and presented it to the ledgermasters.
They both startled, mouths falling open. “You,” the male ledgermaster said to me. “You’re the person whose been—”
“Sever Lord Haron’s Oath,” Faren interrupted—then gagged and grimaced as if the suggestion had stung his throat.
“What?” the second of the two—female, with black braids and a round face—shrieked.
“That’s treason,” the man added.
“But it’s not against your Oaths,” Faren pointed out, his voice rough. “If you care about this great realm, you will sever Lord Haron from the Ledger of the Sovereign. You will strip him of his power over—” He broke off with a strangled sound.
The woman glanced between the three of us—the three knights kneeling in front of her—then past us toward the approaching Morta. She began to shake her head, mouth agape—not a refusal, but disbelief. The man covered his face, fingers trembling.
I found their abject horror an odd comfort—it meant that not all the Lord’s ledgermasters were corrupt enough to enable his schemes. That these two representatives of his Adept court were therefore persuadable.
With a twinge in my own Oath magic, I removed the other tomes from my satchel, thunking the two Ledgers of the Order of the Morta on the tiles between us. “Your choice is simple,” I said. “Treason or death.”
The woman gaped at the Ledgers. The man was shaking his head. A crash from behind us—the Morta, stalking ever closer—made them both startle.
“I’m not supposed to die this way,” the woman moaned, rocking forward and back.
I gripped her arm, squeezing hard. “Morta can alter Fate.”
The man made a small, horrified noise.
“If you want to survive,” Faren piled on, “you will do as we say.”
“Do it,” a new woman said sternly, arriving on the scene. She had short blonde hair and a strong jaw, just like her brother. “Do it,” Phina Farkept repeated.
“Phina,” the female ledgermaster said, and it was clear in her voice that she trusted the Adept of Alchemy. “What is the meaning of—”
“He did this,” Phina stated, pointing, and I noticed then that the Oath tattoo around her wrist was no longer a perfect ring, but broken.
Twenty feet from where we all knelt, the Morta had paused, standing at attention before Lord Haron, who was still perched atop a table.
He swung his arm in our direction, then spoke.
I was no sound magician—I couldn’t hear him over the gruesome cacophony of the battle—but I knew an order when I saw one.
The Morta pinned us with its red eyes.
“He did this,” Phina reiterated to the ledgermasters. “You’re our only hope. He must be stopped. Sever him. Now.”
I shoved the Ledger of the Sovereign into the ledgermasters’ laps. With shaking hands, they opened the book, flipping through the delicate pages until they found the page they sought.
“This will take time,” the male ledgermaster said, eyes flicking to the Morta once again heading our way.
I rocked back on my heels, rising to my feet. “I’ll make time.”
“I’m coming with you,” Faren said, brandishing his swords.
“You’ll break your Oath,” I protested. Mine had not snapped yet, but it was already as good as broken, just by participating in the Valiant rebellion.
But Faren—his Oath mattered to him. I knew he wanted to keep it for his future, for the realm, and as much as I wished he felt differently, I didn’t want to corner him into doing something he didn’t want.
Especially on my behalf. “You don’t have to, Faren. ”
“I can still help, if I—”
An arrow whizzed past us, a warning shot that pinged off a marble column and clattered along the floor.
“Heris,” we said in tandem.
The Valiant Leader was making his way toward us from the left, flanked by Castor, Brom, and four former Morta.
Seeing their trajectory, Lord Haron dismounted his table, rushing our way from the right with his own loyalists in tow.
In addition to the Morta lumbering ever closer, the sight of both our leaders closing in—our oppressors, these would-be tyrants—felt like being trapped inside a collapsing building, with bricks and stones crumbling all around us.
Warner put it into words: “Fucking Fates, this is bad.”
My breaths came shallow, as if I were being crushed by falling rubble. Familiar callouses scraped mine as Faren clasped my hand. The touch was an anchor, a shield, a pause in which to think.
“Keep them away from the ledgermasters,” I told the Mighty Knights. “I’ll take the Morta.”
“Surely you can’t fight that on your own,” Warner said protectively, doubtfully.
“She can,” Faren countered. “Phina, see if you can flag down your brother.” The alchemist nodded an affirmative, and then Faren looked at me again—tender and weighty, as if he were about to say more—but he was cut off by the Morta’s shriek.
With my heart thudding in my mouth, I turned, meeting the monster with my sword ablaze.