Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Hanna
The Bonesteel Armory rose from the industrial quarter like a scar that never healed.
Three stories of reinforced stone, its walls blackened by years of smoke and furnace heat.
Lanterns burned at every entrance. Guards patrolled in tight, practiced circuits, carrying swords that were made of other, less precious metals.
They didn’t merit bonesteel. Pale as bone, poisonous until enchanted, worth more than the lives spent hauling it up from the dark. Dare’s people. My people now.
I crouched on the rooftop overlooking the main yard, the grit biting into my palms as I watched another patrol pass beneath us. Below, the district hummed: foundries roaring, carts rattling, workers moving through streets that never truly slept.
“They’re early tonight,” Dare murmured beside me. His eyes tracked the guards automatically, counting steps, timing breath. “But the rotation’s still tight. North gate first. Thirty seconds.”
Kaelan lay on my other side, motionless as stone. “And our people?”
Thorne answered quietly from behind us. “In position. Alleys to the west and south. Once we open the side doors, they’ll flood the floor.”
Men and women waited for our signal, carrying stolen blades. Among them were bonesteel miners and laborers, faces marked by scars and dust, eyes fixed on the armory that had consumed their families.
“Or,” the Shadow Weaver murmured, “you could shatter the walls and be done with it.”
Kaelan met my gaze. “Hanna?”
“I’m here,” I said. “She’s under control.”
“Oh, is she?” The Shadow Weaver’s annoyed huff left me regretting daring her.
Dare moved first, dropping from the roof the instant the guards turned away. Thorne followed, then Kaelan and me. Boots hit stone softly. The side entrance loomed ahead, warded and locked.
Dare knelt, tools already in hand. No magic. Just skill. The lock surrendered with a faint click just as Thorne released the wards, his hand pressed to the stone, magic glowing around him.
The door swung open for us like an invitation, and a sense of foreboding rolled over me.
Inside, the smell was hot metal, oil, old sweat. The corridors were narrow and cold, the stone worn smooth by generations of use. We moved fast, signaling behind us.
The rebels surged in.
They flowed through the entrance in disciplined silence, dozens of them, eyes wide and burning.
I caught snatches of faces that I’d come to know in the camp in passing, moving among them with Kaelan, Thorne or Dare.
A man who’d lost two fingers in the mines.
A woman who’d carried bonesteel until her back gave out.
A boy no older than sixteen with a war hammer he clenched with fierce determination despite looking too weak to even carry it.
The main storage floor opened before us.
Rows upon rows of weapons gleamed under lantern light. Swords, spears, armor, each piece tagged and cataloged. Each one paid for in blood.
For a moment, no one moved.
Dare stepped forward, voice carrying low but firm. “This bonesteel was stolen from you. Tonight, you take it back.”
The sound of metal against metal rose like a heartbeat. Faces hardened with purpose, with something close to joy.
Kaelan moved through the rows, freezing locks and hinges with careful precision so that they shattered. Thorne coordinated the flow, directing people to exits, keeping lanes clear.
I stood watch, senses stretched thin, listening through shadow and stone. Feeling movement ripple outward as our people poured into the streets, armed now with the very steel that had once crushed them.
“Look at what power can be when it’s shared,” I whispered to the goddess.
“Look what we can do together when we don’t try to shrink from our power,” she whispered back.
Then suddenly, guards converged around us.
“Move!” Thorne barked at the rebels. “Get the weapons out now! Don’t stop, don’t look back!”
He plunged through their lines, already shifting into the dragon, moving to meet this new attack.
The rebels scattered with practiced efficiency, hauling crates toward exits as guards flooded Thorne.
Some of them made it past him; the others were being frozen as Thorne’s enormous black form blocked the entrance from which the guards had come.
His icy breath rolled over them and they froze, then shattered.
The sound of human bodies breaking apart in chunks of ice mixed with clashing blades.
Kaelan met the first three guards who had evaded Thorne and came at his people, his sword moving in brutal arcs. A guard went down with crushed ribs. Another stumbled back, arm hanging useless. The third managed to block—barely—before Kaelan’s boot caught him in the chest and sent him flying.
Then Kaelan’s ice flared, sealing the eastern stairwell entirely. Frost spread across stone, thick as a man’s arm, blocking reinforcements.
Dare fought at the front, protecting the rebels’ escape. His blade was everywhere—deflecting, striking, killing. A guard lunged at him. Dare sidestepped, let momentum carry the man past, and opened his throat with one clean stroke.
More guards poured from the western stairs.
Ten. Fifteen. Against the rebels with their new weapons, without magic they understood yet.
I drew my blade, joined the fight. I deflected a strike aimed at Thorne’s back, then twisted inside the guard’s defense and drove my knife into the gap beneath his armor. He fell.
Fire burned under my skin, wanting release. The shadows tugged at my awareness, offering help.
“Use me,” the goddess whispered. “End this quickly. Before more arrive.”
“Not yet. We could still—”
Then signal horns sounded.
Deep, resonant, carrying across the industrial quarter like a death knell.
My blood went cold. “They knew we were coming.”
Elite forces poured into the streets outside, cutting off routes with brutal efficiency. I felt them as much as heard them through the walls, the Shadow Weaver’s senses mixing with mine: boots on cobblestones, shouted orders, the clang of weapons being drawn.
Ambush.
But Thorne had the lead, and he crashed through the wall, through the guards, opening a path for our rebels.
We burst through the southern exit and ran straight into a wall of armored soldiers.
Twenty at first. Then thirty. More pouring in from side streets, blocking every route, herding us into a narrow lane with stone rising on three sides.
A killing ground.
“Drop the crates!” Kaelan ordered. “Form up! Weapons ready!”
The rebels obeyed instantly. Crates clattered to cobblestones. Swords were drawn. Spears leveled. These weren’t trained soldiers, but they were furious, armed, and done being prey.
The soldiers advanced in formation. Shields locked. Spears forward. Professional. Deadly.
“Hold!” Kaelan commanded.
The clash was immediate and savage.
The shield wall hit our line like a battering ram. Steel screamed against steel. Someone screamed, the sound cut short as a spear found flesh.
Thorne rose as the dragon to fight from above, his ice magic shattering the enemy lines. Kaelan cursed, and I could feel how badly he and Dare wanted to shift, but the people needed them there—their two leaders, forming shields of ice to save their lives.
Kaelan held the center, an unmovable pillar.
His sword shattered a shield, caved in a helmet, opened a throat.
He moved with terrible efficiency, making space where there shouldn’t have been any.
His ice tore through the right flank. Spikes erupted from cobblestones, impaling three soldiers.
Frost spread across shields, making them brittle. They shattered under the next impacts.
Dare moved like a blade given life, carving through the left side. He was faster than any soldier, ducking under strikes, slipping between guards. His blade found gaps in armor with surgical precision.
The rebels fought with desperate courage, but more soldiers kept coming.
The shield wall reformed. Pushed forward. We were being compressed, forced back against stone.
I fought beside them, blade wet with blood, fire burning just beneath my skin. A soldier came at me. I deflected his strike, twisted inside his reach, drove my knife up under his jaw.
He fell.
Another took his place immediately.
“Use me,” the goddess urged. “End this now. Save them.”
A blade slipped past Thorne’s guard, aimed at Dare’s exposed back.
The shadows exploded from me.
They wrapped around the soldier threatening Dare. His neck snapped with a sound like breaking wood. The blade clattered harmlessly to stone.
But the shadows didn’t stop.
They surged outward like flood water, dark and hungry and lethal. Wrapped around three more soldiers. Then five. Then eight.
Bones cracked. Screams cut short. Bodies fell like puppets with severed strings.
“Yes,” the goddess breathed. Satisfaction rolling through her voice like thunder. “Yes. Let me help. Let me save them all.”
I tried to contain the darkness spreading from my hands.
The shadows had their own momentum now. Their own will. Or maybe it was always her will. Maybe there had never been a difference.
More soldiers fell. The shadows cut through them like a scythe through wheat.
“Hanna!” Dare’s voice cut through the chaos. Sharp with alarm—not for the soldiers, but for my sake. “Hanna, stop!”
He cursed. “Kae, watch my back!”
Then I felt him reach out to me. He was at the edge of my mind.
Shadows rose.
“That’s right,” the goddess said. Gentle. Patient. “Stop fighting. Let me protect them. Let me win this battle.”
Dare was fighting his way toward me. Cutting down soldiers who stood between us. Blood streaked his face. Panic burned in his eyes. Six more soldiers blocked his path.
“Thorne!” he shouted, and Thorne was already diving, destroying every one of those soldiers as his enormous dark wings beat above us.
For a second, I felt his wings’ shadow cast over me. Felt their power and safety. Those were my shadows.
But I was drowning in her shadows. Sinking beneath the goddess’s presence like water closing over my head. No air. No light. No way to reach the surface.
“Stop fighting,” she said again. “You’re tearing yourself in two trying to resist power and save them at once. Let me protect you all. Let your power free.”
To stop trying so hard would feel like freedom.
To let go.
“That’s right,” she encouraged. “Let go. Trust me. I’ll keep them safe. I’ll win this fight. You just have to stop resisting.”
The shadows wrapped around another soldier. Then another. The fighting was ending. We were winning.
“Hanna, please!” Dare’s voice. He’d cut through his opponents. Blood on his blade, terror in his expression. “ Come back!”
I wanted to tell him I was trying.
Wanted to reach for him the way I had before.
But the shadows were growing up between us, in real life and in my mind. They were everywhere.
Dare reached me. Grabbed my shoulders with hands that shook. Looked into my eyes. For. Just for a second, I saw him clearly.
But the goddess was ready this time. The shadows wrapped around his presence. Pushed him out. Slammed shut around my mind like iron doors.
And then I was alone in the shadows.