Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Pain flares down my leg as I shift my weight. I clench my jaw, refusing to give it voice, but Mallen catches the twitch at the corner of my mouth and huffs a low, knowing laugh.
Glances scrape across my skin, knowing and unkind. Every look tells the same story: why I limp, why I wince, why my thighs remember what my mouth won’t say aloud.
“You can ride with me,” Mallen murmurs, adjusting the reins without looking at me. “But the men will see it as weakness.”
I flinch—not from the pain, but from the gentleness in his voice.
I shake my head. “Then they’ll see me ride.”
His silence folds back in on itself, the way it always does when kindness fails to serve its purpose. It was never a real offer. Not from the man who forged gentleness into grit and made me realize it was love.
He swings into the saddle with effortless grace.
No sign that he barely slept. No indication of how many hours he spent inside me, coaxing moans and soft sobs until I fell asleep beneath him.
He doesn’t glance back as I bite down on a scream and haul myself up.
The saddle meets my bruised thighs like a blade.
“Gods,” I breathe.
He says nothing, his profile carved from dusk and stone as he stares down the road to Threnos. Intent coils in his posture. He’s already left the country house behind. He’s already riding to war.
“What happens now?” I ask as we pass the gates.
“The capital falls. Quickly, if we’re lucky. Let’s hope we’re fast enough to strike before the magic makes its way back to your father.”
Wind tugs at my cloak. The hills rise and fall around us, pale gold under the lowering sun. Mallen doesn’t speak again, but his conviction shows in the way he moves—like the earth itself has already told him which direction to ride. Forward, always forward.
An officer eases his horse beside mine. The same one from yesterday. He’s young. Still young enough to believe that war is glory and that right always wins.
“Azhara, meet Marcus,” Mallen says.
The officer nods. “We storm the city before nightfall. Seize the palace before your father can dig in. The gates won’t hold long, and he won’t have time to regroup if we’re swift.”
Marcus says it like a promise already carved into stone—like he can’t imagine the city resisting, can’t fathom a version of this war where we don’t win clean and fast.
“You’re wrong,” I say. “He’ll burn Starsfall to the ground before he lets it go. He’ll kill everyone if it buys him a day longer on the throne.”
Marcus falters. Not visibly—but in the pause between words, in the twitch of his fingers against the reins. The kind of hesitation that can’t be scrubbed clean, no matter how fast you recover. Mallen watches him, his eyes lingering, faint humor brushing his mouth like an impish breeze.
“Leave the man alone,” Mallen mutters. “You’ll terrify him.”
I turn to Marcus. “Do I terrify you?”
“No, Princess. You worry me. A lot.” He laughs and I arch an eyebrow at him. “You’re unpredictable. I’ve seen you fight and seen you hold your own. But you’re as likely to charge as to retreat. We’re about to find out what you really are, and I’d rather know before I ride into battle with you.”
Mallen growls and Marcus shakes his head at him.
“He’s still trying to impress you,” Marcus sighs.
“Good,” I say.
His eyes flick to Mallen. “She always like this?”
“She’s worse when she hasn’t slept.”
I laugh, and Marcus rides off, shaking his head. Mallen’s smile fades as soon as we’re alone. He rides like a man with one purpose. One fight. The army follows in perfect silence, boots and hooves thudding against packed earth, the rhythm of war.
The Starsfall banners don’t fly above them. They haven’t in years.
Mallen trained these men, shaped them in his image.
They’d follow him into fire—and I know he’d walk into it for them, too.
He sculpted them into discipline, into death that marches.
He tried to shape me too, but my body clings to softness.
My thighs ache, my spine hums with each jolt, and the echo of last night pulses through me like a secret I can’t shake.
I was trained for war, but not for this.
It’s stirring again—the darkness inside me. Not light, not clean magic, but the kind that slips between ribs and makes promises in the long dark hours of the night. It isn’t studied. It isn’t safe. It tasted midnight and it liked it. Now it waits, patient and poised, a lullaby with fangs.
I don’t know how to control it.
I’m not sure I ever will.
But if my father has regained his magic, I’ll have to use it.
Marcus joins us again, his words spilling like orders, almost too fast for me to keep up with as he rides beside me. He speaks like he doesn’t want me to be part of this fight. Like I’m a weapon he doesn’t want to use because he fears it will explode in his hands.
“Did you want to ask anything, Princess?” Marcus asks at last.
“No.”
He studies me, teeth clenching. His gaze flicks to Mallen again before settling on me.
“How’s your magic?”
“Dark,” I say. “Death is.”
His expression tightens. “I meant control. Your father may already be wielding his again.”
I keep my grip steady, but the question carves through me all the same. He doesn’t ask if I’m ready. He asks if I’ll be the ruin that topples our army.
Mallen doesn’t speak. His silence is a blade now—sharp and deliberate.
I glance between them. “You want to know if I’ll use it against him.”
Marcus nods once.
“If I get the chance.”
Mallen’s grip shifts on the reins. Only slightly. But it’s enough. He trained me to read the smallest movements, the most silent tells. His restraint now is deliberate. He’s afraid—for me, of me. Or maybe of what happens if I fall.
My magic wakes like a remembered dream—violent and vivid. It never whispered. Even as a child, it screamed in silence. It was never meant to soothe. Only to consume or shield, and I never knew which it would choose.
Mallen rides closer, his voice barely a breath. “You were born for this.”
“Maybe,” I whisper. “Or maybe I was born to die.”
He turns to face me at last, eyes catching mine. A storm there—silent, aching, proud. And beneath it, something fiercer than hope. A vow made without words, burning through both of us.
“If you fall,” he says softly, “I fall too.”
Marcus doesn’t speak again. We ride the final stretch in silence, the walls of Threnos rising like ghosts in the dusk.
They used to shine with marble and flame.
Now they’re streaked with soot and unanswered prayers, their glory eaten hollow by time.
Even the stone seems to flinch from what will happen beneath it tonight.
We’re riding into a throne room soaked in old blood and older oaths. My father waits there, and whether I kill him or kneel, I won’t walk away the same.
Marcus breaks the silence one last time.
“Do you have it in you to kill him?”
I meet his gaze.
“Yes.”
I’m definitive. Sure. Unrepentant. The answer hangs between us like iron—rigid, brutal, unforgivable.
Marcus’s expression hardens. He studies me like I’ve spoken too fast. Too clean.
As if conviction should come dressed in tears.
But he’s never had to stand in a room built from my father’s voice and choose not to break.
“She’s ready,” Mallen growls. His tone is steel. Unquestioning. Protective.
“We’re dead if she’s not,” Marcus snaps, wheeling his horse and galloping back toward the line of officers. Dust flares in his wake.
Mallen doesn’t look at me.
Ahead, the capital rises from the dusky earth like a wound in the hills—white stone glowing faintly against the bruised sky.
The walls shimmer—not with magic, but with memory.
Light slicks the stone like sweat, like grief, like a city holding its breath.
The flags above the ramparts flutter in the twilight, red and gold catching the last of the sun.
They should be beautiful. Instead, they make my blood run cold.
This was my city once. My home. My prison.
It’s too quiet. The breeze barely stirs the grass.
The army is still. Horses shift, bridles clinking softly, soldiers adjusting gear that doesn’t need adjusting.
Beneath the calm, tension coils. The men know what’s coming.
Some wear blank expressions, others grim resolve.
A few look up toward the distant towers—wondering if tonight, they’ll breathe their last.
Mallen raises his hand. The movement is smooth, deliberate, and unmistakable. A pause follows—thick enough to choke on—then his hand drops, cutting the dusk in half.
Everything erupts.
Marcus bellows orders. Formations shift.
Runners bolt toward flanking units. Hooves strike stone.
The army flows forward like a tide breaking loose from its dam.
There’s a strange kind of order in it—controlled chaos, fierce and exacting.
This is what Mallen’s built. These are his soldiers. They don’t hesitate.
I do.
I freeze—not from fear, but recognition. The stillness before the first note of a requiem. The last inhale before the sky gives way to fire. Then Mallen turns, gives me one look—nothing soft in it, just command—and I move.
“Stay close,” he hisses, already urging his horse ahead.
His voice isn’t anxious. It’s resigned. Like he expects this to go to hell, and he’s made peace with it.
We ride hard. The wind claws at my cloak. The trees fall away behind us. The road narrows and then dips. The walls of Threnos draw closer, gleaming pale and ghostly in the gloom. A crescent moon glints against the silver trim of Mallen’s armor as he leads the charge—half warrior, half myth.
It sounded so simple.