Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
ARWEN
We don’t have time.
The survivors are still trapped. The Chapel is still occupied. Whatever loyalists remain are rallying behind a woman who has nothing left to lose.
“Cael.” I turn toward the stairs. “How many fighters can we muster?”
“Maybe ten. Most of the survivors are too weak or too broken to hold a weapon.”
“Then ten will have to be enough.” I check my blade. The edge is still sharp—the Abbot kept his ritual implements in perfect condition. “Lady Marceline, can you—”
“I’ll coordinate the non-combatants.” The former ambassador has already begun descending the stairs, moving with purpose that belies her fragile appearance. “Get them ready to move the moment the path is clear. I’ve organized evacuations under worse circumstances.”
She disappears into the smoke-hazed lower levels.
Zrynok appears at my side. His sword is bloodied from the Keepers. Something has closed off in him — the grief of the basement, the anger at Maret’s escape, all of it folded away with the practiced efficiency of a man who learned long ago how to survive by becoming only the task in front of him.
“The Chapel.” His voice is flat. Professional. “Tell me everything you know about its defenses.”
“Thick walls. Limited entrances. The main doors are reinforced with iron bands. There’s a servants’ entrance at the rear, but it’s narrow—one person at a time.”
“How many loyalists inside?”
“Cael said a dozen. Maybe more.”
“And they’ve concentrated spores in the space? The same trick the Abbot used?”
I remember the Garden. The pavilion. The way Zrynok staggered when the spores hit his system.
“If they have, you can’t go in there. The infection—”
“The infection is mine to manage.” He takes my hand. Brings it to his lips. Presses a kiss against my knuckles—the courtly gesture he used in the basement, elegant and out of place. “I need you to trust me.”
“I do trust you. That’s not the same as watching you kill yourself.”
“I’m not planning to die.” Something that might be a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I’m planning to finish this. Get the survivors to the forest edge. Clear the path while I hold the loyalists’ attention.”
“You can’t hold off a dozen Keepers alone.”
“I won’t be alone.” He releases my hand. Draws his sword. “I’ll have the woman I love watching my back.”
The words hit me like a blow. Not because they’re surprising—he said something similar in the Garden, when the Abbot was trying to break us—but because here, now, in the aftermath of killing my former friend, they feel different. Real in a way they weren’t before.
“You can’t just say things like that and then walk into certain death.”
He turns toward the staircase. Toward the smoke and the screaming and the last battle we need to fight. “Then let’s finish this.”
I grip my stolen blade and follow him down the stairs.
“Together,” I say. “Whatever it costs.”
The courtyard is chaos.
Smoke billows from burning buildings. Survivors cluster near the eastern wall, pressed back by flames they can’t escape and enemies they can’t fight.
A handful of defenders—Circe among them, her face set with determination that looks borrowed from someone braver—hold a ragged line between the loyalists and their targets.
The Chapel looms beyond. Its doors are closed. Crimson haze leaks from beneath them—spores concentrated to lethal levels.
Maret’s final trap.
“Get them moving.” I grab Cael’s arm. Point toward the forest edge, visible beyond the monastery’s crumbling outer wall. “The burning buildings will cover your retreat. Head for the tree line and don’t stop until you reach open ground.”
“What about the Chapel?”
“Leave the Chapel to us.”
He doesn’t argue. Just nods and starts rallying the survivors—helping the wounded to their feet, organizing the able-bodied into something like a column, getting everyone moving toward the forest before the loyalists can regroup.
Zrynok draws his sword.
I draw mine.
The Chapel doors wait.
Whatever happens next, we face it the only way we know how.
Not alone. Not apart.
Side by side, with blades drawn and nothing left to lose.