Chapter 17 Kielyne
SEVENTEEN
KIELYNE
The cages squat at the edge of the command section—wooden frames with iron bars, exposed to the elements, designed to hold prisoners for interrogation or execution. Most of them are empty. Some hold human shapes, slumped and motionless.
One holds a child.
An orc child, maybe eight or nine years old by human reckoning. Bright green skin—the color that darkens with age—now ashen with pain and dehydration. Small tusks barely beginning to emerge. A wound in the child’s side, badly infected, the flesh around it swollen and weeping.
Captured in a raid, probably. Left to rot as an example of what happens to the enemy.
The healer in me catalogs the damage automatically. Infection spreading. Fever setting in. Without treatment, this child has hours. Maybe less.
“Kielyne.” Blorjorn’s voice is low, urgent. “We have to keep moving.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. The cathedral is close—I can see its shattered spires rising above the tents, stained glass catching the torchlight, glowing that eerie red. We’re almost there. Almost safe.
All I have to do is walk past a dying child.
I’ve done it before. Gods know I’ve done it before—on battlefields, in field hospitals, in the aftermath of raids where there were too many wounded and not enough hands. Triage means making choices. Triage means letting some people die so others can live.
But this isn’t triage. This is a child in a cage, dying because no one cared enough to stop it.
“Kielyne.” Blorjorn’s hand closes around my wrist. Not the chain—my actual wrist, warm and urgent. “Look at me.”
I tear my gaze from the cage. His face is taut with worry, with fear—not for himself, I realize. For me.
“I know what you’re thinking.” His voice is barely above a breath. “And I understand. But if you go to that cage, we’re dead. Both of us.”
“I know.”
“Then keep walking.”
I look at him—this orc captain who’s claimed me, protected me, made me feel things I swore I’d never feel. Who’s right, tactically and strategically and in every way that matters.
Then I look at the child in the cage, and something in my chest breaks.
“Life is life.” The words come out hoarse. “You said that’s why you saved me. Because I believe that.”
His jaw tightens. “Kielyne—”
“Would you want me if I could walk past this?” I hold his gaze, let him see everything I’m feeling—the fear, the determination, the desperate need to be the person he thinks I am. “Would you still want me if I let a child die to save myself?”
He’s silent for a long moment. The camp bustles around us—soldiers passing, torches flickering, the distant sound of laughter from a card game.
“Two minutes.” His voice is rough. Resigned. “I’ll watch for guards. Two minutes, and then we run.”
I press my mouth to his—quick, fierce, grateful beyond words—and move toward the cage.
The lock is simple—a basic padlock, the kind used for supply crates. My picks make quick work of it.
The child doesn’t stir as I slip inside the cage. Up close, the damage is worse than I thought. The wound isn’t just infected—it’s going septic. The fever has taken hold, burning through the small body, cooking the brain.
I have no supplies. No medicine. Nothing but my hands and whatever dregs of knowledge I’ve accumulated over fifteen years of battlefield work.
It’s not enough. I know it’s not enough.
I do it anyway.
My hands find the wound. I clean it as best I can with water from my stolen canteen, digging out the worst of the infection with my fingernails, murmuring apologies the child can’t hear. I tear strips from my undershirt for bandages. Pack the wound with what pressure I can manage.
The child’s eyes flutter open. Clouded with fever, but aware. Afraid.
“Shh.” I stroke sweat-matted hair back from a burning forehead. “It’s okay. I’m going to help you.”
“Hurts.” The word is a whisper. A plea.
“I know. I know it hurts.” My throat tightens. “But you’re strong, yes? You’re an orc. Orcs are the strongest people I know.”
A tiny hand finds mine. Grips with surprising strength, the fingers curling around my palm, holding on like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s been nothing but pain.
“Don’t go.” The child’s voice breaks. “Please. Don’t leave me.”
My heart shatters.
I think of Millbrook. Of the root cellar where I hid, twelve years old and terrified, listening to my mother die. Of all the years since, running and surviving and telling myself I couldn’t afford to care, couldn’t afford to get attached, couldn’t afford to be human.
This child could have been me. Different skin, different tusks, but the same terror. The same desperate need for someone—anyone—to stay.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I squeeze the small hand back. “I’m right here.”
From outside the cage, I hear Blorjorn’s sharp intake of breath.
I look up. He’s watching me from the shadows, his expression—
I don’t have words for his expression. Wonder, maybe. Reverence. The look of a man seeing something impossible.
“You’re extraordinary.” The words are barely a breath, meant only for me. “You know that?”
Before I can respond, his head snaps toward the main path. His whole body goes rigid.
“Guards.” The word is clipped. Urgent. “Coming this way. We need to move. Now.”
There’s no time.
The guard patrol rounds the corner just as I slip out of the cage—six soldiers, not four, their formation crisp and alert. They see me. See Blorjorn. See the unlocked cage and the child inside.
“ALARM!” The lead guard’s sword clears its sheath. “INTRUDERS IN THE PRISONER SECTION!”
Blorjorn’s chains hit the ground—he’s already slipped free, already moving, his axes somehow in his hands despite the disguise. He takes the first guard before the man finishes shouting, the axe opening his throat in a spray of crimson.
“RUN!” He’s fighting three at once, his massive body blocking the path, buying me time. “Get to the cathedral!”
I run.
The camp explodes into chaos behind me. Alarm bells ring from every direction. Soldiers pour out of tents, grabbing weapons, shouting questions. Torches flare to life, turning the night into a hellscape of dancing shadows and confused men.
The cathedral looms ahead—shattered spires reaching toward the stars, that eerie red glow bleeding from its windows. A hundred yards. Fifty. Twenty.
Arrows whistle past my head. One grazes my shoulder, leaving a line of fire. I don’t slow down.
Blorjorn catches up to me at a dead sprint, blood on his axes, blood on his face, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He grabs my hand and we run together, feet pounding the churned earth, the shouts of pursuit growing louder behind us.
The cathedral doors—massive oak, scorched by fire, hanging crooked on their hinges—loom out of the darkness. Blorjorn hits them at full speed, shoulder-first, and they burst inward with a groan of tortured wood.
We tumble inside.
Arrows splinter the doorframe. Voices shout orders. Boots thunder on stone.
Blorjorn slams the doors closed, throws his weight against them as I look desperately for something—anything—to brace them.
“The pews!” He’s straining against the door, muscles bulging, as soldiers crash against the other side. “Push them against—”
I’m already moving. The old wooden pews are heavy, rotting, but they slide across the flagstones when I throw my weight behind them. One. Two. Three, stacked against the door in a makeshift barricade.
The pounding stops.
For a long moment, there’s only silence—our ragged breathing echoing off stone walls, the distant red glow from the stained glass windows painting everything in shades of blood.
Then Hadrin’s voice, cold and clear, carries through the barricaded doors.
“Kielyne Aelwyn.” My name, spoken like a verdict. “I know you’re in there. I know what you’ve done. And I know you can’t hide forever.”
A pause. The sound of boots on stone—pacing, circling.
“Surrender the orc and yourself, and I’ll make this quick. Refuse—” Another pause, longer this time. “Refuse, and I’ll burn this cathedral to the ground with you inside it. You have until dawn to decide.”
Footsteps retreating. Orders being called. The sound of an army settling in for a siege.
I slump against the barricade, my whole body shaking. The arrow wound in my shoulder throbs. My hands are covered in blood—mine, the child’s, the guard Blorjorn killed to save me.
“Kielyne.” Blorjorn’s voice, rough with exhaustion. His arms wrap around me, pulling me against his chest, and I let myself collapse into him. Let the shaking take over, let the fear I’ve been holding back finally surface.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out broken. “I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t stopped—”
“Don’t.” His hand cradles the back of my head, pressing my face into the curve of his neck. “You saved a child. You did what you had to do.”
“And now we’re trapped. With an army outside and no way out and—”
He tips my chin up. Kisses me, soft and fierce all at once, and the words die in my throat.
“We’ll find a way.” His forehead rests against mine. His breath warms my lips. “We’ve come too far to die here. I won’t let that happen.”
I want to believe him. Want to trust that somehow, against all odds, we’ll survive this.
But the cathedral is massive and empty and full of shadows. The army outside has dozens of soldiers. And Hadrin’s voice echoes in my memory, cold and certain.
You have until dawn.
I press closer to Blorjorn, let his warmth seep into my bones. Whatever happens next, whatever tomorrow brings, at least I’m not facing it alone.
At least I have him.
For now, that has to be enough.