Chapter 19 Kielyne
NINETEEN
KIELYNE
The blight soldiers come for me an hour before midnight.
I’ve spent the hours since Hadrin left trying everything I can think of.
Testing the ward walls—my hands pass through empty air and stop cold against invisible force.
Searching the cathedral for hidden exits—every alcove, every shadow, every crack in the crumbling stone leads nowhere.
Trying to figure out how to use the oath as a weapon, the way I used it in the Bonefields.
When the soldiers appear through a shimmer in the ward wall, I’m sitting on the flagstones near his feet, close as the chains will let me get.
“The general requests your presence.” The lead soldier’s voice is flat, emotionless—the particular emptiness of someone whose humanity has been burned away by blight enhancement. “You will come with us.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then we drag you.” He gestures to his companions. “The general prefers willing conversation, but he’ll take what he can get.”
I look at Blorjorn. His eyes are open—barely, slits of dark fire beneath heavy lids—and watching me with something that might be warning or might be plea.
“Don’t trust him.” The words scrape from his throat.
“I won’t.” I squeeze his boot, the only goodbye I can give him. “I’ll be back.”
I stand and let the soldiers lead me away.
Hadrin’s private quarters are nothing like I expected.
The soldiers lead me through a shimmer in the ward wall and into a side chapel that’s been converted into a makeshift study.
Canvas walls section it off from the main cathedral, creating an enclosed space that feels almost comfortable.
Rugs cover the flagstones. Lanterns cast warm light across campaign furniture—a desk covered in maps, a camp chair with actual cushions, a small table bearing a bottle of wine and two glasses.
Hadrin stands by the table, pouring wine with the casual ease of a man hosting a dinner party. He’s changed out of his armor into a simple officer’s uniform—dark fabric, silver buttons, immaculately pressed despite the dust and blood of the siege.
“Kielyne.” He gestures to the chair opposite his. “Please, sit. I thought we might talk without the... theatrics.”
“Theatrics.” I don’t sit. “You mean without your pet monsters and torture devices?”
“Do you like my new and improved blight? They are necessary tools.” He takes a sip of his wine, unbothered by my hostility. “But not the only ones at my disposal. I find that conversation often accomplishes what force cannot.”
He settles into his chair, crossing one leg over the other, the picture of relaxed confidence. His pale gaze studies me with clinical interest—cataloging, assessing, searching for weaknesses.
“You’re intelligent, Kielyne. I knew that from your reputation, but seeing it in person confirms it. A beautiful, intelligent woman doesn’t throw her life away for sentiment.” He gestures to the empty chair again. “Sit. Please. I promise not to bite.”
I sit. Not because he asked—because my legs are shaking and I’d rather he not see it.
“Wine?” He offers me the second glass.
“No.”
“As you wish.” He sets the glass aside, turning his full attention to me.
“Let me be direct. I’m not a cruel man, despite what you may think.
I take no pleasure in suffering—not even orc suffering, though I recognize it as sometimes necessary.
What I want is to end this war. To see humanity triumph over the monsters that have plagued us for centuries. And to do that, I need healers.”
“You have healers.”
“I have butchers.” A flicker of genuine frustration crosses his face. “Sawbones who know how to amputate and not much else. Men who lose three patients for every one they save. The army deserves better. The war deserves better. I deserve better.” His lecherous look sends chills down my spine.
He leans forward, and something in his expression shifts. Less commander, more... earnest. Almost intimate.
“You could save so many lives, Kielyne. Human lives.”
“He saved my life.”
“Did he? Or did he save his investment?” Hadrin’s voice is soft. Reasonable. “The blood oath benefits him as much as you. His life tied to yours, his fate bound to yours—if you die, he suffers. How noble, then, is his protection? How selfless?”
The words hit closer to home than I want to admit. I’ve had the same thoughts myself—in the dark hours, in the moments when I wondered if Blorjorn’s devotion was real or just survival instinct wearing the mask of affection.
But I’ve also seen him give me his cloak when I shivered. Seen him come to me in the darkness when I woke screaming, asking nothing in return. Seen the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not watching—something raw and hungry and tender that has nothing to do with the oath.
“You’re wrong.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “He saved me before the oath existed. Protected me before he had any reason to.”
“And yet you didn’t choose him.” Hadrin sets down his wine glass. “He chose you. Claimed you. Bound you without consent.” His gaze sharpens. “That sounds like ownership to me, Kielyne. Not love. Not partnership. Ownership.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
Because he’s right, isn’t he? The blood oath wasn’t my choice.
I stood in that ravine with Hadrin’s trackers closing in and no good options, and Blorjorn offered me a way out that was really just a different kind of trap.
I’ve been telling myself it was protection, partnership, something mutual until we got the artefact that could change my blood signature—but I never got to decide if I wanted my life bound to his permanently.
Hadrin sees the doubt in my face. Presses his advantage.
“I’m not asking you to betray him, Kielyne. I’m asking you to survive. To thrive. To use your gifts where they’ll do the most good.” He rises, moves to his desk, picks up a folded piece of paper. “I’ve taken the liberty of tracking down some information about your family.”
My blood goes cold.
“Your brother Tam.” He unfolds the paper, scanning it with affected casualness.
“Nineteen years old, apprenticed to a blacksmith in the Eastern Provinces. Living with distant relatives since you left. Sending money when you can, visiting when the fighting allows.” His pale gaze lifts to mine.
“A good brother deserves a sister who’s alive to care for him, don’t you think? ”
“If you touch him—”
“I have no intention of touching him.” Hadrin waves a dismissive hand.
“Violence against innocent civilians is distasteful. But accidents happen in wartime, don’t they?
Forge fires spread. Bandit attacks go unpunished.
Young men find themselves conscripted into units with. .. unfortunate survival rates.”
He folds the paper and tucks it into his pocket.
“Serve me, and your brother lives a long and prosperous life under my protection. Refuse—” He shrugs. “Well. War is unpredictable.”
The fury that rises in me is cold. Crystalline. The kind of anger that doesn’t burn hot and wild but freezes everything it touches, turning fear into ice and doubt into steel.
“You’re threatening my brother.” My voice comes out flat. Deadly. “You’re sitting there in your comfortable chair, drinking your wine, threatening a nineteen-year-old boy who’s never held a weapon in his life. And you call yourself better than orcs?”
“I call myself practical.” Hadrin’s expression doesn’t change. “The boy is leverage. You are an asset. The orc is an obstacle. I remove obstacles and acquire assets—that’s how wars are won.”
“And if I refuse anyway?”
“Then your brother suffers. The orc dies screaming. And you—” He tilts his head, studying me like a specimen pinned to a board.
“You, I’ll break slowly. There are ways to destroy a person’s will without destroying their usefulness.
Especially a female’s.” His eyes rake down my body.
“I’ve had thirty years to perfect them.”
He says it the same way he might discuss crop rotation or supply logistics. Matter-of-fact. Businesslike. The voice of a man who’s calculated the cost of human suffering and found it acceptable.
I look at this monster wearing the face of a reasonable man, and something inside me snaps.
“No.”
The word comes out quiet. Certain.
Hadrin’s brow furrows—the first crack in his composed facade. “I don’t think you understand the situation—”
“I understand perfectly.” I stand, and my legs don’t shake anymore.
The ice in my veins has frozen everything—fear, doubt, hesitation.
“You want me to surrender. To let you kill Blorjorn and chain me to your army. To become your bed warmer, pet healer, saving lives you deem worthy while you threaten everyone I care about.”
“A reasonable summary.”
“Here’s my answer.” I lean forward, plant my hands on his desk, meet his pale gaze without flinching.
“I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to Blorjorn.
I don’t belong to anyone. The blood oath wasn’t about ownership—it was about survival.
And right now, I’m choosing to survive by fighting you with everything I have. ”
“Touching.” Hadrin’s voice drips with contempt. “But survival requires living, and you’re in no position to—”
“You think you’ve won.” I cut him off, and something fierce burns in my chest—not ice anymore, but fire, the same fire that made me save Grothak on a corpse road, that made me bleed for Blorjorn in the Bonefields, that refuses to let me bow to men who think cruelty is strength.
“You think I’ll break because you’ve got chains and threats and an army at your back. But I’ve survived worse than you, Hadrin. I’ve buried my mother and walked through ash and stitched together bodies that should have been dead. You’re just another monster in a world full of them.”
His expression goes cold. The fatherly mask drops entirely, revealing the predator beneath.
“I see.” He straightens, brushing invisible dust from his sleeves. “I had hoped we could resolve this like civilized people. But if you insist on being difficult—”
He snaps his fingers. The blight soldiers materialize from the shadows, their empty gazes fixed on me.
“Dawn is too merciful.” Hadrin’s voice is ice. “The execution moves to now. You’ll spend your remaining minutes watching your orc die, piece by piece.”
The soldiers grab my arms. I don’t fight—there’s no point, and I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“Such a waste,” he adds softly as they drag me away.