Chapter 76 Survey Your Conquest
(While Planning Your Exit Strategy)
Kazimir
I stood in the highest tower of Sunspire Palace, watching my forces secure the city gates glittering in the bright morning sun.
No resistance. No dramatic last stands. Just silent streets and frightened faces peering from behind curtains. The mighty kingdom that had defied me for years had fallen with barely a whimper. It should have felt like victory.
Instead, it felt like inheriting a house infested with termites.
“The eastern quarter is secure,” Thorne reported from behind me. “No sign of remaining nobility. Most fled when word spread of Auremar’s death.”
I turned from the view, finding my council assembled in what had been Auremar’s private study.
Arabella perched on the edge of the massive oak desk, one leg swinging idly.
Vex stood by the window, cataloging the palace’s assets on a scroll that magically grew longer by the minute.
Griffin hunched over a map, muttering about ley line convergences.
And Sebastian sat in one of the plush chairs, looking entirely too comfortable for someone in the conquered palace of his former king.
Morning glories had sprouted along the chair’s carved arms, their delicate blue petals opening toward the sunlight.
I noticed with irritation that they were all morning glories now—no more random wildflowers or nervous weeds.
Just those damned morning glories, everywhere he went.
I had too much to worry about to puzzle out why his stress flowers had suddenly become so consistent.
“And the western districts?” I asked, dragging my attention away from the way Sebastian’s fingers absently traced the petals.
“Also secure.” Thorne hesitated, then added, “There’s the matter of Auremar’s northern army.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The ten thousand he was marching to meet us at the northern outpost?”
“They’re still marching,” Thorne confirmed. “Last reports had them three days out from the northern border. If word of Sunspire’s fall hasn’t reached them yet—”
“It will soon,” Vex interrupted, looking up from her scroll. “Merchants talk. Refugees talk. Someone will get word to the commanders within hours if they haven’t already.”
Griffin tapped the map nervously. “Ten thousand soldiers is a significant force.”
“It was before we had direct access to Solandris’s ley lines,” I corrected, flexing my fingers and feeling them hum beneath Sunspire like living veins of power.
I moved to the map, tracing the paths of power I could now sense threading through the conquered kingdom.
“Auremar kept his army enhanced with corrupted magic from the Golden Rose Fields. Now those fields are dead, and I control the ley lines they were drawing from.”
“Which means?” Sebastian asked.
“Which means their mages are starving for power,” I said. “And I could crush half that army before they realized what was happening.”
Thorne’s expression shifted to something like satisfaction. “The Heirloom changes the equation.”
“Just as it was always meant to do.” I felt Arabella’s presence through our bond, felt the way the Heirloom resonated between us. “What would have been a grueling siege a month ago is now barely an inconvenience.”
Sebastian’s eyes went wide. “You could use the ley line convergence to cut off their magical support entirely. Just redirect the flows away from their position.”
“I could do that,” I agreed. “Or I could do something more dramatic. The Bone Behemoth was just a taste of what’s possible now.”
Griffin shifted uncomfortably. “Even without Auremar’s magic backing them, they could cause considerable damage if they decide to—”
“Avenge their fallen king?” I finished. “Or they could surrender the moment they realize their cause is lost.”
“Or splinter,” Sebastian offered quietly. “When the Northern Peaks fell to internal conflict decades ago, the army broke into three factions. Some went home. Some turned to banditry. Some tried to prop up a new leader.”
“The ones from Valmont and Meridian Isle are only there because of their alliance with Solandris. They might not even care—well, except for the ones with something to lose, like the merchants and nobility.”
Arabella folded her arms. “We can’t leave ten thousand armed soldiers wandering around making their own decisions.”
“No,” I agreed. “We can’t.”
Arabella leaned forward. “What do you have in mind?”
“We send an envoy and offer terms.” My runes burned at the thought of not crushing every last one of my enemies, but strategic restraint had built my empire, not mindless slaughter.
“Most soldiers aren’t interested in dying for a corpse’s honor.
They want to go home.” I tapped the map where the army’s position would be.
“We give them that option—lay down arms, swear not to take up rebellion, and they can walk away.”
“And if they refuse?” Thorne asked.
“Then we remind them that the Dark Lord who conquered their kingdom in a single day is not someone they want as an enemy. One way or another, that army ceases to be a problem.” I flexed my fingers, feeling the ley lines pulse beneath Sunspire like living veins of power.
“But ten thousand corpses would destabilize three kingdoms and won’t help us at all when the Syndicate moves against me.
Worse, it would leave ten thousand angry, desperate souls wandering Solandris—exactly the kind of chaos the Shadow King could exploit. ”
I met Arabella’s gaze. “Half that army isn’t even professional soldiers. Minor lords called up for feudal service. Farmers who know more about wheat than warfare. The kind of people who’d follow anyone who promised them safety or revenge.”
“You think he’d try to claim them,” she said quietly.
“I think we don’t know the full extent of his powers yet.” The admission tasted bitter. “Better to send them home grateful to be alive than leave them vulnerable to whatever he’s planning. Dead, they’re a problem. Dominated by an ancient evil, they’re a catastrophe.”
“The officers and mages will be the problem,” Arabella noted. “The ones with enough rank to organize resistance.”
“Those, we’ll need to have a more personal conversation with. But I have a feeling that as soon as the mages are dealt with decisively, everyone else will fall in line.”
Thorne nodded, making notes. “I’ll see to it. This will be much easier than I anticipated.”
“Everything’s easier now,” I said, though the words tasted strange. We had the power to reshape kingdoms, to crush armies, to bend the very earth to our will. And somewhere out there, the Shadow King was free, with his own plans for that same power.
“What about my father?” Arabella asked quietly.
Everyone turned to look at her. She was gazing steadily at me.
“We never found him after the battle,” Thorne reported. “No body. No trace. But he could have died and been tossed somewhere. We’ll still be weeks putting things to order.”
“Or he ran like the coward he is,” Arabella said. Her voice was flat, but I felt the complicated tangle of emotions through our bond. “The false memories Kaz planted would make him useless to anyone he tried to sell information to.”
“He’s not a threat,” I confirmed. “Even if he survived, he has nothing left. No power, no allies, no kingdom to return to.”
She nodded once.
Thorne’s expression turned carefully neutral. “There’s the matter of our houseguests. We’re overflowing with them.”
Right. The two hundred or so nobles we’d “preventively relocated” to Skyspire. They’d served their purpose—or rather, hadn’t needed to, since the Shadow King had found his own way out. Now they were just mouths to feed and potential problems to manage.
“Send them home,” I said. “We don’t need—”
“They’ll be targets.” Arabella’s voice cut through my dismissal. “The Shadow King knows who they are. If we send them back unprotected…”
She didn’t need to finish. I could picture it clearly enough—the Shadow King systematically hunting down every drop of heroic blood, either to eliminate threats or to fuel whatever scheme he was hatching.
“So what do you suggest?” I kept my tone even, though the idea of playing protector to a bunch of entitled nobles made my teeth ache. “We can’t keep them at Skyspire indefinitely.”
“Why not?” Vex looked up from her scroll. “Half of them have already offered to pay rent. Kata Goldmary’s son has ideas about establishing new trade routes through our territories. The Fekete twins want to set up a healing practice alongside our Skyspire healers.”
“Because Skyspire isn’t a fucking boardinghouse!” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Besides, we can’t stay there.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Arabella hopped off the desk. “What do you mean?”
I moved to the map Griffin had spread across the table, tracing the floating islands that made up my fortress. “Everyone knows where Skyspire is now. Hell, we’ve been advertising our location with magical signatures visible from three kingdoms away.”
“You want to move it.” Griffin’s eyes lit up with manic enthusiasm. “Oh, that’s brilliant! We haven’t done that in ages. The amount of power required would be staggering depending on where we go, but now that we can harness the ley lines—”
“Not over Solandris,” I cut him off before he could launch into a full technical dissertation. “I’d always planned to park it here eventually, symbol of conquest and all that. But now…”
Now the Shadow King was free. Now everything had changed.
“You think he’ll come for it,” Arabella said quietly. It wasn’t a question.
“Skyspire was his seat of power once.” I stared at the map. “The original fortress, before I rebuilt it. There’s something about that place, something beyond just strategic advantage.”
“The bones,” Griffin whispered suddenly. We all turned to look at him. His face had gone pale. “When I was researching the citadel’s history, I found references to ‘the bones of the first darkness.’ I thought it was metaphorical, but what if—”