Chapter 13
ERYNDOR
The corridor swallowed me the moment I cleared the training hall.
The passage narrowed, the ceiling bowed enough to scrape, a single torch still guttering ahead. The rest had burned out and no one had replaced them.
I made it three steps before my knees buckled.
Stone bit into my shoulder—cutting, indifferent, the only thing holding me upright as I finally stopped fighting the pain I'd been muzzling since the moment her blade kissed my throat.
The Oath-stone had singed my skin with its anger—black fire licking through my breastbone while I matched her strike for strike, while I pinned her, while she pinned me. I'd held the agony behind my teeth and kept my face carved from granite.
I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood. Don't scream. Don't fall. They're still watching.
But they weren't. I'd walked far enough, fast enough, that the murmur of the crowd had faded to a distant hum. Just me and the dark and the thing in me that was trying to hollow me out from the inside.
Gather intelligence, the King had ordered. Assess the threat. Learn Kaelen's plans.
I had obeyed. Every word of it. I had tested her guard, measured her speed, catalogued the way she shifted her weight before a strike. By the cold letter of my orders, I was a faithful hound.
The Oath-stone didn't just care about letters. Its judgement went beyond mere actions. It tasted intent. And intent was a language I had never learned to lie in.
Capture, the order said. Contain.
But when her thighs pinned my hips... when she smiled like a blade finding its angle...you weren't thinking about containment, soldier.
You were thinking about the challenge, the thrill of the hunt.
And to the King, that little pleasure was treason.
Move, soldier. You have a role to play.
I found Kaelen in the war room, bent over his maps like a general planning a siege that had already been won.
He didn't look up when I entered, but I felt his attention settle over me like a hand pressing between my shoulder blades—assessing, filing away every detail of my posture for later dissection.
"Quite a show," he said mildly. "I don't think I've seen her that animated since she arrived."
I clasped my hands behind my back. The posture hid the tremor. "She fights well. Undisciplined, but adaptable."
"Mm. And the marks? That little lightshow at the end?"
My expression shuttered closed. Beneath my tunic, the Oath-stone shivered—a silent alarm. Careful.
"Proximity reaction.” The Truthshard struck—an acute, hot warning that nearly buckled my knees. I forced my shoulders back, fighting the urge to flinch, forcing my voice to remain steady over the pain.
“Her power is unstable. It latches onto the nearest compatible source." The pain receded to a dull throb. Technically, it wasn't a lie—her power was unstable. The stone accepted the partial truth, but it left me sweating.
Kaelen's pale eyes lifted to mine. Held. I kept my expression blank, my breathing even, my hands perfectly still behind my back where he couldn't see the blisters forming on my palms from clenching too hard.
"You shoved her off rather forcefully," he observed. "Almost looked like pain."
"She was close to my blade arm. Instinct."
"Of course." He offered a thin, bloodless smile. "We'll need to run more... controlled tests. See what happens when your marks interact without the chaos of combat." He returned to his maps. "You're dismissed. Get some rest. You look like hell."
I inclined my head and turned for the door.
"Eryndor."
I stopped. Didn't turn.
"If you're going to lie to me," Kaelen said softly, "at least have the decency to be better at it. We both know something happened in that ring. Something neither of you expected." A pause. "I'll find out what. I always do."
I walked out without responding.
Fourteen days, the King had said.
Two gone already.
I pressed my palm flat against the burn and let the pain center me.
She's a threat. A rupture. The Veil bleeds because of her.
She has to be stopped.
But I could still feel the phantom weight of her body sinking into my hips. Still hear that dangerous purr—you talk like a male who thinks holding me down is the same as winning.
And I could still feel the moment I'd shoved her off. The force of it—too much, too desperate. Not a tactical retreat. An escape.
She'd hit the ground hard. I'd heard the breath punch out of her.
She's an enemy. She's a weapon aimed at everything you've sworn to protect.
I'd shoved a female before. Had to fight them. Kill them, when the mission required it. The Crown didn't distinguish between threats based on what shape they came in. Neither could I.
So why did my hands still feel wrong? Why could I still see the shock on her face?
Because you're weak, the Oath-stone seemed to drum. Because you hesitate. Because you know bringing her in means breaking her.
I pushed harder against the burn until my vision blurred.
When I could breathe again, I stepped back into the corridor. Every line in my face was exactly where it belonged.
Twelve days left.
I would bring her to the King. I would do my duty. I would save my people from the Rupture.
And if the Oath-stone burned me alive in the process—
Well.
At least the screaming would stop.
AMARIA
I pushed a lump of gray mush around my bowl—stew, allegedly, though it had the consistency of mortar and roughly the same appeal. Serenya sat across from me, methodically working through her portion like it was medicine. Which, knowing her, she'd probably convinced herself it was.
"You're not eating," she observed.
"I'm strategizing." I speared a chunk of potato that dissolved into mush the moment I looked at it. "Trying to decide if starvation is worse than whatever died in this pot."
"Protein is protein."
"That's not the comfort you think it is."
I dropped the spoon back into the sludge with a wet plop.
Reaching into my satchel, I fished out a handful of dried roots.
I’d dug them up myself near the perimeter, scrubbed them until my fingers were chafed, and sun-dried them on a rock I could see from my post. They looked like shriveled fingers and tasted like dirt, but I knew exactly where they came from.
I bit into one with a loud snap, chewing the fibrous root while Serenya sighed and swallowed another spoonful of the mystery gray.
The cavern ran deep enough that the far wall disappeared into a smoky haze.
Rough-hewn tables, benches made from split logs, cook pots hanging over fire pits that left a permanent grease film on everything within arm's reach.
The whole place smelled like rendered fat and the sharp tang of whatever root vegetable they kept throwing into every meal.
Spoons scraped bowls. Someone coughed. The normal rhythm of the place—felt muted tonight. Waiting.
I was still trying to convince myself to take another bite when the main tunnel disgorged a knot of bodies.
A dozen rebels, maybe more. The first one through the tunnel had his arm slung over another's shoulders, feet dragging grooves in the dirt.
Behind him, a rebel walked with her elbow clamped to her ribs, each breath hitching through her teeth.
Their leathers were black with mud, slick where the firelight caught the wet patches.
Serenya was already rising, her healer's instincts pulling her toward the damage like iron to a lodestone. I snagged her wrist.
"Wait."
The group parted around a makeshift stretcher—two spears and a cloak, a female's body slack across it. Her face was gray. Too gray. Behind her, a male limped with his arm pinned to his side, and another had a cloth wound around his thigh that was blooming red with every step.
Whispers skittered through the mess hall. Tax raid. King's men hit Brindlewood. They fought back. Fought back. As if that was a choice when the alternative was dying on your knees.
I released Serenya's wrist. She slipped away instantly, cutting through the crowd with a quiet authority that made people step aside without knowing why.
I stayed where I was and watched.
The triage swallowed the center of the hall—rebels shouting for clean water, for bandages—and through it all, I tracked a figure at the edge.
Eryndor.
He'd come in with the others, but he hadn't joined the knot around the stretcher. Instead, he'd carved out a corner for himself. Grain sacks piled on one side, an empty water barrel on the other.
His cuirass was dulled with grime, the obsidian sheen buried with dust and what might have been ash.
He'd peeled the vambrace off his left arm and set it on the crate beside him.
The wound underneath, where the vambrace met the elbow joint, was ugly, a ragged mouth of split skin.
He worked a needle through one side, pulled the thread taut with his teeth, and pushed through the other.
The gut thread made a faint wet sound each time he drew it tight.
No mirror. No assistance. Just the steady, mechanical work of a warrior stitching himself closed because he didn't trust anyone else to do it correctly.
I remembered the way his hand had trembled after the sparring match.
The raw exhaustion in his eyes before the iron hardness returned to them.
The way he held the needle—too steady, too sure—reminded me of the way I held a blade when the shaking got bad.
Grip harsh enough to strangle the tremor.
Call it control. Hope no one looks close enough to see what it's costing. I was looking though.
No one approached him or offered help. Whether that was his preference or theirs, I couldn't tell. Maybe both.
Then Maxx appeared.
His usual swagger had gone missing somewhere between the tunnel and the mess hall, replaced by a grim weariness that even his glamours couldn't quite paper over. He carried a suture kit in one hand, the contents rattling softly with each step, and his face—