Chapter 21 – Azaria
AZARIA
Iwalked through the palace corridors with barely controlled fury; the squad falling into formation behind me. The crumpled letter sat heavy in my pocket.
Resigned. Effective immediately. Relocated outside Tempest’s jurisdiction.
Hallen and Vareck had run. Fled like the cowards they were, hiding behind bureaucratic language and council procedures. Resigned or given the option to resign—it didn’t matter. No consequences, no trial, no justice.
Gone.
My bloodied knuckles throbbed with every step. I flexed my fingers, felt the sting, and welcomed it. They thought distance would save them.
It wouldn’t.
But whatever Tywin needed—whatever emergency had pulled us into the war room immediately after my return—that came first. Duty first. Always. Then I’d hunt.
The war room doors loomed ahead, heavy oak reinforced with iron. The guards pulled them open without a word. I stepped inside. It was always bad news when we were summoned to the war chamber.
The door closed behind us as Dain and the rest of my squad fanned out in a loose arc. I took a breath, steadying myself as the room’s weight pressed in. Maps of the continent covered the walls; mission scrolls and reports lined nearly every surface. Nothing unusual.
What I didn’t expect was how empty it felt. Only Tywin—no other captains, no council members. Just us.
“High Lord Tywin,” I said, dipping my head with that formality I couldn’t quite shake, even after all these years.
He gave me that subtle smile: the kind that never told you enough. “Captain Sylvenhart.”
The others bowed. Dain moved to my right, as always. I squared my shoulders and took my place opposite Tywin, heart braced for whatever storm was coming. His gaze dropped to my hand. The bloodied knuckles. The split skin.
“Captain—”
“It’s nothing,” I said flatly.
His gaze lingered for a moment longer, nodded once, accepting the dismissal even if he didn’t believe it. “I apologize for summoning you so quickly after your ordeal,” he said. “I know Myrin cleared you for duty, but I would have given you more time if I could.”
“What happened?”
He gestured to the table at the center as the mage light flickered above us. “This cannot wait.”
The fury that had been simmering beneath my ribs—the cold promise I’d made in the common room, the vow to make them pay—didn’t disappear. It stepped back. Duty first.
He picked up one of the scrolls, passing it to me. “This.”
I took it, fingers dragging across the thick, waxy parchment. I unrolled it and read it. Then stopped dead.
Hound-like creatures. Spotted near the Thalor border. Five sightings in two weeks. Two confirmed attacks. Civilian injuries. No survivors in the last encounter.
My mind was already moving—mapping terrain, calculating distance, running through what I knew about the border settlements along the Thalor line.
“They moved,” Tywin said. “Veshar’s squad tracked them for weeks in his district. Lost them. Now they’ve crossed into Thalor and they’re spreading.”
No one spoke. I stared at the report. Hound-like, unnatural. Killers. The same creatures that had circled our wards before Solmarin. They hadn’t been able to get through then. Now they were past the border entirely, hunting in open territory.
I turned toward the only person in the room whose posture didn’t flicker with surprise. “Quinton.”
His head snapped up.
“You know something about these creatures.” I didn’t ask. I could see it in his face, his posture, the recognition he was trying to bury.
“Tell us,” I said, voice low but unwavering. “Everything you know.”
A beat. Then two. Quinton’s jaw clenched as he stared at the report. The silence stretched, taut enough that I could hear my pulse. “Hounds,” the word snapped the stillness. “They were real. Still are.”
My breath caught.
“In Draevenholt, they kept them in the lower pens. We could hear them at night. The sound that wasn’t quite howling, but something worse.
” He paused, and what I saw in his face was more than grief.
It was guilt. “They weren’t pets. They were weapons.
Blood magic. Forbidden breeding. They twisted them into something that shouldn’t exist.”
“But they were never let outside Dravareth,” I said.
Quinton shook his head. “They weren’t meant to be. They were always caged, always collared. Always controlled.”
“And now they’re here,” I murmured.
His knuckles turned white. “If they’ve crossed the border, someone let them out. Or worse—someone brought them.”
Torven.
The name surfaced before I could stop it. I didn’t say it. Didn’t need to. From the way Dain’s jaw tightened, he was thinking the same thing.
Kael broke the silence first. “Are we talking wild magic? Blood constructs?”
Quinton’s reply was flat. “Not wild. Bred to obey and bred to kill. If they’re here, someone’s commanding them.”
“How dangerous?” Reyna asked. Her voice was stripped of bravado.
“They hunt until they’re dead. One is bad. Two is lethal. A pack?” His eyes found mine. “They’ll wipe out a village in minutes.”
I looked at Dain. “How far were the attacks?”
“A day’s ride,” he said grimly.
Too close.
I was already calculating—departure time, terrain between here and the Thalor border, what we’d need in terms of supplies and formation for something that couldn’t be fought like a conventional enemy.
My body ached. My hands still shook if I didn’t concentrate.
Myrin had cleared me for duty, not a combat mission, and every person in this room knew it.
“We ride now,” I said.
Tywin’s voice cut through the room before anyone else could speak.
“Captain,” his tone was measured, careful. “This is a significant ask. You’ve been back less than a day.”
I met his gaze. “I’m the only one here who’s faced creatures like this before,” I said. My voice didn’t waver. “And Quinton knows them better than anyone in Tempest. We’re the ones who need to go.”
Tywin studied me for a long moment. Then nodded once. “Then go.”
Because this wasn’t a hunt anymore. It was a warning.
Tywin hadn’t spoken since my reply stilled the room. He stepped forward—too close—and his hand settled on my shoulder. Warm, paternal, instinctive.
I flinched. Barely. A fractional tension, muscles tightening beneath his palm.
He noticed. His hand lifted immediately, hovering for a heartbeat before falling away. Regret flickered in his eyes—the quiet understanding of a man who knew better and had forgotten himself.
“You and your squad will handle this,” he said, his gaze holding mine despite the distance now between us. “But be careful, Captain. The world is shifting.”
I bowed my head. Not in submission, but in acknowledgment. “Understood.”
The room stirred—Kael running a hand through his hair, Reyna rolling her shoulders, Thorne and Lirael already murmuring about supplies, Zephyr letting out a breath that crackled with energy. But my gaze drifted sideways. To Quinton. He wasn’t looking at me. But the tension in his face said enough.
Dravareth weapons on Tempest soil. Someone commanding them. And the man who’d grown up hearing them howl in the dark was standing in our war room, carrying the weight of knowledge none of us wanted.
Whatever waited out there, it wouldn’t find us unprepared.
Not this time.