Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
The parapet was crowded with soldiers. Crossbows lined the stone wall, bolts fitted and ready, the sharp tang of oil in the air as great vats were wheeled into place. Even the catapults had been armed, boulders black against the torchlight.
But Eliza suspected they would not need any of it. Not tonight.
These orcs would not storm the walls.
She leaned out over the battlements, her fingers tightening on the cold stone, scanning the plain below. There—she caught sight of him. Rakhal. A lone figure shrouded in shadow, standing apart from his warband. Menacing. Unyielding. A dark silhouette that seemed to draw the very night around him.
The air prickled against her skin.
What is he going to do?
Was this the full measure of his power? Would he unleash the shadows as he had in her chamber, when he’d come to kill her? No—greater. Deeper. This time, to drive back his own.
The darkness below thickened, rolling outward like mist, swallowing the ground at his feet. Around him, his orcs shifted into formation, shields locking, tusks glinting, waiting for his command.
And then she saw them.
The oncoming warband, pounding across the plains, fast as galloping horses, their torches flaring against the night. The flames tossed high above their heads were no beacon of peace. They were a challenge. A warning.
A declaration of intent.
A tingle crept along her spine, raising the hairs at the nape of her neck. Not from the cold night air—but from magic.
Behind her, the war mages stirred. She heard one draw in a sharp breath. “Can you feel that?”
The other swore softly, eyes fixed on the plain below.
Eliza turned sharply. “What is it?”
The first mage’s voice was tight. “He’s pulling on it—the wall. The power contained in its shadow.”
The second shook his head, his lips pressed thin. “Dangerous,” he whispered. “Ancient shadows are… unpredictable. Hungry.”
Eliza’s throat tightened. “Is this something you know how to do?”
Both men looked at her, grim.
“No,” the first admitted. “Only a powerful shadow mage can wield ancient shadows.” His gaze slid back down to the figure cloaked in darkness. “And he… is powerful.”
She stood very still, her eyes fixed on the shifting dark below.
How dangerous is he, truly? The thought curled through her like smoke. What exactly was she letting into her city, into her walls, into her life? A shadow prince who commanded forces she could barely comprehend.
If he was this powerful… he could enter whenever he wished. Nothing could bar him. Not stone, not steel, not even her mages.
And yet… he had given her a choice. Had yielded to her demands. He had come alone, with her, when she had asked it.
Still, the doubts gnawed at her. Was this all orchestrated? A deception, some elaborate play?
Her gaze tightened on him, cloaked in shadow, facing the oncoming horde.
No. He was preparing to fight his own. He would not stand there, ready to face blood kin, unless he truly intended to honor his words.
“Could you stop him,” Eliza asked quietly, “if he decided to turn his power against us?”
The elder mage—Elgara, she remembered now, with his sharp cheekbones and silvered brows—shifted his gaze to her. Slowly, he raised his eyebrows.
“The two of us together…” He glanced at his younger companion. “We could weaken him, perhaps. If his energies were already concentrated elsewhere. I’ve sent a message to the Magic Tower. Reinforcements are coming. Do you want us to contain him?”
Eliza pictured it—the shadows turning against her walls, flooding her city, her people screaming beneath them. She could give the order now. End this before it began.
But her voice was steady when she answered.
“No. Unless I instruct otherwise, hold your attacks.” Her eyes never left the figure below, cloaked in living night. “After all, he’s going to fight for us.”
Eliza’s eyes narrowed as the attacking warband closed the distance. She counted quickly, her stomach sinking. At least a hundred. Perhaps nearer two. Against Rakhal’s force of no more than two dozen.
The odds were brutal.
She turned sharply to the soldiers clustered at her side. “You will fire upon the approaching horde,” she commanded. “But not upon the ones that defend them.”
“Yes, Queen,” they answered in near unison, savage glee flashing in their eyes at the chance to strike back.
Crossbows were raised, strings groaning with tension.
Captain Sorell stepped forward, his face hard now, his hesitation gone. He looked at her with renewed resolve. “You heard our queen,” he barked. “Ready, men…” He paused, just long enough for the air to grow taut with anticipation. “And… fire!”
A storm of iron bolts ripped into the night.
The crossbows were powerful, the quarrels long and strong, forged to pierce armor. They cut through the air with deadly whistles, striking the front ranks of the charging orcs.
A few went down, snarling in pain.
But not enough.
Orc hide was thick, their armor thicker still. They raised broad shields against the storm, and those who fell were trampled by the ones behind. The horde did not falter.
They kept coming.
The archers growled in frustration, already cranking their crossbows, bolts snapping into place, eager to loose another salvo.
But then—something astonishing happened.
The shadows stirred.
They spread outward from the wall, like black water seeping into the earth, rippling across the plain.
Eliza’s breath caught in her throat as she watched Rakhal peel away from his line.
He moved fast, running forward, his arm lifting in a sharp signal that kept his soldiers—and the female commander—rooted where they stood.
And then, in the torchlight, before her very eyes… he vanished.
One heartbeat he was there, cutting a lone figure against the horde. The next—gone. Swallowed by the dark.
The shadows rolled outward, faster now, thick as smoke, black as ink, until they engulfed the oncoming horde. Torches flickered once, twice—then winked out, smothered in the dark.
Everything stopped.
The night itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then it came.
The screams.
Harsh, guttural cries that tore through the stillness. The clash of steel. The sickening sound of bodies falling, of death dealt swift and unseen.
Eliza’s hands clenched on the stone parapet, her chest tightening as the noise rose and echoed across the plains.
And yet… Rakhal’s soldiers did not move.
They stood firm in their line, their weapons lowered but ready. Silent. Unflinching. Not one of them stepped forward.
As if they already knew—had always known—not to go into the shadows with him.
Around her, the city’s soldiers and even the mages muttered under their breath, their voices low with horrified fascination at what they were witnessing.
She watched the chaos thin and peel away like torn cloth. Men ran, orcs vanished into the black, and the field emptied until only the echo of conflict remained. Her chest was tight; the night smelled of blood and smoke and something metallic that sat beneath everything.
Rakhal had gone into the throng—into the very mouth of it—utterly fearless, an arrow loosed into flesh and fury.
He moved so fast she could barely make him out among the torches and swinging blades.
Orcs crowded him, shields and tusks and the press of bodies, and when he pushed into that living dark she had ordered the men to hold their fire.
Do not shoot into the press, she had commanded, not while he is inside.
The fighting continued, a brutal smear against the plain. Then the shadows parted.
For a single flash by torchlight and mage-glow she saw him—Rakhal—locked blade-to-blade with a mountain of an orc she recognised by the way the line of his shoulder moved, by the scent of blood in his hair. Kardoc. The heir. The first son.
The brothers clashed like storm and cliff.
Suddenly, all the calculation and doubt she’d been nursing dropped away.
She saw how Rakhal fought—fast, precise, more cunning than brute strength.
In that furious scrap, his intent was plain: he had cut into his own line to strike down the warmonger.
He wanted the war ended. Kardoc wanted it immortal.
Her chest thudded when Kardoc seemed to press advantage, when for one ragged moment she thought the larger orc might break him. Then came the crack of crossbows—a volley unleashed despite her command.
“No!” she screamed. The word tore from her. Another hail of bolts shredded into the press. In the next terrible beat she thought she saw one sink home into Rakhal’s shoulder, then another in his back. Hold fire, she snapped, furious enough to taste iron.
The shadows that wrapped him recoiled and then closed like a living wound. Dust rolled up in choking clouds. Orcs under the female commander surged to the rear, forming a cover. Rakhal staggered, bleeding, and began to fall back.
The retreat formed like closing jaws. The attacking orcs pulled aside and ran into the darkness, dragging their wounded and their dead toward the chains of the plains. Her heart leapt into her mouth. Could this creature—this terrifying, terrible prince of shadow—actually die here?
She turned with a speed that surprised her to the soldiers along the battlement. Captain Sorell’s face was hard, but there was a glint in his eye she did not trust. The men who had fired had disobeyed her. They had broken the single order she’d given.
“Rakhal’s soldiers are going after them,” she barked. “They’ll do our work for us. Hold your fire, or I will have every one of you executed. That is a royal order.”
A tension snapped through the line. The captain’s jaw flexed; he lifted his head and nodded, obeying the command she issued not as a plea but as law. The men reloaded, crossbows clacking into place—but did not fire.
Below, Rakhal stumbled toward the wall and then dropped to his knees, the earth taking him like a cruel bed.
For a breathless moment she watched him—the proud, terrible figure reduced to something human and broken—and the queen and the woman in her warred so fiercely she could feel the heat of the contest in her veins.
Her heart wanted to scream for healers, to flinch forward and demand that the best of Maidan’s magic be laid on him until life stuck. He must survive, the woman at the edge of her chest whispered, raw and frightened. But the crown she wore weighed more than her fear.
They had to see her as both: merciful where it served the people and ruthless where it maintained order.
If she failed to show steel now, the soldiers’ trust would fray into mutiny.
If she showed only cold calculation, she risked losing the fragile bond that had kept some of them from murdering the orcs in their ranks tonight.
“Retrieve him,” she ordered, voice low but carrying. “Bring him to the courtyard. Secure him. Let no one touch him without my say.”
Her hands did not shake when she gave the next commands. “Summon the mage-healers from the Magic Tower at once. Send runners to every gate—no one leaves or enters without royal sanction. Treat him as a prince and a hostage both. If any man disobeys my orders, his head will pay for it.”
The captain’s nod was curt, automatic. Men slid down the ladders and ropes like shadows, the night erupting again with motion as they obeyed.
She let herself watch them work, tasting the bitter wine of power and consequence. She had saved him when no one else would have asked; she would bind him to her now—by hands of mercy and by the iron of politics.
Whatever he had planned, whatever treacheries had laced the Varak ranks, the next moves would be hers as much as his. The city needed a queen who could live and kill by strategy as easily as by courage. Tonight, the throne would learn how hard she could be.
She looked down at the fallen man—the shadow prince who had bled for his choice—and for one private breath she wished with everything in her bones that he would live.