Chapter 78
Chapter
Seventy-Eight
They returned by the long road, where wildflowers had already begun to reclaim the ditches. The city appeared slowly—towers pale in dawn light, war scars blurred by mist.
No trumpets greeted them. The people waited in silence—bakers dusted with flour, children on barrels, unarmed soldiers in plain tunics. It wasn’t celebration. It was something harder, more honest: the beginning of belief.
Eliza did not ride. She walked, cloak sweeping the cobblestones, her boots gray with dust. Rakhal and Shazi stopped outside the gate. This was her moment to claim.
The palace hall was colder than she remembered. The great marble throne gleamed in the faint light—too polished, too distant. She climbed the steps and sat not upon it but below it, on the stone stair.
“The throne is for justice,” she said to the gathered court. “And justice waits to be earned.”
The first decree came swiftly: the disbanding of conscription.
“No child will fight for a debt they did not make.”
Her words fell like hammers, reshaping the air.
The second: the reopening of the guilds, the restoration of trade, and amnesty for those who had fled the old taxes. Murmurs rippled through the hall—some relief, some disbelief.
And the third—delivered quietly but striking hardest of all:
“Envoys of the plains will hold equal place within this court.”
When Shazi and her warriors entered, the room went still. They wore simple armor and silver-threaded sashes—symbols of honor, not conquest. The translator’s voice trembled at first, but by the end it carried.
“We come not as conquerors,” he said, “but as keepers of oath.”
The people watched, wary but not hateful. Respect, slow and fragile, took its first breath.
By evening, the marketplace was alive again. Bakers set out new loaves; merchants called in both tongues. Children ran with small flags—half black, half gold—chasing kites made from parchment and hope.
In her study, Eliza unwrapped the courier’s bundle from the north.
A shard of scorched glass fell onto the table, fused with a silver rune.
Thalorin’s mark. No body. No bones. No end.
The faint scent of burned metal clung to her fingers.
She stared at it until her reflection in the glass began to look like someone else entirely.
“Not yet,” she whispered to the dark. “But soon.”
That night, she stood on the ramparts overlooking the city. The lights of the orc camps flickered across the plain—small, steady constellations. Rakhal joined her without sound.
“It’s beginning,” she said. “Not peace—just the work before it.”
He didn’t answer, only touched her shoulder briefly. That was enough.
At dawn, the new flag rose over Maidan—black and gold, halves joined down the center. The wind caught it, and for once, it did not tear.