Chapter Fifty-Three
The cruelest wars are seldom won
For ruin spares no chosen one
Jax moves through the slums like she belongs to the dark.
The city has been emptied of its people, but not of its ghosts.
Doors hang ajar where they were abandoned in haste.
Windows gape open, fabric stirs faintly in the night air like the city is breathing.
The streets that once carried noise and hunger and too many bodies pressed too close together, now hold silence, the promise of bloodshed, and the soft, measured footfall of soldiers who know exactly how easily it can all be leveled.
She keeps low, a blade loose in her grip, her senses stretched thin across every shadow and shift of movement.
Around her, the Venomshades move with quiet precision, their presence more felt than seen.
Cloaked figures slipping between structures, hands brushing doorframes, walls, broken carts—leaving residues behind that cannot be seen, only inhaled.
Calira leads from the front, and it becomes immediately clear that command sits differently on her than it does on anyone else Jax has followed into a fight. Not the violent, definitive command of Kael. Not the unflinching, strategic certainty of Teddy.
Calira is calculated, deliberate. There is no wasted motion. No unnecessary instruction. No posturing. When she speaks, it is quiet and exact—the precision of a blade. And perhaps that is what has made her so deadly—she is unnervingly precise.
Jax channels Calira’s magic, drawing on the Venomshade gift to perform the alchemy required for these deadly weapons.
“Get to the edge of the city,” Calira murmurs, her voice barely carrying beyond the cluster of them.
“Place the bottles of gas on window ledges where the enemy will see—divert their course into the entrance we’ll be waiting in.
Do not release the mist yet. We wait for the second wave. On my signal, we release.”
Several pairs of Venomshades peel off without question, disappearing into various narrow passages between buildings.
Jax watches one of them draw a small bottle from her belt, twisting the stopper loose just enough to let a thin stream of vapor spill into the air.
It curls, dense and deliberate, hanging on the air to reroute the enemy and push them exactly where they want them to go. Or die.
Efficient.
Cruel.
Exactly what they need. Maybe that’s why war makes sense to Jax. It gives fury shape. Gives pain permission to become useful. This is the terrible truth of Jax—everything inside her settles the moment survival becomes simple enough to be found in the sharp tip of a blade.
Jax shifts her grip on her blade and moves with the next group, slipping into the shell of what used to be a home.
The walls still hold the imprint of lives lived here—marks on the floor, a chair overturned in haste, a child’s blanket left folded on a small crib as if whoever fled believed they would be back for it. They won’t be.
The night drenches the world in darkness, giving the unit cover to move from abandoned building to abandoned building. Jax crouches low, following the unit and clocking exactly how they move, exactly how they do things.
Calira nudges her with her elbow and presses a round canister into Jax’s palm.
“What’s this?” Jax asks, unfastening the lid to reveal hundreds of thin, long, needle-like objects.
“Throw them. They’re so thin the eye cannot detect their movement through the sky. Grab only this end,” she explains, tapping the top of the canister. “They are dipped in Shadelock. Fatal if they touch the skin.”
A weapon of stealth. Far more subtle than Jax’s usual methods, but effective. Almost terrifying in their simplicity.
Jax nods, but Calira has already moved.
“Positions,” Calira says from somewhere just beyond the doorway, her voice threading through the structure without needing volume. “Runewrights, hold until we’ve taken out the first unit. Hold until the second crosses the threshold. Do not engage early.”
Venomshades are positioned through buildings along the street of Virellin—the street chosen specifically for its lack of side-streets. Nowhere for the enemy to run. Only poison for them to run into.
The perfect place for controlled collapse.
Jax feels the shift before she sees it. The Runewrights move differently, their stillness more dangerous than motion.
Her mind drifts to Maldrak for a fraction of a heartbeat.
She wonders how many times he pressed runes into her skin to glean information when she thought he was tracing idle circles on her skin after intimacy.
Wonders how many times the truth slipped from her lips without her conscious decision to do so.
Wonders how many times his tenderness was just abuse in disguise.
She shakes her head. Not here. Not now.
The Runewrights press themselves into the edges of rooms, into the blind spots of entryways, waiting with the kind of patience that only comes from knowing exactly how little time they will need once the moment arrives.
No one moves.
They wait.
And wait.
Jax’s stomach tightens in the way it always does before battle. Before the high possibility of death. Not that she fears death. At times, it has felt like it would be a welcome reprieve.
But before she can dissect her own thoughts, the first of Maireth’s soldiers enter the street.
Jax hears them before she sees them. Armor brushing against itself, boots striking stone with the careless rhythm of men who think they are advancing into control rather than stepping into a trap already set for them.
There is no hesitation in their movement, no sense that the city itself has been hollowed out to receive them.
That is Teddy’s plan, she thinks. Let them believe it.
The first man crosses the invisible threshold from the Frael Forest, just as Teddy predicted. The threshold they need the units to cross before releasing the mist. Before they trap them inside.
More soldiers come into view, flooding the streets of Virellin with the enemy. With the ones who would rather see it fall. The same enemy who wants Zerynthia to fall, too. Jax knows they’re coming for her kingdom next—when it has no allies, no army, and no king.
Their swords are drawn, ready for an attack.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead, the soldiers infiltrate the city, taking step after step after step into the snare they’ve laid for them.
The gas curls through the air, imperceptible unless you’re looking for it.
The unit’s leader falters.
He stumbles.
Just slightly. Not enough for the others to notice. His stride shortens, his breath catching as something unseen begins to work its way through his lungs. He lifts a hand to his throat, frowning as if confused by the sudden resistance.
Then he drops.
It happens fast after that.
Another breath. Another step forward. Another body hitting the ground.
The formation wavers, the clean lines of their advance breaking into uncertainty as the men behind them hesitate, glance down, try to understand what they cannot see. Someone shouts. Someone reaches for a fallen comrade.
“Hold,” Calira commands. “No movement.”
The gas begins to thin, and the next unit of Caelorians move, rushing the street and flooding it with blades and boots and big plans.
“Mist,” Calira growls, signaling out the window to the Venomshades across the street. “Now.”
Venomshades move, catapulting balls into the air that break apart, dispersing into a fine mist.
The soldiers scream, their agony rending the air as the acid of the mist eats at their flesh, the same way it ate at Jax’s Nullveil.
Brutal.
Efficient.
Precise.
They claw at their faces. Fall to their knees. Cry out in agony as the Venomshades alchemy goes to work.
Their bodies jolt and jerk as life is stripped from their bodies.
They lie motionless on Virellin’s streets, limp and flesh-eaten.
Jax grips her blade a little tighter, ready to practice the Runewright symbol she was shown to take the life of another.
She draws in the gift of Runewrights from those around her, holding both magics in her palms, ready to rush the streets.
That’s where she’d rather be—closer to the violence. Closer to something that makes her feel alive.
The mist weakens, settling to the ground like the last drops of rain.
The next unit appears, and this time, they try a different approach. One at a time, soldiers move forward, chests rising and falling too fast to be calm. No, they know exactly what they are—tests. Sacrifices.
They wait. A heartbeat. Two. Then, the next soldier moves forward. They file down the street like men who think they’ve figured it out.
Then, Calira commands, “Runewrights, move! Do not miss. Or you will be left to fight alone.”
The words are brutal, unflinching.
They’re also true.
They will not risk blowing the plan for one inefficient Runewright.
“Move,” Calira says again, before releasing a needle from between her practiced fingers. It finds its mark, embedding into the neck of the man at the back who stumbles once, and then crumples to the ground with a wet crack.
That’s when the Runewrights move, and Jax follows.
They don’t rush. They don’t need to. They step out of shadow and into proximity.
It hits Jax instantly. The smell of sweat and fear. The sound of ragged, panicked breathing. And it feels like home to her. Maybe that should horrify her more than it does.
She channels more magic, drawing it to her fingers, and she uses the darkness to slip behind ignorant men who think their sword will do anything to stop her. Her fingers press briefly against exposed skin—neck, wrist, jaw—just enough contact for the rune to be drawn and take hold.
They don’t even get enough time to scream before their knees hit the ground.
Jax draws a quick, precise symbol across a man’s throat, the mark flaring faintly before it sinks beneath the surface. The man doesn’t even have time to react. His body locks, seizes, and then collapses inward on itself like something hollowed out from the inside.
Jax exhales slowly.