Chapter 52
The Temptation of Power
Zo's grin was the kind that preceded terrible decisions.
"A race." She planted her axe in the dirt between her feet and leaned on the handle, her weight shifting forward, the veins on her forearms brightening a shade as her Origin stirred in response to her mood. "Against other Dragoons. For a vault full of powerful Regalia."
"That's the part you're excited about."
"Damn right that's the part I'm excited about." She pulled the axe free and slung it over her shoulder in a single motion. "You know what power like that could do for us? For me? I could—"
"Die horribly in a trap designed by the most powerful Dragoons in history."
"—become strong enough that dying horribly wouldn’t even be on the table." She jabbed a finger at me. "Don't pretend you're not thinking the same damn thing. I can see it on your fucking face."
"So what's the plan? We go now, right? Right? Beat the others to it, we find the treasure, we—"
"No."
The word came out flat. Final. Zo stopped dead.
"...No?"
"No… we don't go now. We don't go until we know what we're walking into."
"...But you just said we might be the only ones who know about this."
"I said we might be. And 'might' is not worth getting ourselves killed over."
"The Star Saints designed their treasuries to kill anyone who wasn't worthy. That means traps we can't predict, trials we don't understand, and defenses that were built to stop people stronger than us. Walking in blind and unprepared is suicide."
"We've walked into worse."
"We've survived worse—” I sat on a flat rock to rest my legs.“—Yeah, and we were fucking lucky, and chances are our luck runs out."
"We go to Valdris first. That was always the plan. We resupply, we rest, and we listen. Dragoons talk. If rumors about a Star Saints treasury have started spreading, we'll hear about it there. If nobody's talking about it, then we know we've got time to prepare."
"And if someone else gets there first while we're fucking around?"
"Then they die in the traps, and we learn from their mistakes… I'm not being cautious for fun. I'm being cautious because we're only two people… two injured people.”
“We don’t know where Rafe and Sophie are, and we are still in a hostile territory alone, with no supplies and no information beyond what I pulled from a dead woman's head. If we rush in and hit something we can't handle, that's it. There's no one coming to save us. There's no second chance."
She held my stare for a long moment. Then she sat down next to me. Hard. Her shoulder knocked into mine.
"Fine." She said it the way you'd say I'll allow it. "Valdris first, see if we can find Rafe and Sophie there. But if we get there and the place is crawling with Dragoons all heading to this fucking treasury—"
"Then we plan for that when it happens."
"Then we fucking move."
"There's something else," I said. Zo had pulled a strip of dried meat from her pack and was tearing into it with her teeth. "If word about this treasury gets out… and it will, eventually. It won't just attract a few Dragoons looking to get rich."
She swallowed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, the Star Saints aren't some obscure footnote. They're the biggest names in the Covenant's history. The kind of power that lets one person change the outcome of a war."
"When the location of this treasury becomes common knowledge, every Dragoon in the Hearthlands is going to try to claim it. The Covenant itself might mobilize."
"Deserters, like Emilia," Zo said. The meat strip paused halfway to her mouth.
"People worse than Emilia."
"Anyone with the strength to compete and the ambition to try.
This isn't going to be a treasure hunt, Zo.
If this is real, and if it contains what the legends say it contains, then the Frostspines are going to become a war ground.
Every faction, every lone wolf, every desperate bastard is going to show up and start fighting over the right for it. "
Zo was quiet for a moment. The wind filled the silence, carrying the smell of pine and birch. A raven circled overhead, black against the grey sky, riding the wind with its wings spread wide.
"So we need to be smarter than all of them," she said.
We got up and moved towards the trail that led down towards another valley.
"Valdris," I said, holding a branch aside for Zo. She ducked under it. "If the vault is still a secret, we plan our approach. If other Dragoons are already moving, we figure out who knows what and how far ahead they are."
"And then we decide whether to compete or wait for the bodies to pile up and go in once it clears."
Zo barked a laugh. Short and sharp, the sound was swallowed by the trees. "You're a real romantic, Fish."
"I'm a realist who doesn't want to die in a hole in the mountains because I got greedy." My foot caught on a root hidden under the pine needles, and I stumbled, caught myself on a trunk, and kept moving. "But yeah. The plan is information first. Then the treasury."
The forest closed around us as we descended.
The light dimmed. The temperature dropped.
Somewhere ahead, a woodpecker hammered at a trunk, the rapid knocking carrying through the air between the trees.
My worms shifted under my skin, restless, still processing what they'd taken from Emilia.
Her memories sat in my head alongside Cedric's now—two dead Dragoons' worth of knowledge, merged together.
The Star Saints. A treasury in the Frostspines. Where powerful Regalia lie in wait behind traps designed to kill anyone who comes looking for them.
Zo walked ahead of me through the trees. She was already moving faster than she had an hour ago. The prospect of a fight—a real fight, against real opponents, for real stakes—had put energy back in her step that all of this survival marching had stripped away.
I watched her walk ahead of me, her ponytail swinging with every step, and I thought about the hoard of treasure left behind by dead men, and the people who died trying to get it.
I won't die in this frozen fucking wasteland.