Chapter Twenty-Four Benjadir #2
He told himself the boy had deserved it, that fear could loosen tongues when mercy could not, but the thought curdled even as he formed it.
The taste of it was iron and guilt. He’d spent his life swearing he would never become the man who had raised him, but power, he was learning, had its own inheritance.
Whether held in a crown or in the palm of a soldier’s hand, it always demanded something terrible in return.
He didn’t hear them approach until Astrid’s voice broke through the wind.
“You’re freezing your arse off for nothing,” she said, no softness in the words but something close to care beneath them.
Daen was a silent shadow beside her, his gaze steady, unreadable.
Between the two of them, Benni found himself guided – almost pushed – back toward the tent, the manoeuvres as inevitable as the tide.
Inside, Astrid thrust a bowl into his hands before he could refuse it.
“Eat,” she said. “You’re no use to her dead on your feet.”
He took the bowl without protest. The stew was half-cold, all salt and fat, but it grounded him. Daen sat near the entrance, sharpening his sword in measured strokes, each scrape a punctuation in the heavy quiet.
“How long can we keep this up?” Astrid asked finally, low enough that the wind might steal it. “Before the Queen starts asking where her favourite butcher’s gone?”
Benni didn’t answer at first. The truth was a stone lodged behind his ribs.
Astrid huffed, shaking her head. “The waiting’s worse than any battle.”
He looked down at the bowl, forcing another mouthful past his throat because she was watching, because arguing would mean admitting she was right. And Astrid was insufferable when she was right.
Later, when darkness fell, he left the tent and walked toward the shoreline, drawn by the sound of waves gnawing at the rocks.
The sea was a restless thing – constant, unforgiving, yet somehow simpler than the noise inside his head.
He stood with his arms crossed tight against the cold, the wind threading through his hair, carrying the faint tang of salt and smoke.
Out here, away from the watchful eyes of his soldiers and the weight of command, he could almost believe he was someone else. Someone untouched by oaths and blood.
His thoughts slid backward, unbidden, to another lifetime – to nights spent in waystations between campaigns, where laughter had come easier and the world had not yet carved its mark on them.
He could still recall the warmth of her skin beneath the coarse blankets, the way her breath caught when she was trying not to smile, the fragile illusion that they could steal a life from the years the Queen had not yet claimed.
Even after Ara pulled away—even when the faint spark of courtship had faded and companionship, friendship and loyalty had taken its place—he’d believed they were still the same two fools daring to love in the shadow of a crown.
He wanted to believe it still. But watching the waves break and retreat again and again, he wasn’t sure what had been lost to the tide – or whether it had ever truly been theirs to keep.
He heard their approach then—the whisper of fabric across the sand, the muted chime of talismans catching the wind.
Two Acolytes moved through the dark like wraiths, their pale hands visible only when the torchlight touched them.
Even the sea seemed to hush around their passage.
They stopped beside him without greeting, hoods turned toward the horizon as if they, too, were watching the tide.
When one finally spoke, the voice was wrong – too calm, too precise, as though a dozen echoes were trapped beneath the words.
“The Queen asks after her General,” it said. “She grows impatient with her silence.”
Benni’s jaw tightened. He kept his eyes on the water, letting his breath steady before he answered.
“The General is occupied,” he said evenly. “She’ll send word when there’s need of it.”
The second Acolyte tilted its head, the faint motion oddly birdlike. “The Queen’s patience is not eternal,” it murmured, but the tone was not a threat – instead it was something colder, hollowed out by devotion.
The torchlight caught the edge of its collar, revealing the faint raised lines of sigils carved into flesh.
The sight turned his stomach. He had always thought Ara’s contempt for them was born of fear or superstition, but standing there beside their mutilated reverence, he understood.
It wasn’t what they were that sickened her.
It was what they had willingly surrendered – the last fragments of their own will – in the hope of sharing a power that would never be theirs.
“Captain!” The call carried across the camp – Daen’s voice, louder than Benni had ever heard it, cutting through the surf and the muttering Acolytes alike. Benni turned from the shore, already moving toward him, grateful for any reason to leave the creatures behind.
Daen stood near the main firepit, a young courier at his side, the boy’s cloak heavy with mud and sea spray. His chest heaved as though he’d run the whole distance from the northern watch without stopping.
“Message came from the cliffs,” Daen said as Benni approached.
The boy straightened, fumbling a salute. “Sir, the watch reports strange lights near Tirn’vahl. A storm without clouds – fire above the sea, seen only for a breath before it vanished.”
His voice trembled with a mix of exhaustion and excitement, the kind that came from carrying something that might finally matter.
Benni took the scrap of parchment offered, the ink smeared and rain-blurred but legible enough.
It wasn’t much – half a dozen lines and a signature – but it was more than he’d had in weeks.
He read it twice before handing it back, the words ringing in his mind like the first spark struck in darkness.
Benni looked up from the parchment, the flicker of the fire catching on the hard line of his jaw.
“Tirn’vahl,” he said quietly, tasting the word as if it might reveal more than the ink could.
The name meant nothing to him beyond geography – a wind-battered ruin on the northern coast, where storms chewed through the cliffs and salt ate everything it touched.
He’d heard it was more a ghost than a fortress, the stones crumbling under their own weariness, the air thick with the scent of the sea reclaiming what man had built.
It was the kind of place no one went by choice.
Daen met his gaze, already understanding the direction of Benni’s thoughts.
The courier’s words still hung between them, like smoke – fire above the cliffs, light where there should have been none.
Astrid arrived moments later, drawn by the stir of voices, her hair loose and glinting copper in the torchlight, catching the look between them.
“What is it?” she asked, quickly realising it was something that would take them both from camp before dawn. “If you’re thinking what I think you are,” she said, “we’ll need horses.”
Benni hesitated. Duty warred against instinct, the invisible chains of rank tightening with every heartbeat.
The camp could not run itself, not with the Queen’s Acolytes drifting through like carrion birds, not with the lieutenants restless and whispering.
If he left, the truth would follow him like a scent on the wind—impossible to outrun, impossible to disguise.
“I can’t go,” he said at last, forcing the words out as though they cost him blood. “If she’s out there, the two of you will move faster. Take the northern route. Avoid the main road.”
Astrid nodded once, brisk and certain. Daen lingered, his jaw working as if to shape words he couldn’t quite bring himself to say.
Then, without a sound, he stepped forward and pulled Benni into his arms. It wasn’t the quick, bracing clasp of comrades, but something heavier, held a heartbeat too long, as though both men understood that this moment – this shared warmth in a world gone cold – might have to carry them through whatever came next.
“We’ll find her,” Daen said then, plainly.
Benni gripped his shoulder hard in answer, then stepped back, watching as they mounted and turned toward the dark horizon. The sea wind swallowed the sound of their departure, leaving only the hiss of the surf and the faint crackle of the fire behind him.