Chapter Twenty-Five Mathias
Mathias had seen grief before – how it hollowed men out or hardened them like old iron – but he had never seen it take root as it did in her.
The General had not left the inner chamber in three days.
Not to stand in the light beaming through the half-fallen roof, not to taste the air at the cliffs at the back of the old temple.
She remained where Maeve had left her, folded into the shadowed curve of the altar, her body still as the dead save for the slow, guarded rhythm of her breath.
She had eaten little, slept less, and, though he doubted she knew it, still held the dagger – sometimes with the loose fingers of a dreamer, sometimes with the desperation of someone trying not to drown.
He kept to the edges of the chamber, a silent figure in the periphery, not absent but never imposing.
She had not looked at him since that first morning, and he hadn’t tried to summon her gaze.
Instead, he watched the way her shoulders curled inward, as if bracing for a blow that never came, and the way her jaw stayed clenched even in sleep, the muscles twitching as if chasing some thought she refused to let loose.
The fire’s light caught in her hair when she shifted, glinting on strands of gold, and for a moment, he almost reached out – just to move one from her cheek.
But his hand stilled before it reached her.
There was a tightness to her poise that made the air feel brittle, as though the wrong touch might set something unravelling.
So he held the moment gently and let it pass.
By the second night, that composure began to wear thin.
The first sign came in the way she pushed the cup aside when Maeve brought it – too sharp for courtesy, too slow for rage.
It clattered to the floor, unbroken, and Ara didn’t flinch, only stared at it for a long moment, jaw set, breath quick in her chest. Later, she began pacing – not steadily, but in restless bursts, as if her limbs didn’t know what to do with the tension inside them.
A hand dragged through her hair again and again, tugging until strands clung to her fingers.
She snapped at the laces of her coat when they tangled, muttering once under her breath – low and venomous – though whether it was a curse or a plea, Mathias couldn’t tell.
He just watched as she turned in tighter and tighter circles, like something cornered too long, and knew the storm was gathering – not a single drop had fallen, but the air had shifted.
He hadn’t meant to wait this long. In the first hours after Maeve had spoken, he’d told himself it was mercy to leave the General be—to give her space, to let the words settle before they demanded proper shape.
But days had passed, and what he saw now wasn’t catharsis but containment.
She was holding herself too tightly, pacing cracks into the floor, carrying the weight of both the life she lived and the one stolen from her.
And constantly, she looked braced for impact—shoulders tense, hands clenched, eyes too sharp for someone who hadn’t slept.
He had watched soldiers grit their teeth through wounds, sailors walk into drowning like it was a debt long owed and mothers bury their children without a sound – but none of it had prepared him for the way she carried what had been done to her.
Not with defiance or even anger—only grim, unyielding persistence.
It stirred something uneasy in him. Whatever strength she still had would turn to splinters if kept here too long.
And so he rose, slow from the cold floor, crossed the room with steady steps, and set his hand on the bolt of the door.
It stuck for a moment – warped from years of sea air and weather – but then shifted with a groan as he dragged it back.
She turned at the sound, sharp as a lash. Her eyes went to the door, then to him, and for a moment neither moved. Her gaze dropped to his hand on the bolt, then to the open doorway, where the wind slipped through—cool and damp with the coming rain.
“Is that it, then?” Her voice was hoarse but even.
“A few days of pacing circles, and now you throw the door open like it’s meant to mean something.
” She didn’t rise, didn’t look away. Just stayed where she was, seated at the foot of the altar like a woman waiting for a verdict she no longer feared. Mathias held her gaze.
“It doesn’t,” he said. “Not unless you walk through it.”
“And where would I go?” There was a rumbling of thunder in her words now. “Where can the bastard daughter of a dead mage and an executed priest go where who she is wouldn’t follow her?”
Mathias cocked his head, his eyes infuriatingly gentle as a small smile started to pull at the corner of his lips.
“To the Last Sea, perhaps? To taste the free air and to let the waves wash away whatever is left of the Heir Apparent and the ward of the Sorcerer Queen? Or the dust from an old temple, at least?”
The General stared at him for a moment, her midnight-blue eyes wide, a golden flame circling the dark at their centre.
She seemed to weigh whether the suggestion was kindness or mockery.
Then, her eyebrow slowly shot up, and a tired and wry smile formed on her lips, almost uninvited.
“Careful now. Keep staring like that, and I’ll start to think you’ve taken a liking to me. ”
It was the same thing she’d said when they first met, her wrists still bound and her voice rough from thirst, while he crouched beside her like a man who hadn’t yet made up his mind.
Back then, he’d thought it bluster – a half-shield raised to hide the cracks – but now it felt more like muscle memory, a fragment of the self she was still trying to hold onto.
He dropped his gaze, one hand ghosting to his temple as if brushing away hair that wasn’t there.
“Come on then,” he said, nodding his head towards the door and the sunlight on the other side of it. “The tide waits for no one.”
She didn’t retort but moved when he did, her limbs heavy from days of restless pacing, each step drawn from a body that had lost its natural rhythm.
At the doorway, she paused – as if expecting the light to sting – before stepping into it.
The sun met her face, golden and full on her skin, and she squinted against the brightness, letting it settle.
Her breath caught once, shallow in her chest, before coming again, deeper this time.
She stretched, slow and deliberate, the motion unfurling from her shoulders to her fingertips like something thawing after a long freeze.
Cool wind curled through the loose strands of her hair, and she let it caress her.
Behind them, the temple stood half-swallowed by ivy and sea-worn stone, an old relic perched at the cliff’s edge where no one had come to pray in a long time.
And below, far from the eyes of the town, the sea waited – slate-blue and vast – as Mathias led her down the narrow path, each footstep tracing a fragile trust into the earth between them.
By now the sun had climbed high, casting long lines of light across the rockface, and the sea below caught and scattered the light, its surface restless.
Foam hissed where the waves broke, white-lipped against the shore.
The sand lay dark and stony, strewn with driftwood and shells cracked open by gulls.
Ara’s boots skidded once on loose gravel, but she caught herself without pause, her gaze fixed on the water.
Overhead, gulls wheeled and called, their cries rising and falling like distant laughter, and Mathias watched her shoulders lift, then lower again – as if, for the first time in days, the breath she took didn’t hurt.
The shoreline gave way to a wide sweep of shale, each piece slick with seawater and glinting in the midday light.
The tide drew in slow and steady, pulling a breath across the shore with each retreating wave.
Ara paused near the water, her coat loose around her shoulders, one hand adjusting the folds with the absent motion of someone already halfway elsewhere.
Mathias stopped just behind her, watching the wind lift the ends of her hair like the sea lifting its tide.
It wasn’t until she tugged at the fastenings of her coat that the thought struck him – sharp and sudden, like a bell rung mid-thought.
She would need to undress. His breath caught, and he ran a hand through his hair, unsure for a moment where to look or what to do with his hands.
He cleared his throat, soft and low, and when Ara glanced back over her shoulder, he tipped his head toward a crook in the path where a weathered outcrop rose enough to shield him from view.
“I’ll wait there,” he said, his voice catching just enough to make him clear his throat. “High enough to watch the trail. Just in case anyone from town comes nosing around. Still a fair few there who think you ought to hang.”
She looked back at him, dry amusement flickering in her eyes like sunlight through a storm cloud. “Not worried I’ll run?” she asked, one brow lifted. “Bugger off, swim away, leave you telling stories about the woman who walked into the sea and never came back?”
Mathias let the corner of his mouth tilt. “Where would you go?”
The General huffed, a sound half-laugh and half-exhale, and turned her face back to the sea.
“Suit yourself,” she said then, her fingers already slipping beneath the straps of her coat.
“I’ve dressed and undressed in the company of fifty shouting soldiers, most of them stinkier than sin and twice as nasty.
You’re hardly the worst I’ve had to ignore. ”