Chapter Twenty-Six Frejara
The smell of broth curled through the air, rich with thyme and sea salt and something vaguely bitter I couldn’t place.
Maeve stirred the pot like it had wronged her, wooden spoon clutched tight in her fist as she muttered beneath her breath about the idiocy of grown men wading into the tide like they didn’t know any better.
The fire crackled low between us, sending up soft sparks that danced in the shadows.
I sat wrapped in an old wool cloak, my legs tucked beneath me, the flames chasing off the worst of the cold yet leaving a chill that had nothing to do with the sea.
Across from me, Mathias crouched close to the hearthstone, elbows on knees, hair still wet and clinging to his brow in flaxen waves.
Our eyes met across the flickering light, and something in my chest stirred, slow and steady as the early tide pressing against the shore.
Maeve’s gaze shifted, flicking from him to me and back again.
She gave a long, suffering sigh, a sound that was half-theatre and half-earned.
Reaching up, she swiped at the corner of her eye with the back of one sleeve, as if it were smoke stinging her and not whatever she saw between us.
But she didn’t say a word and just returned to stirring her pot as if the broth had grown suddenly unruly—its rhythm folding into the crackle of fire and the sigh of wind threading through the gaps overhead.
I kept my hands tucked in the wool gathered to my lap, though the warmth could not reach what lived beneath the skin – the kind that settled inward, slow and unrelenting, a chill born not of what I had shed, but of what I had finally seen.
Not just the shape of the lies, but their root, and the depth to which they reached.
I had spent a lifetime wrestling shadows cast by the woman I had called my mother.
Now, with the spell of her treachery broken and her cruelty laid bare, what weighed beneath my ribs was no longer only vengeance.
There was grief, and there was rage, but they no longer pulled in opposite directions.
They circled now, wary and watching, drawn toward a centre I had only just begun to see.
I might have carved a path back to her on rage alone, letting the weight of what she’d taken drive the blade home.
But this was something else – a purpose shaped not by what had been done to me, but by what might yet be done to everything and everyone else.
Malice and purpose had blurred until all that remained was the wreckage in her wake: the betrayals against me, the long red thread of slaughtered Sisters, and the power torn from the bones of those who once guarded it.
And in doing so, unleashed something into the world that could not be called back.
The fire stirred softly, sending a thin ribbon of smoke curling upward.
My gaze lifted, drawn by instinct more than thought, and I found Mathias’ eyes still on me, the flecks of flame reflected in them like gold dust. Something shifted in my chest, slow and almost imperceptible, like frost about to thaw.
I did not know what to do with it, only that it was different from the weight I’d grown used to carrying.
Across the flames, something settled between us, as if the tide had turned without either of us noticing until it swept us with it.
I felt it in the catch of my breath, in the way my fingers curled tighter beneath the wool.
And for the first time in longer than I could measure, I was not a weapon left too long in the forge or a title etched into a banner.
I was someone still capable of being seen – not for what I had done or lost, but simply for sitting there by the fire, my hair still damp from the sea, salt still clinging to my throat.
But even as the warmth of his gaze lingered, and some part of me shifted toward something almost tender, the weight returned, settling over me like night drawing in, slow and certain.
I could not stay here by the fire. I was not built for peace, nor meant for grace.
I had been carved by blood and battle and the sharp bite of steel, and though I had tried to forget it, tried to wear the sea like a salve over old wounds, that truth had never left me.
I was still the blade. And the blade yet had work to do.
I sat a while longer, watching the fire bleed its light across the stone, letting the decision settle deeper into my bones.
There was no ceremony to it or sudden sense of absolution.
Just a breath, and the steady thrum of a doubtless heart beneath it.
Just the certainty that this was the path I would walk, not because it had been forced upon me, but because at last, I could see the way of it – and knew the path would not unfold unless I made it so.
Whatever kindness I’d found here in Mathias – in his words in this broken temple, in his acts of service and trust, in his arms in the water – it could not change the hunger gathering just beyond the marshes and the hills, or the shadow moving beneath my mother’s banner.
They would come, and when they did, it would not be mercy that marched with them.
It would be fire. And if I did nothing, then the blood they would spill would stain my hands as well.
So I could not and would not stay idle. Not even for a town that would rather see me hang than accept my help.
Let them spit at my name. Let them count their dead and trace the blood back to my hands – they would not be wrong. But they would still be breathing when the ash settled.
I shifted, drawing the cloak tighter around my shoulders, though it had little to do with the cold. “I’m going back,” I said, not lifting my eyes from the fire.
Maeve’s head lifted, and her usually so busy hands stilled at her sides. Across from me, Mathias leaned forward just slightly, one forearm resting on his knee, the firelight catching along the ridge of his cheek.
“I’m going back to Irongate.”
Mathias leaned forward, the motion slow, deliberate, as though weighing my words. His hands clasped loosely between his knees, but there was tension in his shoulders, as if he was weighing his own words, too, before he let them fall from his lips.
“To do what?” he finally asked.
With a certainty that grew with every word I spoke, I looked up at him, resolved. “To end this.”
Maeve’s spoon slowed, then stilled, her fingers tightening around the handle before she set it aside with a care that felt more deliberate than gentle. She turned her head toward me, eyes narrowing slightly, as if she were bracing for the answer she already suspected was coming.
“And how do you plan to do that?”
I took a deep breath, and though I did not say what I meant outright, I knew the meaning was not lost on her. “However I have to.”
Running his hand over his face, Mathias let out a long sigh, as if something in him had settled – like a line he’d been tracing had finally come to a head. “You mean to kill her.”
“If I must.” I said calmly, and I didn’t allow the pretence of a different intent into my voice. I knew he didn’t expect me to, but I heard Maeve take a sharp breath through her teeth when I let the words fall off my tongue.
Perhaps she had forgotten who I was in the long days we had spent together – when she nursed my wounds, tended my bruises, and later unfolded my life by giving me the gift, or the curse, of the truth that ran in my blood.
Perhaps she had hoped that the blood she washed from my forehead might cleanse a lifetime of violence from me.
And it could be that the quiet hours in this damp, wind-worn temple had softened my heart enough to dull its craving for outright revenge – but I was the Unbroken Blade, and blades always thirsted for blood.
I went to reach for her hand, as if to offer some comfort, but instead squeezed my fingers into a tight fist and placed them back on my knee. I closed my eyes for a moment, my thoughts still running wild and haphazard. When I opened them, they were bent firmly to my purpose.
“I believe there is still time,” I said then. Yes, there was time, but I didn’t know how long. All I knew for certain was that it was growing thin. “The army camped at Harbour’s Bane hasn’t yet begun to march.”
Maeve’s head angled slightly, a flicker of thought passing behind her eyes, though whatever conclusion she reached, she held it close.
She looked over at Mathias, and something passed between them, though whatever it was, it was lost to me.
But it was not lost to Mathias, who huffed gently and reached out to touch his aunt’s shoulder, briefly, but long enough to settle whatever it was that stirred in her.
“You’re sure?” he asked, returning his eyes to mine.
His head tilted slightly—the way it did when he listened intently—a gesture I suddenly realised had become so familiar to me that I found myself expecting it.
I brushed a stray fleck of ash from my cloak and cleared my throat with two quick coughs.
“If they’d begun to march, we’d know.” I gestured vaguely towards the town and beyond, where the Twin Cities lay.
“There are always signs when that many boots start to move. Villages that empty without reason. Inns packed before sundown, but no one touching their cups. Traders changing their routes. Crossings watched by strangers with too much coin and too many questions. Fields plundered with none of the crops going to the farmers. Even this far north, the ground shifts well before the march even begins. No, if the order had gone out, we would’ve heard it in the rumblings of preparations. ”