Chapter Thirty-One Frejara #2
As we passed beneath the low arch that marked the outer ring of the throne hall’s lower vaults, I saw movement ahead—three figures just beyond the lantern glow, standing at the foot of the stair, their familiar armour dim in the halflight.
Their heads turned as we approached, hands falling to the hilts at their sides with the reflex of habit more than alarm.
One of them stepped forward, broad-shouldered and weatherworn, his helm tucked beneath his arm, his eyes narrowing beneath a furrow of disbelief.
I knew him. Marric, once of the Western Reach – he had taken a crossbow bolt through the thigh at Drymere and kept fighting long after his leg had gone numb.
He looked older now, the lines deeper, the jaw set harder – but it was him.
And when his gaze landed on mine, something shifted.
There was no fear in his eyes, no defiance either – only the slow, deliberate weight of recognition settling between us.
And beneath it, loyalty – not demanded, not declared, but present and tangible all the same.
He shifted aside with careful precision, clearing the stair with a movement so measured it felt like an invitation.
He turned his head just enough for his companions to see the look in his eyes, and the others followed – one casting a glance toward Mathias, the other toward the door we’d slipped through – but neither said anything, and none drew their blades.
Just three soldiers in a corridor, still as carved figures, with nothing in their posture to give away that anything untoward at all was happening.
But as I passed, Marric’s voice reached me – low, even, meant only for me.
“Good to see you, General.”
“And you, Marric.” I nodded to him slowly as he and his comrades raised two fingers to their temples in a quiet salute. Then, in unison and with purpose, they turned away from us and resumed watching the stairs and the corridor, as if they’d never seen us at all.
The stair curved downward in a wide sweep now, broader than before, its centre worn to a shallow dip by centuries of passing feet.
The air thickened as we climbed – not from dust or damp, but from something heavier, more hostile.
A hum, low and constant, like a pressure held barely in check.
The scent changed too – acrid folded into the cloying air, so sharp it clung to the back of the throat.
I could feel it rising through the soles of my boots, coiling along my spine, threading through the hollows of my ribs with every step we took.
It was magic, yes, but not the kind I had known by firelight or felt surging in my blood.
This was older, knotted, heavy with intent.
By the time we reached the landing, the structure itself seemed altered – darker, somehow, though small torches burned along the walls.
The air muffled sound, even the soft shift of fabric or the brush of boot against the floor, as though the very walls were bracing for what came next.
Ahead, the corridor straightened and stretched – a long throat of carved stone that would open, at its end, to the antechamber and, behind it, the Queen’s Hall.
I had walked this path before. In full armour, flanked by banners and horns. But never like this.
At the final bend, where the corridor narrowed toward the antechamber, Mathias slowed beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.
His hand lifted—slowly, carefully—and brushed a piece of hair back from my cheek, his fingers grazing the curve of my jaw before resting, just for a moment, at the base of my neck.
I let my forehead rest against his, briefly, just long enough to feel the warmth of him.
His fingers curled lightly around mine, grounding us in that breath, that heartbeat, that fraction of time that hadn’t yet been taken.
When I opened my eyes again to meet his, he smiled – a sad, hollow little thing – and nodded towards the chamber ahead.
It was time, I understood, and I returned the nod, slowly and with my pulse thumping in my throat.
We stepped into the antechamber, and the air changed again—denser now, shot through with the raw sting of sulphur.
Torchlight flickered low along the walls, casting long shadows that stretched across the floor in uneven ribbons.
The stone beneath us was black and veined; the surface worn smooth in the centre where footfall had favoured the same path again and again.
There were marks carved into it – shallow, deliberate – not decorative, not script, but the kind left when repetition alone grounds meaning into a place.
And at the far end, the Sorcerer Queen was waiting.
Mowgara stood before the throne room doors, robes dark against the iron, her posture composed, almost ceremonial, as though the room itself were reverent to her presence.
Her hands were clasped in front of her, the long sleeves falling just so, every inch of her controlled, deliberate, impossible to unseat.
Her gaze met mine with the full force of knowing, steady and bare of performance, as if the moment were already hers, and we had simply arrived to play our part.
The torches barely reached her face, but I didn’t need the light to know the set of that jaw, the weight behind those eyes.
She commanded the space as if it were her own body – every whit within it bent to her will.
I stepped forward, Mathias just a breath behind me, his light footfalls a steady tether against the pervasive weight.
Each deliberate pace brought us closer, the space in between shrinking inch by inch and growing denser with every move.
My fingers found the hilt at my hip, its familiar grip cool beneath my hand.
I drew the blade slow and careful, letting the steel catch the torchlight as it cleared the scabbard.
It wasn’t a threat but a grounding heft of something forged for purpose – steady where the fire inside me was anything but.
Mowgara regarded me silently, her gaze steady, unreadable, as if she had already counted the pieces on the board and knew how the game would end. The corners of her mouth lifted, not quite a smile, more a scarred curve – worn thin and sharpened by cold, cutting pragmatism.
“So,” she said, the words sharp and searing, “my daughter finds her way home after all.”
“Mother,” I replied, making no attempt to hide the poison in my voice. “Queen. The Last Sister. You choose your titles like you choose your lies – whatever serves you best.”
Mowgara’s expression didn’t shift, but something in her bearing curled tighter – satisfaction, perhaps, drawn from a thread she’d been tugging on for years.
“Predictable,” she spat, as if her own words were a foul taste in her mouth.
“All that posturing. All that running. And still, you find your way back to the foot of the throne – tail tucked like a lame dog, teeth bared for show.” She paused a moment, regarding me as though she were observing something faintly disappointing.
“There is a gravity to power, Frejara. You may thrash against it. You may flee to your ragged little corners of this continent. But in the end, everything comes back to heel. Even you.”
“Shouldn’t you be proud?” I asked, the words low, bitter.
“You made me what I am. Hardened me. Sharpened me. Burned out everything that didn’t serve your cause.
” My fingers curled tighter around the hilt.
“So I’ll let you claim every stained and ruined part forged by your hand.
Everything I lost to become what you needed. But nothing else. Not anymore.”
Mowgara tilted her head, just slightly, like she was examining a piece of glass for cracks she already knew were there.
“Is that so?” she purred, her voice like honey – and poison.
“You wear them in every breath, every choice you think is yours. You walk in here dressed in defiance and call it freedom, but I see the tremor beneath it. The shape of my hand, still ghosting your spine.” She took a step forward – not close enough to crowd, just enough to let the next words land where she meant them to.
“Even the things you gave up to spite me… weren’t yours to lose. ”
I could feel anger rise in my belly, but Mowgara wasn’t done.
No, on her face was now a sickeningly sweet smile.
“But if ownership and agency is what you so desperately crave, I am happy to share it with you. You were right to be afraid of the things your bleeding little heart wanted. You must have always known it—the stain and the shame of it. I may have handed you the knife, but you were the one who pressed it to your own skin.” Her voice softened, but the steel was in the tone now—honed, cruel, and cold.
“Yours were never clean hands, Frejara. They would rot everything they touch. And that filth is all your own doing.”
My grip on the hilt stayed firm, though the blade felt heavier in my hand. I looked at her – her cursed composure and detachment – and felt the ache beneath the fury in that old, hollow place, where the wounds had never quite closed.
“Because you fed me the poison that tainted everything I loved.” I said, each word drawn slow, steady, the way you speak when the ground beneath you is shifting and you refuse to fall with it.
“But I lived with that. I carried it. I made room for it because I had no choice.” I shook my head slowly, my gaze fixed on her eyes.
“So whatever filth you planted – it ends here. It dies here.”