Chapter 14 Declarations of War #3
Gessa flinched at the familiar, dismissive language.
But then she saw Ky. He had gone still, his head snapping up at the envoy’s words.
She saw his eyes, wide with shock, dart from the envoy to her, the pieces clicking into place with a sudden, visible force.
Wife. Lady Gessa. He had known she’d fled an enemy, known she’d been tortured.
But this… this new context, the high-born title, the legal bond of marriage to her tormentor…
she saw the understanding of her full predicament dawn on his face, mixed with a new, unreadable emotion.
Aris Thorne leaned forward, his voice dropping into an icy calm that was far more intimidating than any rage.
“Convey this message to your Lord Polan,” he said.
“The woman you refer to as his wife is now Recruit Gessa of the Iron Spur Academy. She possesses the Wayfinding talent and is under our jurisdiction and our protection, as per the oldest laws of this land. Your lord’s marital claims are irrelevant here. Spurs’ Heart is a sovereign nation.”
He stood, a figure of immense authority.
“Tell him that any attempt to breach our territory or forcibly remove one of our own will be considered an act of war. Tell him that while his lands are rich in raw cold iron, ours are rich in other, more volatile, elements he would be wise not to test. Now, you will take your leave of my Academy.”
The envoy, pale and sputtering, was summarily dismissed. In the ringing silence, Lolly turned to Gessa, her expression serious.
“This is not the end, Gessa. As long as you are legally his wife, he will believe he has a right. And legally, he does if you step a foot outside our territory.” She paused.
“But you have rights, too. Under the ancient laws that govern these territories, and given the extreme circumstances, you have grounds to petition for a formal severance of that bond. A divorce. The Academy will stand as your advocate.”
A divorce. The word was a thunderclap. To not just flee Polan, but to legally, formally, undo her bond to him. It was terrifying. It was liberating.
She looked at Lolly, then at Aris Thorne, and finally at Ky.
He was watching her now with a new, searching intensity, the last of his cynicism seemingly burned away by the raw truth of her situation.
They had stood for her. They had faced down her tyrant.
And in that moment, some last vestige of the shamed, cowed, broken woman Polan had created finally shattered, replaced by cold, clear, unyielding iron.
She took a deep breath, meeting Lolly’s gaze.
“Yes,” Gessa said, her voice surprisingly strong, clear, infused with a will she hadn’t known she possessed until this very moment. “Yes, I will do it. I will sever the bond.”
Lolly nodded, a fierce approval in her eyes. “Then we will draft the petition immediately.”
Gessa was dismissed shortly after. She walked out of the citadel, her mind buzzing with the enormity of what she had just set in motion.
But she didn’t go straight to the Wyvern barracks.
Instead, she found herself walking to the outer perimeter wall, where the Academy grounds dropped sharply into the deep, shadowed ravine of the valley below.
It was dusk. The ravine yawned beneath her boots, a dizzying, jagged drop into pure shadow, but for once, she didn’t shrink from the edge.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the hematite. It lay heavy and cold in her palm—the rough chunk of ore she had clawed from the earth the night of her escape. It had been her anchor. It had saved her sanity when the magic threatened to tear her apart.
Or so she had believed.
Master Elms’ voice echoed in her mind, louder than the wind. You are trying to block the sun with a coin. You hold it up to your eye and tell yourself it is night.
Slowly, Gessa lifted the jagged chunk of ore. She held it up against the vast expanse of the sky above the ravine, closing one eye to align the stone until it blotted out the rising moon.
For a moment, the light was gone. The world was dark, just as she had made it for herself all these years.
She lowered the stone just an inch.
The moonlight flooded back instantly, washing over her hand, brilliant and undeniable. The stone hadn’t extinguished the light; it had only blinded her to it.
It wasn’t a shield. It wasn’t a silencer. It was just a small, cold rock that could only hide the world if she refused to look around it.
“I am done blocking the sun,” she whispered to the empty air.
She simply extended her hand over the dark abyss of the ravine and opened her fingers.
The stone fell. It made no sound as it vanished into the shadows below, taking the last of her self-imposed cage with it.
Her pocket was empty. Her anchor was gone. The panic that tried to rise in her chest was met, by a wall of cold, hard resolve.
She turned her back on the ravine and walked toward the barracks. Her words to the Council had been a legal challenge, but this—this empty pocket and the wild hum in her blood—this was her true declaration of war.