Satisfied.
For now, Rakhal thought, and the words felt less like surrender and more like the beginning of rule.
Chapter
Sixty-Three
Night cloaked the camp in cold silence. No wind stirred the valley. Beneath the ground, the wards hummed faintly—a vibration felt in the bones rather than heard. The vault where Kardoc lay bound was quiet.
Eliza moved through the narrow passage above it, the torchlight breathing over her shoulders. Each step stirred a whisper from the walls. She had learned to hear the difference between wind and Shadow; one moved through the air, the other through her thoughts.
Shazi had led her to the door, stopping just shy of the threshold. “He waits for you,” she’d said, meaning Azfar, not Rakhal. “Best not to keep him long.”
Azfar had called for her. Of all people, her. That alone was enough to set her pulse unsteady.
Then she had gone, and Eliza was alone with the faint salt scent of the wards and the quiet knowledge that if she listened too closely, she might hear Kardoc’s slow, bound breathing through the stone.
The chamber beyond was small, built of bone-stone veined in faint gray light. A single rune-lamp hung from a hook, casting a pale, tidal glow that rose and fell like the pulse of a livingthing. Azfar stood at the far end, half-shrouded in shadow, his staff resting upright before him. Behind him hung a stretched-hide map of the plains, Maidan marked with dark ink like an old bruise.
“Queen,” he said, neither bowing nor smiling. His voice rasped like old parchment.
“Azfar,” she answered, stepping into the light. “Why did you summon me here?” A hint of challenge in her voice.
He glanced down at the wards pulsing beneath their feet. “Because what you and Rakhal call mercy has consequences.” His eyes met hers. “Dangerous ones.”
Her brows drew together. “Kardoc is bound. The seal holds.”
“For now,” Azfar murmured. “The wards are loyal to the law that made them, not to the hand that laid it. If the one who bound him falters, they will follow the strongest will left standing. Mercy is no small current, Eliza. It moves all who swim near it.”
She folded her arms, keeping her tone even. “Then tell me what you fear.”
He shifted his staff slightly, the rings of bone clicking together, a sound that always felt too precise to be accidental. “The Shadow does not love us,” he said. “It bends to conviction. When conviction holds, it serves. When it cracks, it feeds.”
Her throat tightened.You think it might take him.
“I think it already has its hand on his heart,” Azfar said. “It has simply not decided whether to close its fingers.”
He spoke without drama, only certainty. And because there was no theatricality in it, the words hit harder.
Eliza’s gaze dropped to the floor, to the web of runes beneath their boots. “Then my work is to keep him steady,” she said quietly.
“Your work,” Azfar corrected, tapping his staff once against the stone, “is to see him. Truly see him.” His voice softened. “TheShadow cannot fully take what is witnessed by those who love it.”
Her jaw tightened. “And if I see him slipping away anyway?” The question came out sharper than she intended.
The old man’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes did. He reached into his cloak and drew something small and dark from within. When the lamplight caught it, Eliza saw it was a ring—plain iron, narrow as a whisper, etched with a seam of light that didn’t move with the lamp.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A counter-sigil,” he said. “It was forged before the First Binding, back when the shamans still believed they could unmake what they called down.” He turned it between his fingers, the faint glimmer chasing itself around the curve. “If the Shadow claims him fully, this will still him. Not cure. Not kill. It will silence the darkness in him long enough for you to act.”
Eliza didn’t reach for it. “Act,” she repeated. “You mean decide whether to save him or stop him.”
Azfar’s mouth curved faintly. “You learn quickly.”
She felt the weight of the wards under her feet, their hum like the slow exhale of something ancient and indifferent. “You should give it to him,” she said. “He deserves to know.”
Azfar shook his head once. “He would destroy it before the night was out. He believes in holding the storm until it breaks. You—” He paused, studying her face. “You know when to let go.”
