Rakhal had gone into the throng—into the very mouth of it—utterly fearless, an arrow loosed into flesh and fury. He moved so fast she could barely make him out among the torches and swinging blades. Orcs crowded him, shields and tusks and the press of bodies, and when he pushed into that living dark she had ordered the men to hold their fire.Do not shoot into the press,she had commanded,not while he is inside.
The fighting continued, a brutal smear against the plain. Then the shadows parted.
For a single flash by torchlight and mage-glow she saw him—Rakhal—locked blade-to-blade with a mountain of an orc she recognised by the way the line of his shoulder moved, by the scent of blood in his hair. Kardoc. The heir. The first son.
The brothers clashed like storm and cliff. Suddenly, all the calculation and doubt she’d been nursing dropped away. She saw how Rakhal fought—fast, precise, more cunning than brute strength. In that furious scrap, his intent was plain: he had cut into his own line to strike down the warmonger. He wanted the war ended. Kardoc wanted it immortal.
Her chest thudded when Kardoc seemed to press advantage, when for one ragged moment she thought the larger orc might break him. Then came the crack of crossbows—a volley unleashed despite her command.
“No!” she screamed. The word tore from her. Another hail of bolts shredded into the press. In the next terrible beat she thought she saw one sink home into Rakhal’s shoulder, then another in his back.Hold fire,she snapped, furious enough to taste iron.
The shadows that wrapped him recoiled and then closed like a living wound. Dust rolled up in choking clouds. Orcs under the female commander surged to the rear, forming a cover. Rakhal staggered, bleeding, and began to fall back.
The retreat formed like closing jaws. The attacking orcs pulled aside and ran into the darkness, dragging their wounded and their dead toward the chains of the plains. Her heart leapt into her mouth. Could this creature—this terrifying, terrible prince of shadow—actually die here?
She turned with a speed that surprised her to the soldiers along the battlement. Captain Sorell’s face was hard, but therewas a glint in his eye she did not trust. The men who had fired had disobeyed her. They had broken the single order she’d given.
“Rakhal’s soldiers are going after them,” she barked. “They’ll do our work for us. Hold your fire, or I will have every one of you executed. That is a royal order.”
A tension snapped through the line. The captain’s jaw flexed; he lifted his head and nodded, obeying the command she issued not as a plea but as law. The men reloaded, crossbows clacking into place—but did not fire.
Below, Rakhal stumbled toward the wall and then dropped to his knees, the earth taking him like a cruel bed. For a breathless moment she watched him—the proud, terrible figure reduced to something human and broken—and the queen and the woman in her warred so fiercely she could feel the heat of the contest in her veins.
Her heart wanted to scream for healers, to flinch forward and demand that the best of Maidan’s magic be laid on him until life stuck.He must survive,the woman at the edge of her chest whispered, raw and frightened. But the crown she wore weighed more than her fear.
They had to see her as both: merciful where it served the people and ruthless where it maintained order. If she failed to show steel now, the soldiers’ trust would fray into mutiny. If she showed only cold calculation, she risked losing the fragile bond that had kept some of them from murdering the orcs in their ranks tonight.
“Retrieve him,” she ordered, voice low but carrying. “Bring him to the courtyard. Secure him. Let no one touch him without my say.”
Her hands did not shake when she gave the next commands. “Summon the mage-healers from the Magic Tower at once. Send runners to every gate—no one leaves or enters without royalsanction. Treat him as a prince and a hostage both. If any man disobeys my orders, his head will pay for it.”
The captain’s nod was curt, automatic. Men slid down the ladders and ropes like shadows, the night erupting again with motion as they obeyed.
She let herself watch them work, tasting the bitter wine of power and consequence. She had saved him when no one else would have asked; she would bind him to her now—by hands of mercy and by the iron of politics.
Whatever he had planned, whatever treacheries had laced the Varak ranks, the next moves would be hers as much as his. The city needed a queen who could live and kill by strategy as easily as by courage. Tonight, the throne would learn how hard she could be.
She looked down at the fallen man—the shadow prince who had bled for his choice—and for one private breath she wished with everything in her bones that he would live.
Chapter
Thirty
Five mages. That was what it took—that was how afraid they were of him.
Of this orc, who now lay bound in irons etched with glowing wards, sprawled on a stretcher in the courtyard like some dangerous beast barely contained.
Eliza pushed her way through the ring of soldiers, through the knot of mages who kept their wary distance. One by one, they stepped aside, heads bowed, until the path cleared to Rakhal’s side.
His eyes were open, but glazed, unfocused, seeing nothing.
Part of her ached to kneel, to reach out and press her hand to his face, to murmur comfort into his ear. But not here. Not in front of her people. That would put them both in danger.
A healer knelt beside him, bandages already tied tight around his shoulder and back, streaks of blood still soaking through.
“How badly is he hurt?” she asked, her voice clipped, stripped of everything but command. She folded her arms to hide the tremor in her fingers. “Will he survive?”
Elgara stood close, the elder mage’s silvered brows furrowed, his sharp eyes fixed on the orc sprawled before them. He shareda glance with the healer at Rakhal’s side, one that spoke of unease.
