Hope.
He met every gaze, unflinching. “Milonia Dardana speaks at great risk to herself and her father,” he began, his voice clear despite the pounding in his chest.
At the courtyard’s edge, Milonia stood with Caius at her feet. Her gaze lowered from his.
“Whether you believe her or not is up to you.”
He turned back to the crowd. Battled the tightness in his throat. Focused on his people, who were anxious for every scrap of information.
“I’m as surprised as you are by some of it,” he admitted. “But not all. Here’s what I have known, and what I’ve already shared with the province lords: Titos Demakis and Leonidas Primakos were in league to damn myreputation through a variety of methods meant to shift control of our lands over to Soterra. Much of it done atyourexpense.”
Dimitrios paused. Let the truth land.
“You don’t have to take my word for it. I have it in writing.”
An older man with soot-stained fingers and a wide chest stepped forward. “If it’s in writing, and the lords knew about it, why haven’ttheydone something?”
Voices echoed the question.
Dimitrios lifted his hands. “That’s a fair question, Iason. One I wish I could answer. If you want my opinion… They have been reluctant to disparage Leonidas’s good name.”
A few heads nodded, tight and bitter.
“I understand their hesitancy,” Dimitrios said. “Even if I don’t like it. But now I ask you this: What wouldyouhave me do? I am a foreigner whose father was once the crown prince. I have been at the mercy of these same men for months.”
Silence stretched as the truth cut through their anger.
Dimitrios turned in a slow circle. “I don’t care about titles. Or how the lords cling to their comforts. They’ve chosen silence—we don’t have to.”
Heads bobbed, and spears pounded the earth.
Dimitrios lifted his voice further. “Soterran forces have crossed our borders. They arehere, coming through the north pass. Right this very minute. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to fight. Untitled. Crownless. Your equal. A man who has grown to love these lands. And I stand among you, asking you to join me. Let us fight together as Pereans.”
It started small. A nod from a man with scarred hands. A boy tightening his grip on a spear. A woman lifting her chin.
Then it swelled.
Murmurs to shouts.
Weapons raised.
Voices rose like wind—louder, stronger—until hope rolled through the crowd like thunder.
Dimitrios faced the soldiers waiting in the courtyard. Nikolas stood among them, arms folded, brows furrowed.
“Decide now,” Dimitrios called. “You can be a Perean now”—he drew his sword, the steel glinting—“or Soterran tomorrow.”
These warriors belonged neither to Kai nor to Usti.
Yet she and the Stormguard stood ready, shoulder-to-shoulder at the chamber’s mouth, blades drawn, breath held.
The strangers moved with eerie precision, their formation tight and silent. Not Silver Wolf discipline. Something different. Sharper.
Their armor hugged close—black leather overlaid with dark steel plates, curved and glinting like dragon scales. Many were masked. Those who weren’t bore streaks of ash and dark blue pigment across their faces. Curved blades crossed their backs, and whips looped at their belts.
The murmuring crowd parted for them, unease rippling like wind through dry leaves.
At their head, Drakaa strode in silence, her long braid trailing down her back. Perched atop her shoulder, her pearlescent white beast coiled its tail around her neck.
