It was a standard report Fiera had been receiving for years now. The only variant was that each time she heard it, there was less and less to say. Most had thought she was far too young to be placed at the head of the Knights of Jadar five years ago when it happened at her seventeenth birthday. But war changed girls into women, and softness into steel.
“Any report of Imperial ships at sea?”
Twintle shook his head. “Not since our last effort to drive them away.”
“The pirate Adela?”
“No sightings,” Twintle said, with no small amount of relief.
Fiera nodded, relieved as well. They had enough to worry about. Adela could go terrorize the brutish and uneducated masses on the Crescent Continent.
“Open the grain stores of the castle to the soldiers. Denja, anything you can dredge up from the bottom of barrels in the castle or city is to be turned out. Ask the nobles again to search their larders—by surprise this time. Let’s see if we can’t find anything hidden away in their cabinets. All combatants have first claim. Let the people eat after our military, and then a curfew is in order. All non-combatants are to remain indoors.”
“If I open my warehouse—” Lord Twintle began from the other end of the table.
“You will quickly run out. Yes, I realize.” Fiera rapped her knuckles against the table twice; a ring in the shape of a silver phoenix rung out loudly. “This ends in the coming days. Feed our troops, give them strength.”
“You had a vision.” Ophain, her brother and eldest sibling, said softly from the head of the table opposite her. He still had not risen to greet her.
The man was a shade of his former self. Fiera remembered him towering over her with broad shoulders and a noteworthy amount of muscle ever since she was a girl. But he had been one of the first in their family to begin refusing food to help it last longer, and his perpetual fast had taken a toll.
“The Mother has blessed me with the sight,” Fiera affirmed. “This ends. So if you agree with my will, brother, see it done.”
All eyes shifted to Ophain. Officially, he was the head of the council as the crown prince. But Fiera was the head of the Knights of Jadar, the soldiers of the West, and that made her nearly his equal.
“I will see it done.”
“Then I will be the one to tell Father,” she said to him and turned to Zira. “After, I will address the people. Send criers for a royal announcement now and meet me in the armory.”
“Yes, your highness.” Zira bowed low, hovering there as Fiera left the room.
She rotated the heavy silver ring around her ring finger, worrying away at the smooth silver.It would end. She had told them the truth in that. Fiera paused, staring out a window lining the hallway. She imagined a city burning, ransacked by their enemies.
Was it wrong not to tell even her most trusted advisershowit would end?
Pushing the thoughts from her mind, Fiera continued on to her father’s chambers. More and more often, she found him on his wide balcony. The sheer curtains that drifted in the open archways of his room obscured his form.
“Do I hear the soft footsteps of my youngest child?”
Nothing about her was still soft. “Yes, Father.”
“Approach, girl.”
Fiera did as she was bid. Even as the head of the Knights of Jadar, she was still a girl to her father, and no amount of cunning deeds or ruthless bloodshed would change that.
“What have you come to trouble me with?” Even as he spoke, silver crown heavy on his brow, King Rocham gazed out over the city. Fiera wondered if he, too, could imagine it burning.
“We are making preparations for the end.” That brought his attention to her. Rocham’s dark eyes set against leathered skin scrutinized Fiera, and she let no weakness show. “The Mother has gifted me with a vision.”
“Finally,” he murmured. “Well, tell me.”
“This will all end soon.”
“How does it end?”
“We will lose.” This was the one man whom telling could make a difference—though Fiera doubted it would. She knew how deep her father’s pride ran.
Rocham settled back once again admire his kingdom, likely one of the last times he would see it in the bright afternoon sun. Soon they would be looking from this balcony at just another stretch of the Solaris Empire. The history and name of Mhashan would be wiped from the maps and reduced to “the West.”
