Kael wasn’t sure why he had come. Perhaps after the night in Shelb, he needed to see Henrich, to speak, to breathe the same air, to reassure himself the old man still lived. For Henrich, with his snow-white hair and the deep valleys carved by age across his face, was considered at risk. And since that night, Kael had not stopped thinking of him.
“I am fine,” Henrich said with a faint smile. “Just a cough. It is the end of winter, after all. You know how I am before spring.”
They spoke of mundane things. New students, new teachers.Henrich mentioned a gifted half-elf named Loren Vey, an arcane bender whose telekinetic powers were already the talk of the academy. The young man wished to serve the Court someday. Henrich asked Kael if, once the sickness passed, he might have a word with him.
Then came silence. A long, fragile quiet in which a single question seemed to hang between them.
When will all this finally be over?
They drank tea together. They did not speak of Kael’s work. They did not speak of the dead.
Instead, they spoke of rumors, those surrounding the Earl of Perlgate.
Dereck Thorne, who seduced the desperate with promises of freedom and riches, naming the Crown their common enemy. Some said he was raising militias across Bretannia, men armed not only with blades, but with grief ripened into rage.
Kael told Henrich that Alaric and Thalen of the Council of War were gathering troops and battlemages, preparing for the worst, if there was such a thing as worse than the Breath of Death.
If Dereck Thorne wanted blood, then he would be met with it.
Henrich’s disapproval was immediate, palpable even behind the cloth over his mouth. If the Crown crushed Thorne’s followers now, he warned, they would make him a martyr, and nothing good ever rose from the ashes of false martyrs.
“And where will you stand?” Henrich asked, his tone a quiet test.
Kael only shrugged. Lionel had ordered him not to intervene. He already had enough ash on his hands.
“I’ll be in the castle.”
Henrich released a frail breath. The wolf would remain caged. The storm would stay within.
For now.
When the firstacacia trees bloomed, Dereck Thorne had already gathered an army and raided the home of the Duchess of Bretannia. She became his prisoner, and he crowned himself leader of Bretannia, crying for the state’s independence.
Bretannia plunged into an age of darkness.
Thorne never kept his promises. The poor starved or died choking on their own blood, while the rich, those whose wealth spanned across the lands, were invited within his castle walls to feast and drink until they forgot the screams outside.
And still, despite it all, the survivors followed Dereck Thorne blindly. They raided royal buildings, stormed magi keeps, and fell beneath the blades of guards loyal to the king, each death feeding Thorne’s cause all the more.
Then, his armies crossed into Hauvia. He called for rallies, for militias to march upon Befest and take the academy. The Trivale became a battlefield. Lutessian forces splintered, some joining one side, some the other. The kingdom fractured in a single spring.
In every village, in every city, people chose sides. Even in the capital, while war raged beyond the walls, Thorne’s influence festered in the gutters. Like mad beasts, his followers surged upon magi houses, upon the markets, and at last upon the academy itself.
Kael, who had held his distance with every shred of restraint he possessed, had endured enough. When they came in the hundreds, charging battlemages with teeth and rusted blades, the wolf stepped from his cage.
And the storm he unleashed upon the city did not cease for weeks.
When it was finally over, ash still fell from the sky, covering the streets in a silver snow that was almost beautiful. All Kael felt was a strange elation. The storm had been released, and for a fleeting moment, he understood what it was to be normal.
He hurried to the academy, his boots stamping a dark trail through the pale dust. The magi were already at work, rebuilding the western wall and reviving the scorched gardens. Henrich wasnowhere to be found. Kael caught the arm of the first teacher he saw, a man with jet-black hair wearing the teal robes of the teachers.
“He was by the entrance, last I saw him,” the man said in a thick Sud accent. The words steadied Kael’s pulse.
Then the man’s eyes widened in recognition, but before Kael could react, movement caught the corner of his vision.
A woman stood nearby, her back turned. She wore the same teal robes, her long dark curls tied low at the nape of her neck. He could not see her face, and that fact disappointed him more than it should have. A faint breeze stirred the air between them, carrying her scent.
Roses.
