They dismount as if the ground owes them thanks. Behind them, their loyalists fan out—scarred wolves in old armor, carrying the smell of the house that raised me to be an answer no one should have to live with.
“Wrathborn,” Garran calls, spreading his hands like a father forgiving a child too late. “Nephew.”
“Don’t,” I say.
He grins.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try the word that died with my parents.”
A shadow of something mean touches his mouth.
“We warned them not to hide under fae skirts. This is not a realm for—”
“For love?” I finish. “I noticed.”
Vorren tilts his head toward the palace.
“And now you kneel to a crown that leashed your throat. The King led your first love to an altar and you still come to him to borrow a knife.”
I don’t move. Rage blooms and I let it, then bank it like a forge.
“I’m here so she doesn’t bleed for my grief. I’m here because I learned the difference between revenge and protection.”
Daesin laughs softly.
“You’ve learned how to lie to yourself in a prettier tongue.”
He steps forward, palms open, as if we’re discussing crops instead of the shape of my soul.
“Leave the leash, boy. Take your birthright. We will burn the palace, and the fae king will learn what a mistake costs. We’ll give you the head you dream of. Come home.”
“Home died in a house of smoke,” I say. “You lit the match.”
Silence. Then Garran sighs, the patient man showing his last coin.
“You’re choosing a fae princess over your blood.”
“I’m choosingme,” I answer. “The man your fire didn’t finish making. The man she can still find when night comes.”
The smile curdles.
“So. To kill, or to love?”
“To love, and to kill anything that touches it,” I say, drawing steel.
We stop pretending. The first clash shatters the quiet like stained glass. Rheon’s shadow peels off his shoulders and becomes knives. Seori moves through the loyalists like the lastline of a prayer carved into stone, clean, efficient, unmerciful. Jisoo folds his wings through the air like the night decided it wanted teeth.
Garran comes for me with an axe too heavy for a man his age. He doesn’t swing it. He folds it into strikes I remember from a yard where every mistake cost blood, the rhythm drilled into me until I could hear it in my sleep. I break it. I step inside the third beat, catch the haft with my forearm, let it bite, then pivot and drive my elbow into his throat. Cartilage cracks under my bone. He staggers; I press.
“Still a student,” he rasps.
“Still your nightmare,” I answer, and pin his axe under my heel.
Vorren is behind me before the word fades, ash-breath and furnace hymns. I feel the heat on my neck and drop. His blade chews a hiss out of air where my head was. I drive my knife backward without looking. It finds meat. He howls, reaching for a charm at his throat—old Korr sigil, a burning brand that lives under the skin like a second heartbeat. He slaps it and the ground answers: a seam in the earth splits, belching heat.
Minji’s whistle cuts the din; Seori’s blade flashes and kills the spell before it learns my name. Rheon’s shadow snaps shut over the seam, smothering fire like a palm over a candle.
