“Cheese and crackers, stay down?—”
He went down. Not from her wild assault, but from Miles’sword hilt cracking against his skull as the knight appeared at her side.
“My lady.” Miles’ voice was caught somewhere between horror and admiration. “Perhaps stay behind me?”
She retreated, her hands shaking so badly she nearly dropped the smoldering torch. Not a warrior. Definitely not a warrior. Just a woman who refused to watch the man she loved die.
The fight had shifted while she wasn’t watching. Alaric was struggling now, his movements growing desperate. Sweat darkened his fine clothes. His perfect hair hung loose around his face.
“You should have died in that clearing,” he hissed, blocking a strike that visibly numbed his arm. “You should have bled out in the mud like the dog you are.”
Gareth pressed harder. His blade was everywhere—high, low, feinting left and striking right. Silent and relentless as the tide.
“You were the best thing I ever made.” The words tore out of Alaric between ragged breaths. “Better than any knight I trained.” He parried, barely, stumbling back another step. “And you never understood?—”
A slash opened a line across his forearm. He hissed in pain.
“—that’s why I had to destroy you.” His voice cracked, something raw bleeding through the aristocratic polish. “Because you weren’t supposed to be better than me. Greywatch was supposed to be mine.”
For just a moment, Gareth’s rhythm faltered. Then his sword moved faster. The sequence was too quick to follow—a feint, a parry, a step that put him inside Alaric’s guard. His elbow caught his enemy’s chin, snapping his head back. His foot hooked behind Alaric’s ankle. And then Alaric was on the ground, hissword clattering across the stones, and Gareth’s blade was at his throat.
Silence descended over the courtyard. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Alaric lay in the dirt, his fine clothes stained with dust and sweat, and for the first time since Elodie had met him, he looked small. Not afraid—not exactly. Just... diminished. A man who’d built his whole life on jealousy and found it wasn’t enough.
“Go ahead,” he rasped. “Finish it. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Kill me. Prove you’re the monster everyone says you are.”
Gareth’s sword hand trembled. Not with weakness—with restraint. With the effort of holding back three years of fury, of denying the darkness that demanded blood.
“Gareth.” Elodie’s voice cut through the tension. She stepped forward despite Miles’ grab for her arm. “Gareth, look at me.”
His eyes—slate-gray and hard as winter—flicked to her. Something lurked beneath the cold rage. Question. Uncertainty.
“You already won,” she said. “You survived, built something good. You loved—” Her voice cracked, but she pushed on. “Don’t let him take that from you.”
For a long moment, Gareth didn’t move. His sword stayed at Alaric’s throat, his body coiled with deadly tension. Then Alaric moved. A hidden blade, a slim dagger drawn from his boot while everyone watched his face, slashed upward toward Gareth’s exposed side. His reaction was pure instinct. He twisted, brought his sword down, and?—
The sound was awful. Wet and final. Alaric’s eyes went wide. He looked down at the blade embedded in his chest, then up at Gareth, and his lips twisted in something that might have been a smile or a grimace.
“Always... too soft,” he wheezed. “I knew you wouldn’t do it, so I made you...”
His head fell back against the stones. His body shuddered once, twice, and then went still. The silence that followed was absolute. Elodie stared at Alaric’s body, at the blood spreading across the courtyard stones, and felt nothing. No triumph. No horror. Just a vast, exhausted emptiness.
Gareth stood over his fallen enemy like a statue carved from grief and steel. His sword hung loosely at his side. His shoulders rose and fell with ragged breaths. And when he turned to look at Elodie, his eyes were wet. She didn’t remember crossing the space between them. One moment she was standing by Miles, and the next she was in Gareth’s arms, her face pressed against his leather jerkin, his heart pounding against her cheek.
His arms came around her so tightly she could barely breathe. She didn’t care, just wrapped herself around him and held on, and the world narrowed to the warmth of his body and the sound of his breathing and the solid, living reality of him.
He’s alive. We’re alive. We made it.
“My lord.” Miles’ voice, rough with emotion. “The keep is ours. What are your orders?”
Gareth released her reluctantly, his hands lingering on her shoulders, and turned to face his men. His fingers shaped signs with a steadiness that belied the tremor she’d felt in his arms.Secure the keep. Tend the wounded. Prisoners to be held until the crown decides their fate.He paused, then added.We ride for Greywatch at first light. Our people will want to know it’s over.
The men dispersed to follow orders. Around them, the courtyard filled with the controlled chaos of the aftermath—soldiers binding the wounded, servants emerging from hiding, the slow process of turning a battlefield back into a functioning keep.
Elodie reached for Gareth’s hand. His fingers intertwined with hers, squeezing once.
“You’re bleeding. Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. Signed back.Are you?
