Viktor stopped.
It was her—the child from the monastery tent, her burns healed. Wide-eyed, hair tangled from sleep, her aunt behind with a shawl pulled tight.
“You’re leaving?” she asked, her little voice breaking.
Viktor crouched to meet her gaze. “I have to. For a little while.”
Her lips quivered. “Don’t go.”
Her eyes brimmed as tears slipped free, and the sight cracked something deep inside him.He opened his arms, and she rushed into them, clinging fiercely around his neck.
“I’ll come back,” he promised—words a soldier should never give, yet couldn’t hold back. “And when I do, I’ll visit you at the bakery. You’ll show me how to knead bread—the proper way?”
She nodded, a shy smile breaking through.
“Good,” he said with a low laugh. “I’m a terrible cook. My wife just doesn’t know it yet.”
He glanced at Amerei, her hands pressed to her heart.
The aunt stepped forward, taking the girl’s hand, meeting Viktor’s eyes with quiet gratitude.
He rose, the stone cold against his chest, the weight of the march settling across his shoulders.
And this time, he did not look back.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Stone and Sea
They called him Seraphim now,
in the way soldiers speak a name when it’s already halfway to legend.
Amerei felt it in the way the hall shifted as he strode through, each bootfall echoing like a drumbeat on the planks, shoulders squared beneath more than armor. The air seemed to tilt around him, shadow stretching long, and men who had once stared down dragonfire straightened as though his presence alone could brace their spines.
The High-Captain of Fort Windmere stepped forward from the gathered ranks, his weatherworn face lit with something between pride and defiance.
“Jaems.” Viktor clasped his arm in a soldier’s grip, firm and unflinching.
Jaems’s mouth bent into a grin. “Elváliev’s colors suit you, Tory.”
Viktor’s reply was clipped. “Soon, I’ll wear Casqadia’s.”
He drew Amerei to his side. “Our queen. My wife.”
Jaems bowed. A grin appeared when he rose.
“I’m beginning to regret letting you run as a scout, Ruakite.”
“Never.” Viktor lifted Amerei’s hand and brushed his lips over her skin.
“It led me to her.”
Jaems nodded. “Then I only regret losing one of my best captains.” His smirk carried salt and smoke. “That bastard Storne didn’t even ask. Just sent the order.”
“Sounds like Father,” Amerei said with a soft laugh.
Jaems’s eyes crinkled. “Then let’s make his orders worth the ink.”
