He looked past them to the yard, to the faces gathering in twos and threes.
“Most of them are alive because they were here when it happened,” he said. “If they’d been in Glaston…”
Viktor’s jaw clenched.
“Send them to me at Fort Sevrak. Every sword that can be spared. Together, we’ll make Zeporah bleed for every life she’s taken.”
Jaems held his stare, then gave a single sharp nod.
“They’re yours, Seraphim. All of them.”
He stepped back, sweeping an arm toward the open doors where the wind roared in off the sea.
Viktor’s mouth curved—not a smile, not quite.
“I’ll do more than speak.”
They followed Jaems outside, the salted wind tearing at cloaks and hair. Beyond the palisade, the garrison had gathered on the high cliff known as Ronan’s Bluff, its jagged edge jutting over the deep churn below.
Viktor moved through the ranks, the men parting without a word. Amerei stayed close at his side, Gabriel hovering behind like a sentinel.
They reached the bluff’s edge and Viktor simply stood, boots braced on stone, the wind tugging his dark hair loose from its tie.
Waves battered the cliff with a roar, spray leaping from jagged stone more than eighty feet below. The drop was sheer, slick with moss and shadow, the kind of fall that could dash a man to pieces. Viktor tipped his head toward a narrow ledge clinging treacherously near the bottom.
“I’d sneak out and jump from there,” he said to Amerei, voice edged with memory.
Then, louder, flat and daring:
“Today, I’ll jump from here.”
A ripple moved through the crowd—half disbelief, half dare, the sound swelling like surf against rock. Someone laughed too loud, then choked it back to silence. Even the wind seemed to pause, the sea’s roar falling to a hush as if the cliff itself waited.
Gabriel touched Amerei’s arm, guiding her into the press of bodies.
Viktor stood alone at the cliff’s edge, listening to the howl against the rock face. The wind tore at his coat, his voice cutting across the bluff.
“We stand here, the last of a people burned and broken by a queen who was never ours. She crowns herself in stolen gold. She sends dragons to carve the names of our dead into the land.”
A breath.
“But Aerdania is not hers. It’s the wild heart that beats in each of us. We endure. And we take back what’s ours.”
He spoke like stone breaking, each word a drumbeat carrying over the surf.
“A gift was placed in my hands—the Endowment, wrested from fire and storm—to seal the breach, to end the war, to bind the wound torn in our land…”
His gaze caught Amerei’s. In her ears, the sea stilled, the world narrowing to his voice.
“…and to win my queen the keys to her kingdom.”
The ranks stirred, a murmur swelling like the tide. Viktor stepped closer to the brink, the sea raging far below.
“And as for the usurper…”
His voice dropped to steel.
“I’ll drag her from her stolen throne and cast her into darkness so deep no light will ever find her.”
