“Enough,” I snapped, my voice cracking like a whip.
The nearest soldier shoved the Acolyte back with the butt of his spear. “Get away from him. Go.”
They scattered with hissing resentment, robes trailing like smoke.
“What in the hells was that about?” Astrid asked, brow furrowed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t like it.”
The cage door clanged shut. The lock snapped into place – and something flared beneath my shoulder blade. A sharp, sudden heat, gone as quickly as it came.
I exhaled, slow and steady, fighting the urge to reach back and touch it.
Instead, I turned back to Benni. “Make sure the troops are ready by the time I return. “She’ll burn him at the Feast, and she’ll want the next campaign on its feet before the smoke clears.”
He nodded. “I’ll see to it.”
I reached for his forearm, and he took mine. The clasp lingered, as it always did – too long to be just a soldier’s farewell, too short to be anything else.
“Like old times, eh?” he said, voice low.
There was a softness to it. It hung there for a breath, unspoken.
I was the first to let go. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
I swung up into the saddle, the leather cold under my hands. Astrid followed, cursing at her mount as she adjusted her reins. Daen, already waiting, gave a nod.
The cart rattled into motion behind us.
And we rode – away from ruin, away from blood, toward Irongate and whatever fire awaited there.
Chapter Six: Mathias
The square of Tirn’vahl was slick with salt and rain, the stones worn smooth by centuries of storms – and now by the press of a restless crowd, gathered shoulder to shoulder across the square. Mathias stood at the edges of the crowd, shoulders hunched against the cold, listening as voices rose and broke like waves against the crumbling walls. Fear was thick in the air, sharper even than the scent of the marshes beyond the city.
The gathering was little more than a desperate tangle of townsfolk, bundled in damp wool and patched cloaks, faces drawn and pale in the grey morning light. Old men muttered into their beards, mothers clutched their children close, and the few traders who had not already packed their carts for flight hawked what wares they could in low, urgent tones. Over it all, the sea wind moaned through the broken teeth of Tirn’vahl’s battlements, a sound too much like a dirge to ignore.
Mathias edged closer, weaving between shoulders and elbows, until he could see the raised platform where the Elders stood. There weresix of them, their faces as weathered as the stones underfoot, arguing in sharp bursts.
“- already taken Haedor!”
“We don’t know that for certain.”
“We do! Jaren’s boy came back two nights ago – said he saw the black banners from the cliffs!”
The black banners. Mathias’ fingers twitched against the hem of his sleeve. He had dreamt of those banners. Tattered and bleeding into the burning horizon, coming for them all.
A thickset man in a battered leather coat raised his hands for silence. “We can’t stand against her,” he growled. “If Haedor fell, if the Twin Cities go silent – we’re next.”
A ripple of dread passed through the crowd.
“We have the marshes,” someone protested weakly.
“The marshes won’t stop her,” the thickset man snapped. “Nothing stops the Sorcerer Queen.”
Mathias closed his eyes briefly, feeling the truth of those words settle like a stone in his gut. The Sorcerer Queen. They spoke her name rarely, and even now, the Elders skirted it like children afraid of calling a monster into the room.
