Mowgara clicked her tongue, frustrated, and muttered, “Flames and fire and ashes” in a low voice, almost as if she had not intended to say the words out loud. A shiver went down my spine as I recognised those words as my own from when I first met Alaric.
I couldn’t explain why I held back how Alaric had hummed the song of Dragna’toch or why I didn’t tell her Alaric had said she was afraid of something. And in the next moment I couldn’t think at all. A sudden heat burned beneath my skin, sharp and insistent, and I winced despite myself, my hand flying instinctively to the hollow of my neck.
My Mother’s head snapped toward me at once, her eyes narrowing as if she could see straight through the cloth and into the bone.
“Show me,” she said, her voice low but not without concern. It was the kind of command that left no room for defiance. Sometimes, there were the odd occasions where she played the part of a mother, not a monarch. They unnerved me more than her constant cruelty.
She said nothing at first. But I heard her breathe in. Once. Slowly. She then raised her hand, and the Acolytes, ever present at the edges of her presence, drifted forward at her unspoken command.
“Boil the blackroot. The draught must be strong enough to numb the marrow.” Her voice was crisp as ever, devoid of care, but I knew that concoction. She had brewed it for me many times before – when the mark had turned restless in my youth, when it blistered during the rites I never mastered, or when it flared during the annual Feasts. No other hand had ever eased its fury. Only hers could quiet it, even if only for a time.
She had always acted as though it were a dull inconvenience – like picking rot from old rope. She called it duty, but I suspected it was the closest she ever came to offering even a trace of tenderness.
But the moment passed, like all things with her—noticed, controlled, and then dismissed.
“See to your rest. You look like the bottom of a boot.”
I swallowed the urge to roll my eyes, knowing it would only win me more time in my mother’s suffocating company. The mark still burned, but I straightened and walked away from her – each step slow, deliberate, and heavy with the knowledge she could stop me. She did not.
Chapter Ten: Frejara
The corridors of Irongate whispered behind me as I walked, my steps slow but purposeful. My quarters, tucked away in the northern side of the keep, shared none of the grandeur that dripped from every arch and gilded pillar of the Sorcerer Queen’s domain. I had chosen them that way – plain, practical, quiet. Far removed from the den of magic and politics.
The stone was older here, untouched by enchantment or vanity, holding to its chill with the stubbornness of something carved too deep to be warmed. The walls were bare save for a single iron sconce by the door and a pair of hooks where my travelling cloak now hung, still dusted with the ash of Haedor. The bed was narrow, tucked into the curve of the outer wall, its wool blanket neatly folded, untouched since my last departure. A wooden chest sat beneath the window, its hinges slightly rusted, its lid bowed from use.
The campaign desk took up the far corner, scarred with nicks and wax stains. There were no maps laid out now – only a tarnished mirror, a stack of old letters I hadn’t yet burned, and my sword, its hilt restingagainst the edge like a waiting hand. The brazier had been lit in my absence. Someone, perhaps an Acolyte tasked with menial warmth, had left it smouldering low—just enough to keep the cold from turning my breath into mist.
And there, perched on the windowsill as if it had arrived mere moments before me, sat a raven.
It tilted its head, black eyes catching the firelight, and let out a single low croak – rough and hollow. We used to call them death-singers in the old days. First to circle the fallen, first to feast. Soldiers would weave their feathers into cloaks or bound them to their hilts, not in defiance but in hope – to fool death or greet it on familiar terms. It was an old superstition, of course. And though no one said it aloud, there was a strange comfort in their watching. To be seen, even by a bird drawn to endings, was better than being overlooked entirely. Better that than silence in the sky, where the gods no longer watched.
Benni, I thought immediately. Who else would send me a raven within hours of my return to the keep?
I approached slowly, and the bird gave another low caw before fluttering toward the rafters, leaving its burden behind. I opened the note with the carefulness of someone already half-certain what it would say.
The ink had smudged in places, words bleeding together like they’d been written mid-laugh. Or mid-drink.
“Ara, they’ve made me camp somewhere between a marsh and a privy. I’m not sure which smells worse. It’s a shithole. They’ve given me a tent with holes in the roof and a sergeant who thinks he’s a poet. I’ve already threatened to throw him in the river. And they sent us salted cod again. I suspect a plot. If I die of salt poisoning, burn the cooks at the next Feast.
Long live the Queen.
– B”
I read it twice. The tone was careless, absurd, and clearly drunk. ButI knew Benni too well to miss what he’d done. The mention of the marsh. The tent’s location. The Sergeant. All of it wrapped in jest, but precise enough to tell me exactly where they’d made camp. Any fool who intercepted it would dismiss it as the ramblings of a sentimental officer too deep in his cups… Which, of course, he was. Smiling, despite myself, I folded the note carefully and tucked it beneath discarded papers on the desk.
The faint lift Benni’s words had left me with hadn’t yet worn off when the knock came – though “knock” was too kind a word for the sound the Acolytes made. More a scrape, like bone dragged against stone. The door creaked open, and two Acolytes entered, robed and stooped, faces hidden behind tattered hoods. One carried a steaming bowl, its contents dark and reeking of boiled root, the smell turning the air thick, as if it were something I could drown in.
I didn’t turn to face them. In truth, I hoped if I pretended I didn’t see them, they would scurry away. But of course, they did not.
“I don’t want it,” I said then. The mark wasn’t burning like it had mere moments before, and whenever there was a chance to refuse my Mother without risking my life or the lives of those I cared for, I took it. Not only out of futile defiance, but the broth always left me feeling groggy, like I’d emptied several skins of wine the night before.
The Acolytes said nothing, but one lifted the ladle in its skeletal hand.
“I said no.”
Still, they approached, the ladle trembling slightly in the air, held with the reverence one might offer a chalice of sacred fire.
“If you try to feed me like a child,” I said, turning slowly, “I’ll leave you picking your teeth off the floor with broken fingers.”
