“Captain, please. I’ve seen your flags raised over smoking homes. I’ve seen the bodies your Queen’s justice leaves behind. Don’t ask a man to grow a conscience in a graveyard you built.”
For a moment, there was no sound but the wind threading through the camp, tugging at cloaks and canvas. Benni didn’t answer. His jaw worked once, then stilled, and something in his chest closed like a fist.
“Get him out of here,” he said quietly. “Give him food. Or whatever he wants. Let him go.”
No one moved at first – then Daen gave the faintest nod, a silent gesture to the scout nearest the mule. The merchant did not linger. He had delivered what he came to deliver, and now he would disappear back into the dust and the dark, vanishing like all things that slipped through cracks left too long unguarded.
When the sound of hooves faded and the stillness returned, Benni remained where he was, hands slack at his sides, eyes fixed on the firelight flickering over the ridgeline as though it might conjure something – anything – that could tell him what to do next.
“She’s alive,” Astrid said, uncharacteristically soft.
“Yes,” Benni answered, and the word sounded more like a sentence than a realisation. “Alive. But we don’t know where. And we don’t know who has her.”
“What about the Queen? Do we report to her?”
The question came hesitant, almost reluctant. But it had to be asked.
Benni shook his head. “No.”
Astrid tilted her head. “You’re sure?”
“If we tell her Ara is missing, she’ll assume the worst. And she’ll burn the cities down just to make an example of the ashes.” His voice was flat, but there was something raw beneath it, something that cut deep. “Even if Ara’s still there. Even if she’s alive. Even if there’s a chance. You know what she’d do.”
They all did.
No one spoke after that, not for a long time. The night deepened, stretching wide over the camp like a mouth held just slightly open. Somewhere down by the river, a horse whinnied, restless. A fire cracked. The sound of metal striking stone echoed faintly from the weapons tent, a soldier sharpening a blade he might never need.
“She would burn it all,” Benni said at last. “Not to rescue her. Not even for vengeance. But because it would be seen as weakness if she didn’t.”
He turned to look at them then – Astrid, whose hands were balled into fists at her sides, and Daen, silent as always but with that same shadow behind his eyes that had lived there as long as they’d known him.
“I won’t hand her that excuse,” he said. “Not unless there’s no other choice.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We wait for word. We scour the roads. We pull every whisper from every passing merchant and watchman and gods-damned drunk in a tavern until we find out where they took her.”
“And if we don’t?”
Benni’s voice was sharp. Not loud, not reckless. Just steady, burning with a fury that threatened to break loose. “Then we burn it down ourselves. But only if we have to.”
And with that, he turned back toward the camp, the weight of command settling hard across his shoulders. This was no longer just a war, no longer just a campaign. This was personal – and personalthings had a way of tearing kingdoms apart.
Later, when the camp had settled into a strange, uneasy stillness, Benni found himself alone beneath the crooked rise just beyond the ridge. The firelight from the tents flickered faintly behind him, casting long shadows up the slope. His hands were braced on his knees, breath coming slow, like it had to be coaxed in and out of his chest.
He had known Ara for most of his life. First as a sharp-edged girl with no patience for fools, then as a fellow grunt in the barracks, a sparring partner and a drinking companion. And for a heartbeat, something more—brief, fragile, like a flame trembling at the end of its wick. It hadn’t lasted, not because it burned out, but because she had snuffed it, clean and without cruelty, pinching it out before it had a fair chance to catch.
She had never explained why. No grand falling out, no bitter words, no betrayal to mark the wound – just a quiet withdrawal, like a tide slipping back before the shore noticed it was gone. One day they were close enough to share stolen moments under the eaves of the barracks, to feel the shape of each other. And the next, she had stepped back behind the lines – still near, but never like that again.
He hadn’t asked. Not because he didn’t care, but because he’d understood—on some level deeper than he could explain with words—that whatever door had shut in her was not one he had the right to knock on. There had been something brittle in her back then, something that hummed with tension even when she smiled. And Benni, for all his sharp tongue and blunted fists, had known how to see that. He had seen it and chosen not to press.
And yet, in all the years that followed, she never left his side. Whatever line she’d drawn between them had not been a wall but a boundary – firm but never cold. Their friendship, once forged in firelight and skirmishes, had held through every campaign, every long night in foreign tents, every moment when command pressed so heavyit bent the spine. It had held through her rise and through his. Through victories they did not feel like celebrating and losses that never stopped aching.
They had argued, of course – about tactics, about politics, about the old guard and the new. But never about each other. Not once had she made him feel lesser. Not once had she wielded her titles like a weapon. She trusted him in a way that had nothing to do with rank or camaraderie – it was something stronger than either, something that ran deeper. And he trusted her in return.
He had loved her in many ways, and not all of them had names. But the one that endured – the one that had shaped the man he became – was the kind that does not demand, does not break, does not look backward in longing. It was steadier than that. Built not from desire, but from a covenant of scars – on their skin and in their hearts. A knowing that could only be forged when you had bled for someone, and they had bled for you.
She was his General. His friend. His guidepost on the darkest roads. And if she needed him now – wherever she was – he would not fail her.
