A pause – longer than a heartbeat, shorter than a breath, but still somehow it felt like it was never going to end. The General tilted her head, studying him as if she were weighing his words. Then, with the same care one might use to trace the outline of something precious, she let her fingers run along his arm, the one still resting at her shoulder, until they reached the crook of his elbow, and there, she eased herself in, closing the space between them.
He felt her breath at his neck, her shape warm and full despite the cold water, and let his arms come around her – not to claim or contain, but to meet her where she’d come, holding her not as something fragile, but as something treasured, something that had shed a weight never meant for them to carry.
She stirred against his chest when a voice called from the shore, loud enough to echo over the sound of the seagulls. Maeve’s voice, a blend of reprimand and concern, cut through the air. “You’ll freeze your bloody bones off if you don’t get out of there soon.”
Without quite being able to help himself, Mathias let out a shallow laugh, and he could feel the General meeting it against him.
“We should go.”
“We should.” She drew back from him, then struck out toward the shore, her strokes swift and clean, cutting through the water with practised ease. Mathias lingered only a moment, watching the wake she left before following – slower, less graceful, a grin tugging at hismouth as he realised how much better a swimmer she was than he, a seaside lad.
By the time he reached the shore, Maeve had already bundled Ara into a blanket and sent her up the path and now stood waiting with arms folded and a face arranged into its finest scold.
“And just what in the blazing hells do you think you’re doing,” she demanded, “in the water, in your birthday suit, with the last living descendant of the Sisterhood?” She scoffed, already tugging a blanket around his dripping shoulders. “You daft, reckless boy.”
Mathias let himself be chided, the warmth of the blanket no match for the burn still low in his chest. “It was her idea,” he offered, teeth clicking as the wind needled at his wet skin. But Maeve only rolled her eyes and thwacked his arm with the edge of the fabric before turning to follow Ara’s retreating shape.
They walked the path back in silence, the General just ahead, her figure hunched slightly under the wool, hair dark with seawater. It wasn’t until they reached the crooked doorway of the old temple that Mathias paused, letting Ara step through first. He waited until she had vanished into the warmth and shadow, the door closing behind her with the soft clatter of wood against stone.
Maeve turned, halfway through unpinning her shawl, and caught the look on his face. “Well?” she said, but not unkindly. “You’ve had that look since before you set foot in the water. Out with it, boy, before it burns a hole clean through you.”
He didn’t speak right away. Just stood there a moment longer, watching the sea where it bruised itself against the rocks below, white spray catching the wind. When he finally found his voice, it came quiet and low, the kind of tone that doesn’t ask to be heard by anyone but the one it’s meant for. “I never told you what I saw the first time the Sight took me.”
Maeve’s expression shifted. Gone was the bark and the bluster. Shestepped closer, her shawl clutched in one hand, as if bracing herself not for what she feared, but for what she already knew.
“I thought the world would end inside me. And maybe it did.” He swallowed. “Flame everywhere. My chest”—he glanced down at it, almost absently—“torn open. Blood boiling in the heat.”
Maeve’s face held steady, but her knuckles whitened where they gripped the blanket.
“She was there,” Mathias went on. “Not causing it. But walking through it. Lit by it, maybe even made from it. And I knew—” He stopped for a beat, the words caught not out of fear but from the weight of saying them aloud for the first time. “—I knew my death would come with her rising. That whatever I was meant for ends the moment she becomes who she’s meant to be.”
Maeve’s hands, busy with the folds of her cloak, fell still. She closed her eyes once, like someone standing in a doorway as a storm gathers, knowing there’s no outrunning it. When she looked at him again, her gaze was old with knowing and bright with unshed tears, and for a moment she wasn’t a guide or a guardian or a wise old aunt—just a woman watching someone she loved walk toward the fire.
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “Not of the ending. But I don’t want it to catch you off guard. Not again. Not like with Signe.” He reached out, briefly, fingers brushing the back of her hand. “You deserved a goodbye then. You deserve one now.”
Her eyes closed for just a breath, a flicker of pain that passed like a shadow. And when she opened them again, they shone not with sorrow, but with something steadier – forged in the long years of losing and loving anyway.
“Then promise me,” she said, voice rough with something old and maternal and sharp-edged. “When the time comes, you’ll give me that.”
He nodded, once, and meant it. “When it’s time.”
Chapter Twenty-Six: Frejara
The smell of broth curled through the air, rich with thyme and sea salt and something vaguely bitter I couldn’t place. Maeve stirred the pot like it had wronged her, wooden spoon clutched tight in her fist as she muttered beneath her breath about the idiocy of grown men wading into the tide like they didn’t know any better. The fire crackled low between us, sending up soft sparks that danced in the shadows. I sat wrapped in an old wool cloak, my legs tucked beneath me, the flames chasing off the worst of the cold yet leaving a chill that had nothing to do with the sea. Across from me, Mathias crouched close to the hearthstone, elbows on knees, hair still wet and clinging to his brow in flaxen waves. Our eyes met across the flickering light, and something in my chest stirred, slow and steady as the early tide pressing against the shore.
Maeve’s gaze shifted, flicking from him to me and back again. She gave a long, suffering sigh, a sound that was half-theatre and half-earned. Reaching up, she swiped at the corner of her eye with the back of one sleeve, as if it were smoke stinging her and not whatever shesaw between us. But she didn’t say a word and just returned to stirring her pot as if the broth had grown suddenly unruly—its rhythm folding into the crackle of fire and the sigh of wind threading through the gaps overhead.
I kept my hands tucked in the wool gathered to my lap, though the warmth could not reach what lived beneath the skin – the kind that settled inward, slow and unrelenting, a chill born not of what I had shed, but of what I had finally seen. Not just the shape of the lies, but their root, and the depth to which they reached.
I had spent a lifetime wrestling shadows cast by the woman I had called my mother. Now, with the spell of her treachery broken and her cruelty laid bare, what weighed beneath my ribs was no longer only vengeance. There was grief, and there was rage, but they no longer pulled in opposite directions. They circled now, wary and watching, drawn toward a centre I had only just begun to see.
I might have carved a path back to her on rage alone, letting the weight of what she’d taken drive the blade home. But this was something else – a purpose shaped not by what had been done to me, but by what might yet be done to everything and everyone else. Malice and purpose had blurred until all that remained was the wreckage in her wake: the betrayals against me, the long red thread of slaughtered Sisters, and the power torn from the bones of those who once guarded it. And in doing so, unleashed something into the world that could not be called back.
The fire stirred softly, sending a thin ribbon of smoke curling upward. My gaze lifted, drawn by instinct more than thought, and I found Mathias’ eyes still on me, the flecks of flame reflected in them like gold dust. Something shifted in my chest, slow and almost imperceptible, like frost about to thaw. I did not know what to do with it, only that it was different from the weight I’d grown used to carrying.
Across the flames, something settled between us, as if the tide hadturned without either of us noticing until it swept us with it. I felt it in the catch of my breath, in the way my fingers curled tighter beneath the wool. And for the first time in longer than I could measure, I was not a weapon left too long in the forge or a title etched into a banner. I was someone still capable of being seen – not for what I had done or lost, but simply for sitting there by the fire, my hair still damp from the sea, salt still clinging to my throat.
But even as the warmth of his gaze lingered, and some part of me shifted toward something almost tender, the weight returned, settling over me like night drawing in, slow and certain. I could not stay here by the fire. I was not built for peace, nor meant for grace. I had been carved by blood and battle and the sharp bite of steel, and though I had tried to forget it, tried to wear the sea like a salve over old wounds, that truth had never left me.
