Astrid had come from nobility – the youngest of six, too spirited and sharp-tongued for the placid life expected of a daughter like her. Marriage and manners were never her strengths – nor her interests – and when her temper flared one time too many, her family seized the chance to send her to the barracks, cloaking their shame in the guise of loyalty to the Queen. What was meant to be punishment had instead become purpose. Astrid had taken to soldiering with the joy of someone finally allowed to be themselves. By the time Benni and I arrived, she had already served a year, and the grizzled instructors barked her name with something that almost sounded like respect.
A year ahead of us in service, Astrid had grown up with sisters and a mother who had taught her what womanhood would bring long before her family cast her aside. So, when the changes came for me - the bleeding, the tenderness, the quiet shifts in strength that no training drill prepared you for - she met them without fuss. No sympathy, no spectacle. Just a rag and saltwater, a nod, and a joke sharp enough to cut through discomfort. She never treated it like weakness. And after that, neither did I. And from then on, there was an ease between us - not just friendship, not only loyalty, but something harder-won, hammered out in battle and tempered by trust.
“General,” she said, teeth flashing in the cold. “About time. Thought maybe you’d decided to let the Queen come fetch her own prisoner.”
“You know I live to disappoint,” I replied dryly.
“Not me, you don’t,” she shot back, pushing off the stone to clasp my forearm. Her grip was strong and warm. “Let’s hope this one doesn’t drop dead halfway to Irongate. The old man looked like he’d collapse under a strong wind.”
Daen said nothing but gave me a curt nod as he approached, already mounted. Tall, broad-shouldered and quiet, he held the reins loosely, his posture at ease. His cloak hung neatly over his armour, his bow strapped across his back. He always looked like he’d been carved fromstone and only barely tolerated the business of being present.
Where Astrid moved like fire and Benni like wind, Daen was something else entirely – still, unshifting, a man of very few words. He had been that way for as long as I’d known him. Blonde hair, kept short and practical, and eyes the colour of a winter sky – not the gentle kind, but the one that came before the storm. He spoke little, but when he did, it was never wasted. His words carried weight. Not because he demanded it, but because he thought before he let them slip from his lips.
He came from a line of soldiers – his mother had worn the same colours we did now, a commander of no small renown before she fell in battle when Daen was just a child. No one ever spoke of her, not even in hushed reverence. I think he carried her name like a blade in his chest, sharp and buried deep. Whatever softness he’d once had was locked behind a face that rarely shifted and a voice that only surfaced when silence had said all it could.
But he was kind. Not in the ways people often noticed, and certainly not in ways he’d admit to. A second cloak quietly offered in cold weather. His rations halved and passed on without a word. The shield raised before a blow landed. You had to look closely to see it – and even then, only if you already knew where to look.
He held no love for the Queen or her cause. The war meant nothing to him beyond its necessity. He fought because this was who he was now. Because we were here, and he had nowhere else to be. I think, if the world burned, he would stand in the ashes beside us – not for glory or vengeance, but because he’d chosen us. And that choice, for Daen, was all he had. I had come to understand over the years we had fought side by side, that it was more than enough for him.
I returned the nod. “Daen. You’re looking cheerful.”
He raised a brow, and Astrid smirked. “He’s been at it all morning, General. We were thinking of using him as torture for the old man ifhe gives us any trouble, nagging his ear off and all that.”
Daen rolled his eyes and tilted his chin toward the far side of the camp, where Benni was crouched beside a saddlebag-laden horse, inspecting something with more focus than was strictly necessary.
Benni was tightening the girth of my horse’s saddle when I reached him, brushing a bit of soot from the leather. He didn’t look up right away. When he did, his face was unreadable.
“The roads will be clear,” he said. “We swept ahead last night. But I don’t want you riding through Ferrowood. Some of the scouts said they saw lights. No torches. Just… lights. Moving between the trees against the wind, they said. Too many places to vanish in there, too many eyes that don’t belong to us. Take the river route instead.”
“That’ll add a day.”
“And avoid an ambush. You’ll be slower pulling a cart and a company behind you.”
I gave a short nod. “Fair.”
He patted the side of the horse once and stepped back. “I’ve assigned Astrid and Daen. Thought you could use someone who can still swing a sword without complaining.”
“I’m touched.”
Benni gave a half-smile. “You should be. They’d follow you into the flames, even if they grumble the whole way. Well, Astrid would. Daen probably wouldn’t say a word. But you’d know.”
We stood in silence for a moment, the kind that didn’t ask to be filled. Around us, the camp continued its slow, inevitable march toward readiness – swords buckled, mounts snorted, orders shouted low between tents.
I ran my palm once more along the saddle, checking the straps more out of habit than necessity. “What will you do with the spoils of war?” I asked. He knew what I meant. We both did. Not gold. Not jewels. The true power lay in the survivors. The broken, the bruised, the onesstill breathing when the drums went silent. Those were the Queen’s favourite currency.
Benni exhaled a long breath through his nose. “What we always do,” he said. “Those of age will get the Queen’s Choice: the ranks or the chains. The rest…” he glanced towards the ruined city, its broken sprawl still half-lost in the haze of old smoke, “they’ll rebuild. Or what’s left of them will. That city’s not going to coin itself back into the treasury.”
“Always the same choice,” I sighed. “Bleed for the crown or break for it.”
“She makes it easy.”
“You make it look easy,” I said, gentler this time. “You’ll get more of them to join than I ever could. You always do.”
Benni glanced at me, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That’s just because I smile more and stab less.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “You just smile while you stab.”
He chuckled. “Well, you’re not wrong.”
