“Why do you look ready to kill someone?” Vorrik asked, hiding behind Lyssara.
“Because we are going to kill someone.”
“Who?” Lyssara asked cautiously, nodding to Sable.
“At dawn, we end a kingdom.”
39
Esther
How to Identify the Princess: Step one—kidnap both girls. Step two—hope the right one doesn’t bite you.
The sharp, chemical bite of ammonia speared up Esther’s nose, ripping her from unconsciousness. Her lungs seized as shechoked on the pungent sting. The air tasted metallic and wet, thick with mold and old stone.
Esther blinked hard, trying to force clarity. Her head throbbed dully, as if stuffed with cotton and struck with a hammer. Every breath scraped as it entered, shallow and panicked.
The stone beneath her back was damp and unforgiving. Cold seeped into her spine, into her bones, settling with intimate persistence. Somewhere, water dripped steadily, each echoing plink measuring time she did not have.
She cataloged herself instinctively: bruised ribs, burning wrists, no obvious bleeding—Lucy alive.
Magic—
Esther reached inward and met nothing but resistance. The absence made her stomach lurch, like missing a step on a staircase.
Beside her, Lucy gagged violently, the sound bouncing off dripping brick.
“Finally awake?” a sultry voice purred, smooth as velvet stretched over a blade.
Esther forced her heavy head upward. Her vision swam, then sharpened on a breathtaking woman: chocolate-brown hair cascading like polished silk, a tight black dress hugging her figure, fabric gleaming like oil in torchlight.
But it was the grin—sharp, predatory—that made Esther’s stomach twist. She recoiled instinctively, but the movement jolted iron against bone.
Her wrists were shackled to the frigid, sweating brick wall; cold seeping into her skin.
Lucy snarled beside her, thrashing like a furious animal. The chains clattered so harshly that Esther’s teeth ached. Lucy’s wrists were already red and swollen.
“Such crude behavior,” the woman laughed. “I am Princess Zaria of Draewyn.”
A chill slid down Esther’s spine. Her heartbeat stuttered—not for herself, but for Lucy, for Valedara, for every refugee who needed her alive.
She tried to summon magic—just a spark—but the chamber swallowed it whole. The runes carved into the stone hummed, pulling the magic from her like a leech. Esther gasped, as if breathing through cloth while someone pressed against her chest.
The markings crawled along the walls in deliberate patterns, etched deep enough to look ancient—and maintained. Someone had re-cut them recently. The lines glimmered faintly as they drained her magic with methodical hunger.
Esther had seen wards like these once before, in a sealed wing of the Valedaran archives. Designed not to kill, the text had said. Designed to contain.
That knowledge chilled her far more than the chains.
“What do you want with us?” she growled, forcing steel into her voice.
The heavy door groaned open, cold air swirling in. Hinges screamed like something dying, scraping down her spine.
“Your Majesty,” Zaria said, bowing. “I present to you the princess of Valedara.”
Esther’s breath hitched.
The man who entered carried authority like poison—thick, suffocating. His boots thudded with deliberate weight, each strike vibrating through her chains.
