A woman bit a knight’s ear.
Lyssara blinked. “She just bit him.”
Sylva shrugged. “He deserved it.”
Sable cut down three guards in one smooth motion, clearing the path.
They reached the inner palace corridors, and the world shifted.
Draewyn’s palace had always been unnerving, even in peacetime. Its architecture favored towering arches and low-burning sconces, shadows stretching long over carved stone. The walls told stories—quite literally. Painted battles and etched victories shimmered faintly as magic pulsed beneath the surface, reacting to the chaos outside.
Every portrait’s eyes seemed to follow Nythir. Every step echoed like a judgment. Every breath tightened the knot inside his chest. The palace felt alive in the wrong way.
Every step echoed too long. Every torch burned too steadily, flames unnatural in their stillness. The walls drank sound, swallowing the clatter of boots until it felt as though the building itself was listening.
Nythir reached instinctively for Esther’s presence, meeting only the thinnest thread. It flickered weakly at the edge of his awareness, stretched thin and smothered by hostile magic.
Fear cut sharply and immediately through his chest.
She was here. And she was running out of time.
He sprinted faster.
The air changed as they neared the throne room. It grew colder, thinner, tinged with iron and magic—the kind that settled like a weight against the ribs. Nythir felt it before he saw anything.
Esther. Her magic. Faint. Strained. Calling to him like a candle sputtering in the wind.
“Faster,” he rasped, and the word scraped raw in his throat.
They rounded one final corner. A pair of heavy obsidian doors loomed, engraved with Draewyn’s ancient crest—a wyvern swallowing the sun. The castle’s wards pulsed over the doors like veins of light, reacting to the conflict inside.
Nythir didn’t slow. He slammed into the doors with silver magic bursting up his arms, forcing them open in a shock of sound—
—and the world narrowed to a pinpoint.
The throne room of Draewyn stretched wide and cold, all sharp edges and polished obsidian. Tall windows filtered dawn light into thin, icy shards. Banners hung from the ceiling—Draewyn’s black and crimson sigils, ceremonial and imposing, now torn and fluttering from the battle’s vibrations.
The floor had been polished to a mirror sheen ages ago, reflecting the chaos like a second world. The throne itself was carved from blackstone, massive and jagged like a mountain peak ripped from the earth.
But Nythir saw none of it clearly.
The world narrowed to a single, unbearable point.
Esther knelt on the stone like she belonged there—shoulders squared, chin lifted in defiance even as exhaustion carved hollows beneath her eyes. Blood streaked her temple. Her hands were bare. Trembling with no sparks.
Nythir’s vision blurred.
He remembered her laughing in the market. Her fingers warm in his. The way she had said his name like it anchored her to the world.
The distance between those moments and this one felt impossible. If he had been seconds later—
He shoved the thought away. Terror eclipsing rage. Not yet. Please, not yet.
A dagger pressed to the delicate line of her throat.
Nythir stopped so abruptly that Lyssara staggered behind him. His lungs strained, refusing to pull in air. Something hot and brutal cracked through his ribs, detonating across his chest.
He had imagined many ways this could have happened. He had feared worse. But nothing—not even the nightmares—prepared him for the sight of her on the ground, forced to kneel as if she were something less than divine.
