Page 13 of Fallen Nocturne

It’s not what an enemy should do. If the positions were reversed, no fae lord would have done the same.

The wind shifts, bringing the scent of cooking fires from the valley below where my squadron has made camp. They’re adjusting to exile better than I expected. But I can feel their unease. We’re warriors without a war, soldiers without a nation. Everything we’ve known has been stripped away because we refused one order from the fucking witch.

My warriors refused to slaughter civilians. Members of other legions did the same once the villages were taken and the fighting was done.

Was that truly such a crime that it warranted our execution?

The Fae King I thought I knew would have said no. Eirik was hard but fair, brutal when necessary but never wasteful. The order to kill elven civilians and the order for our deaths do not align with the king who pulled a devil-marked child from a pyre.

Unless Eirik is no longer the one making these decisions.

My thoughts turn to his mistress. Every courtier calls her beautiful. I call her what she is, a serpent dressed in silk. She appeared at court five years ago, and since then, Eirik’s decisions have become increasingly erratic.

The enchantress personally led the attempt on my life. She turned our own wing brothers against us.

Did Eirik know? When she sent those three riders to kill me mid-battle, was it at his command or on her own initiative?

Then there is Finnbheara, my closest friend among the nobility and the only prince who argued against the hasty attack on Aelfheim. Where does he stand in all of this? At the last war council, he kept glancing toward his father as though he were watching a stranger wearing the king’s face. If anyone at court has noticed what Eirik is becoming, it will be him.

I need answers. But I’m in exile, branded a traitor.

Every time I close my eyes, I see Rhianelle’s face. Her lilac eyes, steady and unafraid, even standing in a field of wyverns that could swallow her whole.

She doesn’t remember her husband, the vampire. A shameful part of me is relieved. The bond is difficult enough to bear without knowing she is consciously in love with another. I see how she touches that ring on her finger sometimes, unconsciously, like her body remembers what her mind doesn’t. She loves him still, even if she can’t recall why.

I am the enemy commander Blight has chosen for her. I don’t know why the Unyieldings concern themselves with Rhianelle’s fate. It’s fucking terrifying.

“You’re brooding again.”

I don’t turn when Kieran approaches. The veteran has an uncanny ability to move silently despite his size.

“I’m keeping watch,” I reply.

“From here? You can barely see our camp, let alone any approaching threats.” He moves to stand beside me, his weathered face thoughtful. “You’re thinking about her.”

Everyone in the squadron can sense the thread of fate that binds me to Rhianelle. They know what it means, the pull it creates.

“I’m thinking about many things,” I say carefully.

“But mostly her.” Kieran pulls out a flask, takes a swig, offers it to me. Fae wine, probably the last we’ll have for a long while. “I’ve seen mate bonds before, Commander. They’re impossible to ignore.”

“This one needs to be ignored.” I take a drink, letting the wine burn down my throat.

Kieran is quiet for a moment. “She reminds me of what the Fae Royal Bloodline was like before the blood feuds. When honor meant something more than victory.”

What Rhianelle did today was like something out of the ancient tales, the ones my mother used to tell me, before she abandoned me to the streets rather than endure the shame of keeping her devil-marked child.

“It doesn’t matter what she is,” I say finally. “I owe everything to King Eirik. That debt doesn’t disappear because of a mate bond.”

“Even if he ordered your death?” Kieran asks quietly.

I say nothing. The question settles between us. I have no answer that does not feel like a betrayal, either of my king or of myself.

“Get some rest,” I tell Kieran. “Tomorrow we need to establish patrol routes and hunting schedules.”

He studies me for a moment longer, then nods. “Don’t stay up here all night, Commander.”

His footsteps fade down the slope, leaving me alone with the wind and the distant glow of Völundr. I remain on the outcropping, turning Kieran’s question over in my mind. I think about my centuries of loyalty and one thread of gold that unravels all of it.