The flight back to Ashbluff could not have felt more different than the way I had left. When I departed, it had been alone, burdened by oath and grim purpose. Now I returned with Grand Marshal Meilyn Potan at my side—a living emblem of what had been accomplished. Her presence was not symbolic alone. To every soldier, noble, and commoner of the western frontier, it would mean one thing: the Axe King was gone.
Meilyn flew with the quiet poise of someone shaped by decades of aerial combat. Every line of her body was economical, balanced, measured. Her navy-blue hair streamed in the wind behind her, but her golden eyes never left the horizon where the spires of the capital were slowly emerging. She had insisted on joining me to deliver the news herself. Reports could be forged, rumors twisted, but the word of the Grand Marshal of the frontier could not be questioned.
