The sea wind tastes of iron and endings.
It slides across my lips with the salt, carrying the faint memory of blood. When I was small, this same wind smelled of pine and tar and the laughter of fishwives on the quay of Whitecliff harbour. It carried the promise of summer and the clang of the bronze bell calling men home to warm bread and warmer arms. My mother would stand on the western parapet with Lysenne in her arms, waving a green scarf until the ships were specks. My father would lift me onto his shoulders so I could see farther. Lior and Maika would race along the battlements, pretending to be knights riding to greet the returning fleet.
Now the wind tastes only of rust, and no one waits on the walls.
I am Kaelen of House Veal, second son of Count Aldric Veal, Lord of Whitecliff, Warden of the Western Reach, and sworn bannerman to the Aurelian Emperor.
Or I was.
They no longer speak the name Kaelen aloud in this house. When they must refer to me at all, they use titles that taste worse than poison:
the spare
the soft one
the shame that walks on two legs.
I have two brothers and one sister.
Lior, the eldest, twenty-two summers, heir to the seat, the sword, the name, and the future. Tall, golden-haired, born with a sword in his smile and the world already kneeling at his feet before he could walk. Even the servants call him "young lord" with pride in their voices.
Maika, nineteen, one year younger than me, my shadow since the cradle. Same dark hair, same storm-gray eyes, the same crooked laugh that used to echo through the corridors when we stole honey-cakes from the kitchens together and blamed the hounds. We learned to swim in the same cove, took our first cuts from the same master-at-arms, confessed our first terrors to each other under the same blanket during thunderstorms.
Lysenne, sixteen summers, all sharp elbows and frightened doe eyes, who still dares to whisper "Kael" when no one is listening, who leaves bread crusts outside my door like offerings to a ghost.
And then there is Elyra.
Lady Elyra of House Avelaine, daughter of our wealthiest bannerman, my betrothed since the day I turned fourteen and she twelve. Hair the colour of winter wheat after harvest, eyes the pale green of sea-glass washed smooth by storms. Voice soft enough to make a man forget winter existed. We were promised to each other in the great hall beneath banners of white and gold, with minstrels singing of eternal spring. I carved our initials inside the old watchtower where the gulls nest every year. I already pictured the children we would have: two boys with her smile, a girl with my stubborn chin and her mother's grace.
Hope is a slow blade.
It cuts deepest when you don't feel it going in.
It starts with small things.
A letter returned unopened, the wax seal of a gull unbroken.
A dance at the harvest feast where she suddenly has a turned ankle and cannot stand up with me.
Lior guiding her to the floor instead, his hand low on the small of her back, her laughter brighter than it ever was when she danced with me.
I tell myself: war changes people.
Lior has been campaigning in the north with Father's banners for nigh on two years, fighting the border lords who will not bend the knee. Men come back harder, colder. Elyra is simply being kind, trying to soothe a hero's homesickness when she visits the army with supply wagons.
I am gentle by nature. Second sons are born to yield. That is what they always told me. Lior will have the sword and the seat and the name. I will have the quiet marriage, the smaller keep on the cliff's edge, the children who will call me "my lord father" in soft voices. I was content with that. I was happy.
Maika notices first.
We are in the armoury, oiling practice blades the way we have since we were ten. He watches me fumble the whetstone with my left hand (always clumsy) and says, too casually:
"You've gone quiet, brother."
I shrug.
"Weddings make fools of us all."
He laughs, but his eyes do not join in. "Elyra is… radiant these days. Lior says the northern air agreed with her when she visited the army last spring to bring supplies and comfort the wounded."
My stomach knots like a rope hauled too tight, but I force a smile. Maika is my best friend. If there is poison in the cup, he will taste it first and warn me.
I never see the cup coming.
Three nights later he finds me in the library, poring over old maps of the estate I was promised as dowry (the one with the orchard that blooms white in spring). He brings a flagon of Father's best red, the one locked behind iron in the cellar, the one we swore we would open together on my wedding night. He fills my cup himself, smiling the same crooked smile we shared the night we first kissed kitchen girls behind the pantry.
"To your happiness, Kael," he says, raising his own cup.
I drink deep. The wine is rich, warm, perfect.
The room tilts. The hearth roars though no new logs have been added. My tongue turns thick as wool. The parchment swims before my eyes.
Maika catches me as I fall. His arms are gentle, almost loving.
"Easy, brother," he whispers against my ear. "Let the dark take you for a little while."
I wake on cold flagstones outside Elyra's chamber door.
My braies are unlaced. My hands stink of her rosewater perfume. My head is a cracked bell tolling inside my skull.
The corridor is full of torchlight and people.
Father stands at the forefront, face carved from winter granite.
Mother beside him, white as salt, hand pressed to her mouth as if to hold in a scream.
Lior in his best black velvet, face a mask of pity and triumph.
Elyra herself, wrapped only in a bedsheet, golden hair wild, face streaked with perfectly timed tears that catch the torchlight like diamonds.
And Maika, standing just behind her, hand resting protectively on her shoulder.
She does not look at me when she speaks.
"He forced the door," she says, voice trembling exactly enough to sound broken. "He was drunk. He tore my gown. He… he would not stop."
The word lands between us like a headsman's axe.
Rape.
I try to stand. My legs are water. Whatever Maika slipped into the wine still drags at my veins like chains.
"I would never—" My voice cracks like a child's. "Elyra, please—"
Father's hand silences me with a single raised finger.
"Take him to the courtyard," he says, calm as a judge pronouncing winter.
They drag me by the arms through corridors I have known since infancy. Servants I have shared bread with will not meet my eyes. Lysenne watches from the staircase, sixteen years old, fingers pressed so hard to her lips they leave white marks.
The courtyard is torch-lit though the sky is only just paling toward dawn. The entire household is assembled in perfect ranks: guards in mail, cooks still in flour-dusted aprons, stable boys clutching their caps, even the hounds, whining low at the smell of what is coming.
They force me to my knees on the old execution block (dark oak, still stained from the last poacher who stole a stag from Father's forest).
Father steps forward and reads the charges himself, parchment unfurling like a death banner. His voice never wavers.
"Kaelen of House Veal, second son, you stand accused of dishonour, of breaking guest-right, of the attempted violation of the Lady Elyra of House Avelaine, your betrothed. Conduct utterly unbecoming the blood of Veal."
He does not say my name again after that.
Evidence is presented with ceremonial care:
- My own dagger (missing for months) found beneath Elyra's bed.
- Bruises blooming on her pale wrists (the exact span of Lior's fingers; I see that even through the drug haze).
- A torn strip of my tunic clutched in her heroic fist.
I look to Maika. For one heartbeat our eyes lock. In that heartbeat I see the apology he will never voice, the guilt he will drown in wine for the rest of his life.
Then he looks away.
Father pronounces sentence with the same tone he once used to order new destriers from the south.
"The hand that sinned will be forfeit. The eye that looked with lust will be burned away. The cheek will bear the mark of the beast forever. And twenty lashes for every year you have drawn breath upon this earth."
He turns to old Anric, the stable master who taught me to ride my first pony, and says, "Begin."
Anric's hands shake so badly the hatchet nearly slips from his grip.
He is sixty-and-three, the man who set me on my first pony when I was four, who let me hide in the hayloft when Father's temper was high, who once gave me a sugar lump and said, "Gentle boys make the best knights, lad."
Now he cannot meet my eyes.
They bind my left arm (my sword arm) to the block with leather straps still warm from the forge. The same arm that held Elyra when she wept over a dead gull washed up on the rocks. The same arm that carved our initials in the watchtower stone while she laughed and kissed sawdust from my hair.
I start begging the moment the first strap bites my wrist.
"Father, please. I did not touch her. I swear by the Seven, by the Emperor, by my mother's life—"
Father's face does not change. He has heard oaths before.
Mother is sobbing now, a low animal keen that cuts deeper than any blade. Lysenne is trying to push through the ring of guards; two men hold her back. I see her mouth form my name again and again, but no sound comes out.
Lior stands beside Elyra, one arm around her sheet-draped shoulders like a protector. His other hand rests on the pommel of his sword (my sword, the one Father gave him when he turned seventeen). He does not look at me at all.
Maika stands three paces behind them, pale as milk, eyes fixed on the cobblestones as though they might open and swallow him.
Anric raises the hatchet.
The first blow is not clean.
The blade bites halfway through wrist and bone. There is a wet, grinding crunch like green wood splitting. Blood fountains, hot and bright, painting the block scarlet. My scream is not human; it is the sound a horse makes when its leg snaps in a ditch.
The world whites out.
When colour returns, my hand is lying palm-up on the block, fingers curled like a sleeping child. The Veal signet ring (my ring, the one Mother gave me on my naming day) glints stupidly in the torchlight. The stump pumps blood in perfect rhythm with my heart: thump, thump, thump.
They do not let me faint.
Someone I think it is the blacksmith's apprentice pours vinegar straight onto the raw meat. The pain is a sun exploding behind my eyes. I thrash so hard the straps cut to the bone.
Anric is weeping openly now, snot and tears running into his beard. He raises the hatchet again.
The second blow finishes the job.
The hand comes free with a soft, wet pop. It lands on the stones and twitches once, as though waving goodbye.
I stare at it.
That is my hand.
Those are the fingers that held Elyra's the first time she let me kiss her.
Those are the calluses from years of practice swords and pen-holding and gentle things.
I try to scream again, but my throat is raw meat.
Father nods to the blacksmith.
The brand is the Veal sigil a winged boar rampant, heated white-hot in the brazier until the iron glows like a captive star. Two guards seize my head, one on each side, fingers digging into my scalp hard enough to crack bone. They wrench my face to the left, exposing the right cheek.
I smell my own hair singeing before the iron touches skin.
The brand kisses flesh.
There is a sound like bacon dropped on hot stone. My right eye boils in its socket. The fluid inside bursts with a soft, obscene pop. The world ends in fire and the smell of my own cooking.
I feel the skin blister, split, blacken. I feel the sigil sink deep, branding not just flesh but bone. The pain is absolute. There is no thought, no prayer, no god only the sun pressed against my face.
When they pull the iron away, the courtyard is silent except for my mother's keening and the wet thump of my own heart trying to flee my chest.
They release my head. I sag forward, held upright only by the straps.
But the ritual is not finished.
They cut me loose from the block. My ruined arm flops uselessly, blood still pouring in rhythmic gushes. They strip my tunic with knives
no time for laces.
The cold dawn air kisses the fresh welts on my back from practice swords I took willingly only days ago.
They drag me to the whipping post in the centre of the courtyard (old, dark wood, scarred by generations of thieves and oathbreakers).
Iron manacles snap around my remaining wrist. They haul my arm above my head until my toes barely scrape the stones. The stump of my left arm hangs like a side of butchered meat, dripping steadily.
Father himself counts the lashes.
Twenty for every year I have disgraced them.
The first lash opens my back like a red smile.
The whip is knotted leather soaked in brine. Each knot finds a new place to bite. By the tenth I stop counting. By the fifteenth I stop feeling anything except the wet slap of my own blood hitting the stones.
At twenty my knees give out entirely. I hang by one wrist, the manacle cutting deep.
At forty the world narrows to the rhythm of the whip and the wet sound of my own breathing.
At sixty the skin of my back is hanging in ribbons. I can feel the cold air on raw muscle.
At eighty I am no longer screaming. I have no voice left.
At one hundred the whip pauses.
Father steps close enough that I smell the clove on his breath.
"This is mercy," he says quietly, for my ears alone.
"Death would be kinder, but the Frontier Legion will finish what weakness began."
The final twenty lashes are delivered slowly, deliberately, each one timed with the tolling of the chapel bell calling the household to morning prayer.
When the last stroke falls, they cut me down.
I collapse into the pool of my own blood. The cobblestones are warm and sticky beneath my cheek.
Father's boots stop inches from my face.
"You are no longer my son," he says.
"You are no longer of this house. At dawn you will be given to the levy. If you die there, no one will mourn. If you live…"
He pauses, almost gently.
"Do not come back."
They drag me away by the ankles. My ruined back scrapes across the stones, leaving a red trail like a bride's veil.
They throw me into the stables, onto filthy straw that sticks to the blood and the brand and the vinegar and the shame.
Old Garvin the huntsman finds me hours later, when the torches have burned low. He brings water and clean linen, but his hands shake too hard to bind the wounds. He weeps silently, tears cutting channels through the soot on his cheeks.
I do not weep anymore.
There is nothing left inside to make tears.
The stables smell of horse piss, wet straw, and old blood.
They flung me here like offal. The door slammed. The bar dropped. Darkness swallowed everything except pain.
I lie on my right side because my flayed back will not touch anything. The straw is soaked with decades of dung and now with me. Every breath drags more filth into the raw meat of my back. My ruined arm lies in front of me like something that once belonged to another man. The stump has stopped spurting; instead it oozes thick, dark blood that cools into black glue. Flies find it instantly. They crawl across the raw end, laying eggs already.
Time loses meaning.
Minutes or hours only pain marks the hours now.
The brand on my cheek throbs in perfect rhythm with my heart.
The boar's wings feel burned all the way into the bone. When I breathe, the charred skin splits and weeps clear fluid that stinks of cooked pork.
I try to count my heartbeats to stay sane.
One.
Two.
Three thousand and something.
I lose track when a rat begins to lick the blood from my fingers that are no longer there.
The stable door creaks open once.
A sliver of torchlight.
A small silhouette.
Lysenne.
She slips inside, closing the door behind her. She is only sixteen, barefoot, still in her nightgown, hair loose like a child. In her hands she carries a basin of water, clean linen, and a tiny pottery jar (Mother's salve for burns).
She kneels in the filth without hesitation.
"Kael," she whispers, and her voice cracks on the single syllable.
She sees the stump.
Sees the brand. Sees the ribbons of skin hanging from my back. A sound escapes her—half sob, half animal keen.
I try to speak. My tongue is swollen, my lips split. All that comes out is a croak.
She dips the linen in the water and begins to wash the stump. The touch is feather-light, but I still jerk and whimper like a whipped dog.
"I'm sorry," she keeps whispering.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry… .... forgive me"
She cleans the flies away. She spreads the salve it smells of lavender and honey, the same one Mother used when we fell out of apple trees as children.
The coolness is heaven and hell at once.
She works in silence for a long time. Then, so quietly I almost miss it:
"I saw Maika pour something into your cup."
The words are a blade between my ribs.
I stare at her with my one remaining eye. The socket that used to be an eye weeps blood and yellow fluid down my branded cheek.
Lysenne's tears fall onto my ruined arm. They sting the raw flesh.
"I was hiding behind the tapestry," she says. "I wanted to see you smile. You hadn't smiled in weeks. Then Maika came in with the wine and… he looked afraid, Kael. He kept looking over his shoulder. He tipped a little paper into your cup when you turned to the map. I thought it was a love charm. I thought he was helping you…"
Her voice breaks completely.
"I should have screamed. I should have run to Father. But I was afraid they would call me a liar too. I was afraid…"
She cannot finish.
She presses her forehead to my shoulder—the only place not bleeding—and sobs without sound, shoulders shaking so hard the basin tips and water runs red across the straw.
I want to comfort her.
I want to tell her it is not her fault.
But the pain is a living thing eating me from the inside, and all I can do is lie there while my little sister tries to wash the blood from a brother who is already dead.
Footsteps outside.
She stiffens. Kisses my forehead once—quick, desperate—and flees with the basin, leaving only the faint smell of lavender in a stable that stinks of death.
The door bars again.
I am alone.
The rats come back.
Night deepens. The torches outside burn low. Somewhere in the keep, the household is at feast—roast lamb, honeyed wine, music to celebrate Lior's safe return and Elyra's honour restored.
I hear laughter drift across the courtyard.
I wonder if Maika is laughing too.
I wonder if Elyra lets Lior kiss the bruises he put on her wrists.
I wonder if Mother is sitting at the high table with empty eyes, or if she is in the chapel on her knees begging the Seven Gods to forgive her for raising a monster.
I wonder why the straw beneath me is wet again, and realise I am crying after all—only the tears come from the burned socket now, thick and bloody.
The chapel bell tolls midnight.
Old Garvin the huntsman comes next.
He is seventy if he is a day, face like cracked leather, the man who taught me to track deer and to set snares and to be kind to wounded things. He brings a wineskin and a heel of black bread.
He kneels, unafraid of the blood.
"Drink, lad," he says, voice rough as gravel.
I cannot lift my head. He puts the skin to my lips. The wine is cheap and sour, but it is the first kindness I have tasted since waking.
He tears the bread and feeds me like a child. I chew and swallow around the swelling in my throat.
When the skin is half-empty he sits back on his heels.
"I was there when you were born," he says quietly.
"Held your mother's hand while the midwife worked. You came out quiet.
Never cried.
Just looked at the world with those big gray eyes like you already knew it would hurt you one day."
He is silent a long time.
"I hung the man who poached your father's deer last spring," he says. "Took his hands clean. He screamed less than you."
He reaches out and touches the brand on my cheek with one calloused finger, gentle as a father.
"This is wrong," he whispers.
"This is evil."
Then he is gone, taking the empty wineskin and the torchlight with him.
The darkness returns thicker than before.
I sleep or faint—there is no difference now.
I dream of the watchtower.
Elyra is there, hair loose in the wind, laughing as I carve our initials. She kisses the sawdust from my lips and says, "Forever, Kael. You and me."
I wake to the taste of blood in my mouth. I have bitten my tongue in my sleep.
The chapel bell tolls again—three in the morning.
The door opens a third time.
This time it is Maika.
He carries no torch. Moonlight from the high window paints him silver and black. He is still in his feast clothes—black velvet, silver buttons, the new cloak Lior brought back from the war. He smells of roast meat and spiced wine and her rosewater perfume.
He stands over me for a long time.
I cannot see his face clearly, but I hear his breathing—shallow, quick, like a man who has run far.
"Kael," he says at last.
My name in his mouth is a blade.
I say nothing. I have no voice left.
He kneels. The velvet brushes the bloody straw.
"I didn't want this," he whispers. "You have to believe me. It was only supposed to make you sleep. Lior said… Lior said if you were found outside her door, drunk and helpless, Father would break the betrothal quietly. Send you to a monastery in the south. Not… not this."
His voice cracks.
"I measured the dose myself. It wasn't supposed to hurt you."
He reaches out as though to touch me, then pulls back when he sees the ruin of my arm.
"I loved you," he says, and it sounds like a confession and a curse.
"You were always the better one. The gentle one. The one she was supposed to choose."
He laughs then—a wet, broken sound.
"But she wanted fire. And Lior is fire. And I… I just wanted to be seen."
He stands.
"I'll tell them," he says suddenly. "I'll go to Father now. I'll confess everything—"
"No," I croak. It is the first word I have spoken since the courtyard.
He freezes.
"They'll kill you," I say. My voice is gravel and blood.
"Lior will kill you. Slowly."
He is silent so long I think he has left.
Then I hear the softest sound—a sob swallowed whole.
The door closes.
He does not come back.
The bell tolls four.
Then five.
Then dawn.
Dawn comes the colour of a fresh bruise.
The stable door is thrown open so hard it slams against the wall. Torchlight and cold air flood in together.
Six guards in Veal colours march in, faces hard as winter iron. The captain is Ser Darric—one of Father's oldest sworn swords, the man who taught Lior, Maika, and me to hold a shield wall when we were boys. He looks at me once, jaw clenched, then away.
"Up," he says.
I cannot stand. My body is a single open wound.
Two guards haul me upright by the armpits. The world tilts. My back screams where the lashes have crusted to the straw. My stump knocks against a post and fresh blood spatters the floor.
They do not give me a tunic.
They do not give me boots.
They wrap my torso in a filthy horse blanket that stinks of old sweat and dung, then tie it with rope so the wool rubs every lash raw.
Iron manacles snap around my remaining wrist and both ankles. The chain between the ankles is short—barely enough to shuffle. A longer chain links me to the other condemned.
There are seven of us.
Three poachers, eyes down.
Two deserters from the northern war, faces hollow.
One madman who babbles about dragons coming back.
And me.
They march us out through the postern gate—the small door used for refuse and shame.
The household is already assembled along the walls to watch.
Servants.
Stable boys.
Kitchen maids who once slipped me extra honey cakes.
They stand in silence. Some weep openly. Most simply stare as though I am already a corpse.
I search the crowd for familiar faces.
Mother is there, high on the western parapet where she used to wave her green scarf. She is wrapped in black, face the colour of old ash. Lysenne clings to her skirts, eyes swollen, mouth open in a silent scream.
I want to call to them.
I want to say I love them.
But the blanket has slipped and the morning wind cuts across my flayed back like a thousand knives, and all that comes out is a broken animal sound.
Lior stands at the gatehouse in full armour, cloak of white boar fur stirring in the wind. Elyra beside him in pale blue velvet, hair braided with pearls. She does not look at me. She rests her head on Lior's shoulder like a dove seeking shelter.
Maika is nowhere.
Father stands at the centre of the gate, cloak of office across his shoulders. He does not look at me either.
Ser Darric hands him the levy parchment. Father signs it with a quill already dipped in ink. The scratch of the quill is the loudest sound in the world.
Then Father speaks—not to me, but to the captain.
"Tell the Frontier Legion this one is to serve in the worst trench. No mercy. No ransom. If he dies, burn the body and scatter the ashes. No stone. No name."
His voice is steady, calm, the same voice he used to read us stories when we were small.
Ser Darric salutes.
The guards shove us forward.
I stumble. The ankle chains bite. My bare feet find the first sharp stone of the road and I nearly fall.
Someone in the crowd gasps.
I look up one last time.
Mother has broken free of the retainers. She is running along the parapet, black cloak flying, reaching out as though she could pull me back by sheer will.
Lysenne is screaming my name now—high, broken, over and over.
"Kael! Kael! KAEL!"
The sound follows me down the cliff road like a dying gull.
The great gates of Whitecliff slam shut behind us.
The clang echoes off the rocks and the sea, final as a coffin lid.
We are marched down the switchback path to the harbour road. The salt wind flays the lashes on my back until blood runs anew. Gulls wheel overhead, screaming for scraps.
At the bottom waits the levy wagon—an open cart stinking of old shit and fear. The wheels are crusted with mud and something darker.
They throw us in like sacks of grain.
I land on my ruined back. The world whites out again.
When I come back, the wagon is moving. The chains rattle. The madman is laughing about dragons. One of the deserters is praying in a language I do not know.
I lie on my side and watch Whitecliff recede.
The castle clings to the cliff like a white wound against the sky. I can still see the tiny figure of my mother on the highest tower, black cloak whipping, arms still reaching.
Then the road curves, and the sea swallows her.
The journey to the Frontier takes nine days.
Nine days chained in the open cart, rain and sun alternating.
Nine days with no food but mouldy bread thrown in like we are dogs.
Nine nights curled against the wheel, trying to keep the flies from the open stump.
The guards do not speak to us.
They do not even curse us.
We are already dead men.
On the third day the stump begins to rot.
Green pus mixes with the blood. The smell is sweet and foul. Flies lay eggs in the lashes on my back. I feel the maggots hatch and begin to eat.
On the fifth day fever comes.
I burn and freeze at once. My teeth chatter so hard they chip. I hallucinate.
Elyra bends over me in the cart, hair shining, whispering, "You should have been stronger, Kael. You should have fought for me."
Lior stands behind her, hand on her swelling belly, laughing with Maika's mouth.
Maika himself kneels beside me, trying to pour wine between my cracked lips, weeping, "I measured it wrong, I measured it wrong, forgive me, brother—"
I spit blood in his face and he dissolves into flies.
On the seventh day we reach the edge of the Empire.
The road becomes a rutted track. The forests close in. Villages are burned-out shells. Crows hang from gibbets with their eyes pecked out.
The guards grow quieter. Even they are afraid.
On the ninth night we camp beside a river that stinks of death.
The guards drink themselves to sleep. One of the deserters tries to saw through his ankle chain with a shard of pottery. He bleeds out before moonset. They leave the body for the wolves.
I lie awake and listen to the wolves.
I have not spoken since Whitecliff.
I have not wept since the first night.
I simply wait.
Because something inside me has begun to understand:
Pain is patient.
Pain is honest.
Pain does not betray.