"I rode through the night with five thousand men. Do not tell me it was for nothing."
Thorne entered Halden's private chamber. His father stood at the window—torches burned between the trees.
"I did not call you back to watch you perish in a pointless last stand."
Halden's palm struck the table. Maps flew across the command room, red marks showing enemy positions overlapping their blue marks.
Thorne dropped his gauntlets, thick with mud. "Those men deserve—"
"They have Captain Morvek. He shall do what he can."
"Morvek cannot hold the outer walls alone."
Halden poured wine. He did not offer a cup to his son.
"When the outer ring falls—and it shall—I need you coordinating the inner defences."
"You ask me to abandon them."
Halden returned to the window. "I ask you to save the city."
Thorne studied the maps, red marks encircling the blue. Too much red.
"Two thousand militia. Brave, but untrained."
Halden kept his back to his son. "They shall not survive. We both know it."
"Let me take command out there. My veterans could—"
"No."
Halden approached the table. "The Archive must survive. The knowledge we have protected for centuries. That matters more than two thousand lives."
Thorne touched one of the red marks. "Does knowledge matter more than the men perishing to protect it?"
"Yes. Without it, every life in this kingdom becomes worthless."
"And if we lose both? The knowledge and the men?"
"Then we lose everything regardless."
"There must be another way."
"Name it."
Thorne traced the map's borders. "Evacuate the civilians through the eastern tunnels. Pull back our forces to defend only the Archive itself."
"The tunnels collapsed in the spring floods. You know this."
"Then we make our stand here. All of us. No sacrificial outer rings."
"With scribes and children against Verrian's warriors?"
A messenger burst through the door.
"Sir! Enemy scouts eliminated our outer patrols at Greyford Bridge!"
Halden waved the messenger closer. "How long?"
"Before dawn, sir. Perhaps longer if they advance with caution."
"They shall not."
"Get word to Captain Morvek. Full defensive positions. Every man to the walls."
Thorne stepped forward. "Tell him I am coming."
Halden set down his cup. "Kaelen may not wish to receive you."
"I know. But I must try."
Halden picked up his cup. "You remember how she was. After you departed."
Thorne traced another red mark on the map. "I remember her anger as well."
. . .
"I heard you had returned."
The eastern tower was dark. Kaelen remained at the window, watching enemy torches flicker through the distant trees.
"Kaelen."
She turned. The new scar across his jaw caught her attention first. Grey streaked his temples now.
"Commander Halden."
Thorne stepped closer. "Kaelen—"
"Did you expect a warm reception?"
"No. I know I have no right to one." He hesitated. "I wished to say farewell that morning, but—"
"But duty called. Your king needed you more than I did."
"That is not—"
"That is precisely what happened."
War horns sounded.
They are almost here.
"And now duty calls again, does it not?"
"Yes. But I wrote letters. Dozens of them."
"Indeed?"
"I never sent them. Nothing seemed adequate. How does one apologise for abandoning someone who trusted completely?"
"One does not. One lives with the guilt."
Thorne stepped beside her. "Kaelen—"
"What did you think would happen, Commander? That time would make it hurt less?"
"I hoped—"
"You hoped I would understand. That duty meant more than promises."
"Duty never meant more than you."
"Then why did you choose it?"
"Because King Lucian commanded it. Because refusing meant death."
"For you, perhaps. Not for both of us."
"What do you mean?"
"King Lucian threatened more than your life, did he not?"
"How did you—"
"Know? Because I am not the naive girl you abandoned."
Thorne reached for her hands. His fingers touched hers. The pendant burned.
Images flooded her mind—a woman weaving spells around a grey-eyed boy, binding their lives together with magic.
Elena.
She braced against the wall as the room tilted.
"Kaelen?"
"Nothing. Just—weary. The night has been long."
"You spoke my mother's name."
Neither spoke.
"If something is troubling you, you may tell me—"
"There is not."
Kaelen made for the door. Thorne caught her arm.
"Do not lie to me. Not now."
She twisted free and backed away. "Release me."
"The pendant. It grows hot, and your manner suggests you have seen something. What does it show you?"
"Memories that should remain buried."
"What memories?"
"A woman. Casting spells, I do not understand. Binding lives together with magic I cannot comprehend."
Thorne's hand fell from the table. "Binding whose lives?"
"Mine. And another—a boy with grey eyes."
"Grey eyes?"
"Like yours."
"Magic connects us, Commander. Spells your mother cast before she perished. The kind that binds our fates. If you perish, so do I."
"You cannot know that."
"I felt every wound you took in service to your king. Every battle, every injury. Unexplained pains that came from nowhere and departed without cause."
The pendant. The visions. The phantom pains—his mother's magic bound them together.
The signal horns grew frantic. Screams from the outer walls.
He watched the enemy torches advance. "The warriors out there come for you, not the Archive."
"I know."
"Why?"
"Because my bloodline can break the Ancient Wards. Verrian needs that power."
"A key. A weapon. A way to shatter barriers that have stood for centuries."
"Then we cannot afford to quarrel now."
"Are we quarrelling? I thought we merely spoke of impossible magic."
A guard burst through the door.
"Miss! Commander! The outer ring is under attack!"
Through the window, fire lit the night sky.
"And so it begins."
"The true battle?"
"The battle for the city. The truth between us. Everything we have avoided."
Kaelen pushed past both men. "I must go."
Thorne followed. "Where?"
She paused in the doorway. "To the Council. I must persuade them to free the prisoner."
"To what purpose?"
"To save us all. Or see everything fall in the attempt."
"Kaelen, wait—"
"The Council chambers, Commander. If you wish to help, meet me there."
"They shall not listen."
"When has that ever stopped us?"
The guard cleared his throat twice. "Commander, your father requests your counsel."
"Tell him I am coming."
Thorne glanced towards the door where Kaelen had vanished.
"Soon."
. . .
Verrian Dain's forces had breached Nareth Hollow's walls.
Down in the city, the bells would not cease their ringing.
Captain Morvek commanded the outer wall with two thousand militia at his back. When Verrian's warriors reached the gates, he met them with arrows and burning pitch.
The first wave broke against the walls. Then the second.
Captain Darius Blackwood led the third. Shadow-marked warriors swarmed up the battlements, steel gleaming in firelight. Morvek's sword rang against Blackwood's as they clashed on the gatehouse until Blackwood's blade found flesh.
"For Erathil!" Morvek's cry rallied the militia even as flames consumed the eastern tower.
Morvek went down.
The outer ring broke.
Maya pressed her face against the watchtower window. At twelve, she had never seen warriors before. The warriors filled the valley below—more warriors than she had ever seen, more than the village elders claimed existed in all the kingdoms combined.
"Mother." Her voice came out small. "Mother, there are so many of them."
Her mother loaded arrows into the quiver, hands shaking so badly the shafts clattered against each other.
The city walls were old stone, built three generations past. Good for keeping out bandits and wild beasts.
Useless against Verrian's warriors.
Old Garrett held a torch in his gnarled fist. The baker's daughter clutched a sling she had only used to scare crows.
The priestess tried some spell—muttered words, waved her hands in patterns Maya did not recognise. Her palms showed no glow.
Maya pressed harder against the window. The walls would not hold.
Verrian raised his hand.
The sky caught fire.
Burning ash fell like rain. It ate through stone as though the walls were parchment. Melted iron into rivers of glowing metal.
The screaming started before his warriors even charged—high and terrible as the flames caught them.
War horns. Hoofbeats that shook the tower foundation. The crack of breaking walls.
Maya ran. Everyone ran. But the streets twisted back on themselves, smoke-blinded, and there was nowhere to go that the fire had not reached first.
Bodies clogged the river.
Verrian's warriors shoved Maya against the wooden bars with twenty other children from the village.
Some wept. Most stared at the smoke-blackened sky, their eyes blank.
The priestess hung from the main gates, still wearing her prayer beads.
Verrian rode through the ruins on a black warhorse that stepped over bodies without breaking stride.
He rode past the dead without a glance, past the caged children. He stared at the horizon where a silver light glowed against the stars like a second moon.
The wardlight of Erathil's Inner Ring.
His captains gathered around him—shadow-marked warriors who had cut down Nareth Hollow's defenders in minutes.
Verrian studied the distant glow. "We have until dawn to breach the Archive's gates. We ride now."
. . .
Kaelen ran through the Archive corridors, boots echoing on stone. Smoke crept through the eastern windows. Behind her, the east tower still blazed where Thorne had left to join his father.
Scribes fled past, scrolls tumbling from their arms. Guards shouted orders. The air tasted of ash.
Ahead, every lamp burned in the Emergency Council chambers—every Elder summoned, every guard mobilised.
The pendant pulsed once more.
Kaelen stopped at the doors. "They are coming."
She pushed them open.
. . .
End of Chapter 11
. . .
Next Chapter Preview: The Last Choice
The outer defences crumble as Verrian's shadow warriors breach Erathil's gates. With children taken and the middle districts burning, Kaelen faces an impossible choice: free the imprisoned ice prince Riven Drae, a known traitor, or watch the city fall. As her pendant reveals dangerous truths about her mother's past, the Emergency Council must decide whether to trust their greatest enemy to save them from certain destruction.