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The possibility was too grave to consider. It made him sick at heart.
“Isibel would not dare,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Another Spindle torn might break the realm in two.”
We are already on the edge of a cliff, and Gidastern still burns open, inching us closer to ruin with every passing second.His heart thudded, louder and faster.
Corayne gave him a sad look, her eyes welling up with...
Pity, he realized.
“She only cares for one realm, Dom,” she whispered. “And it isn’t this one.”
Glorian.
The vault spun again, and the world with it.
He gripped her hand back, careful not to break anything.
“Who else have you told this?” he hissed, dipping his head closer.
Corayne stared up at him, brow drawn and black eyes wide. “Just us. Our own.”
His relief was short-lived. Again, he felt the weight of the castle bearing down, along with the rest of the realm.
“Let us keep it that way.”
35
Blinded
Erida
Her breath spiraled in the cold, like smoke against the breaking dawn.
Frost clung to the tents, the carts and wagons, the horses, and even the sentries at their posts, waiting for the change in the guard. They stood against snowbanks piled higher than their spears, hastily cleared by the engineers and laborers. The workmen slowed the passage of the cavalry, but they widened the pass, cutting through the snow, until even the packed trebuchets might lumber through.
Erida did not feel the cold as she used to. Fire burned in her flesh, warming her better than any fur. While the others shivered, she kept still, frozen as the mountains around them. She felt like a mountain herself, her head raised above all others.
While her soldiers began the work of breaking down the camp, Erida remained still, alone but for the demon inside. She stood at the pinnacle of the mountain pass, the slope falling away on either side of her.
The west lay behind, back to the foothills and her own kingdoms, where spring already bloomed. Erida faced east, into the long valley on the far side of the Monadhrion. Gray fog carpeted the land below,obscuring the valley floor. The Queen thought little of it. They would cross the valley without issue, cutting through the heart of Calidon to the next mountain range.
It was the Monadhrian she stared at, the ragged peaks many miles away, silhouetted against the pink dawn. They stood on the far side of the valley, like islands poking up out of the gray-cloud sea. The last obstacle between her army and Iona. Between Taristan and Corayne.
Between Erida and empire.
What Waits glowered beneath it all, tugging at her skirts. She shared the sentiment. But some things were beyond even the Queen of Galland. Erida could not force the army to move any faster than it did already. She could not melt the snows or level the mountains, no matter how hard she tried.
Shouts echoed through the pass, and boots crunched through the snow. Horses and oxen lumbered awake, snorting against their rope paddocks. Erida gave a sigh of her own, and turned away, following her own footsteps back through the snow.
She wore fur-lined boots and a thick cloak over quilted wool, dressed more like a maid than a queen. But there was no call for finery in the mountains, not even among her lords who still clung to their overwrought armor and patterned silk. Erida’s manner was crown enough.
His red cloak over one shoulder, Taristan waited at the tent flap, his eyes glassy with sleep. But he already had a sword belted at his hip, his traveling clothes donned. Like Erida, he was eager to be gone and back on the march.
“You should not wander,” he said gruffly.
Erida gave a shrug. She eyed the clear sky overhead, fading from soft purple to more vibrant pink. There was not even a cloud to threaten snow.
“We have been lucky. A blizzard would have closed the pass to us or stranded us up here.” Her lips curled. “A blessing.”
