Those with true Shadow talent didn't need to be told he had come. They already knew. The dark in their blood had turned toward him like a compass needle pulled by an unseen magnet.
Power. That was what they recognized. That was what they needed to see. Unflinching. Unwavering.
Eliza felt that pull as a gentle pressure.
Shazi glanced back, her voice low. "If you speak, you'll break a rule older than these stones."
Eliza kept her gaze forward.I'm not here to be obedient.
"That's one word for it," Shazi said dryly. After a pause, she added, "They will listen to strength. They always have."
Strength, not volume; strength, not pleading.Eliza turned these words over in her mind as they climbed the shallow rise to the dais.This isn't the time to bargain or apologize.
Rakhal stepped onto the stone platform with natural authority. The Shadow grew thicker around him, almost visible. Night had always been his element, but here on the open plains, surrounded by his own kind, he commanded it with a power that would have been impossible in the confining light of the forest.
The drums that had been beating a slow warning fell quiet. The silence that followed wasn't reverence but the stillness before a strike. The Shadow grew thicker around him, almost visible. Eliza felt it as a weight settling into her bones.
The only reason she could speak here was because of him.
Chieftains crowded the front row: faces mapped with scars, tusks capped with iron, hair braided with bone. Inked symbols twisted over forearms and throats. Among them stood a woman wearing a collar strung with hooked fangs and a man whose left shoulder bore raised scars burned into the shape of a serpent. Beyond them stretched the lines of clan after clan, dotted with thin, hungry children. The young ones were always allowed at the Moot to witness and learn who would live and who would die.
Rakhal's gaze swept over the crowd. He didn't raise his voice; he didn't need to. "The old order ended the night Kardoc carved my father open and forced you all to watch. There will be no son of Kardoc after this season. There will be no more serving under borrowed fear."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd like grass in a crosswind. A man called out with mocking laughter. "And the human at your side, outcast—is she your trophy? Or a witch who whispered in your ear?"
Eliza watched Rakhal's expression harden, then smooth over. She sensed his formidable restraint. He didn't answer.Instead, he looked at her, the message clear: this was a moment he could either shield her from or give to her. He gave it to her.
She stepped past him to the edge of the dais. The drums fell silent, leaving only the sound of leather creaking and the soft clink of iron-capped tusks as heads turned toward her. The air grew sharp with the smell of metal and old bone. It was almost physical, the weight of so many eyes turning to her. She felt the urge to flood the silence with words, to build a bridge of sound and cross it before it collapsed. She recognized the impulse and resisted it. She took two deep breaths, kept her shoulders level, and let the quiet work for her.
She didn't need to shout; her voice cut cleanly through the air. "I didn't come to beg," she said. "I came to offer."
The first words were less about content than rhythm. Weight. She matched the cadence she'd heard in their oaths and battle cries, the trick of making consonants hit like hammer taps on a blade. She moved her gaze deliberately, placing it like a game piece. They would read that as control more than any grammar.
"You know what Kardoc is. You know what he did to your dead and your living. You've survived him by bending or breaking or turning your knives on each other. That path ends with a bone wall and your children carving your names into it."
A low sound moved through the crowd, a rumble of recognition that needed no words.
"We are two peoples running out of time. I offer a path neither of us can walk alone. Two thrones. One treaty. Peace with honor."
It wasn't how she would have said it at home. There, she would have talked about trade and borders and cultural exchange. The orcs didn't care for that. "You value strength. So do I. You value a leader who steps into the dark first and walks until they find solid ground. I am not your blood and will neverclaim to be. But I will not send others to do what I won't do myself. I am here. I am speaking."
Silence cut through the murmurs. The air itself felt attentive, the Shadow in it prickling like cold.
An elder pushed forward from the front rank, leaning on a staff wrapped in skins and hung with yellowed teeth. His tusks were cracked at the tips, his white hair braided down to the small of his back. Black ink ran up his neck in a pattern like burned wood. When he lifted the staff, the nearest orcs drew back—not from respect, but from a habit carved into them by time.Bonekeeper,Eliza thought.Keeper of names and rituals—the spine of memory.
"The human speaks of unity," he said, his voice like gravel pouring. "She speaks well. It makes a neat path in the mouth." His eyes cut sharply. "But her tongue knows nothing of blood."
Laughter broke out in patches.
Eliza didn't drop her gaze. "I know how it smells," she said. "How it looks on stone. How it dries on the hands and turns skin stiff." She let the next words come out rougher. "I know what it costs when you fail to stop it."
He lifted his chin. "Do you?" He struck the staff against the stone. "Words are wind. The right to speak before the Moot comes with a price."
He didn't explain further. He didn't need to. The altar beside the dais was a slab of obsidian veined with shadow like smoke trapped in ice. On it lay the ritual knives: curved, shadow-etched steel whose edges shimmered with a faint dark light that had nothing to do with sunlight.
Shazi's fingers brushed Eliza's elbow, a light pressure. A warning, not restraint.
Eliza walked to the altar, her eyes on the blades. Every orc born to the Shadow had some sense for the living currents of power; she had none by birth. But she had learned to read theshapes it made in them, and she'd learned about herself—what she feared, what she would pay not to be small.
