Eliza stared at the ring, unwilling to take it.If I use this, it means I’ve failed him.
“It means you’ve given him a chance,” Azfar said. His hand trembled slightly—the first sign of emotion she’d seen from him. “Mercy isn’t weakness, Eliza. It’s what keeps us human when power would make us monsters.”
Her hand lifted, slowly, until the ring rested on her palm. It was cold, almost too light to feel real. The etched light down its surface flickered once, like a heartbeat under glass.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“When the time comes,” Azfar said, “press it to the hollow above his heart. Speak his name exactly as you would if you’d lost him in a crowd.”
Her throat tightened. “And if he doesn’t answer?”
“Then you will have a breath to act before the Shadow does.”
He stepped back, lowering his staff, the bone rings clinking like chimes. “If you never use it, I will die grateful.”
Eliza’s gaze stayed fixed on the ring. The faint light within it pulsed once, responding to something in her. She slid it onto her thumb, testing the fit—it was too large to wear, but warm now, as if it had learned her pulse.
Azfar’s tone softened, though not kindly. “You carry yourself like one who’s already weighed the loss. That will serve you.”
She looked up sharply. “I’m not planning to lose him.”
“No,” Azfar said. “You’re planning to win, which is another way of inviting the same gods to test you.”
He started for the door, then paused in the frame, half-shadowed. “Love him, queen. But remember—what he carries loves nothing. It will promise you peace to silence you. Don’t take its bargains.”
The words lodged behind her ribs. By the time she found her voice, he was gone.
She stood a long while in the empty room, feeling the hum of the vault beneath her. The faint shimmer of the counter-sigil glowed against her palm—cold light, not warm. The wards below her gave a single slow pulse, like a sleeper shifting in its dream.
When she finally left, the night was colder than before. Rakhal’s tent burned dim on the ridge above the camp, a single flame behind hide and canvas. She stopped outside it, listeningto the rhythm of his breath inside—the slow, steady sound of someone who still believed the war was done.
Her hand closed around the ring.If she gave it to him… he’d break it.
If she hid it, she would carry its secret like a blade between them. So she did neither. She slipped it onto a leather thong and hung it around her neck, where it settled against her skin like a promise she hoped never to keep.
In her tent, the lamp guttered. She sat on the bedroll and turned the ring in her hand again and again until her fingers numbed. The light inside it never changed.
If I ever use it, let it be mercy again.
Outside, the camp murmured with sleep. The wind came back through the valley, brushing the torches until they swayed like tired sentinels. Beneath it all, the hum of the wards continued—steady, patient, waiting for the next command.
Eliza finally lay down, the ring cold against her skin. As she closed her eyes, fragments followed her into dreams: Kardoc’s bound breathing, Azfar’s warnings, and Rakhal—the man who held darkness in his hands and called it law.
For now, the world was still. But even in sleep, she felt the Shadow listening.
Chapter
Sixty-Four
Crows came first—one, then three, then dozens darkening the sky over the northern ridge. They circled silently above the frost. The orcs muttered at the sight. Even those with little Shadow in their blood spat and clutched amulets.
Eliza watched from the outer trench, her cloak pulled tight, her breath fogging the air. In Maidan, crows had meant market mornings and fresh bread. Out here, they were omens.
She waited, still as stone, until the scouts appeared over the trench edge—orcish riders, mud-splattered and raw from frost and smoke. The air around them shimmered faintly with Shadow, the last traces of the power they had used to veil themselves beyond Maidan’s borders.
They had been gone twelve days, watching Istrial in secret—the capital, the heart of her kingdom. And now they rode as if the wind itself chased them.
The first scout, a woman from the river wards with a bandage high on her cheekbone, carried a rolled banner tied in leather. Eliza didn’t realize it was one of hers until the leather slipped and the cloth unfurled enough to show a field of blue sewn longago by women whose names she had known as a girl. It was smeared with ash and streaked brown.
