Dawn came slowly, as if cautious about what it would find. The crows still circled when the horizon lightened, their wings black against unpolished silver.
Eliza stepped into the biting cold and faced north. She didn’t ask the birds for omens. She refused to be a queen who trusted her future to scavengers. She watched them circle toward her city and decided they were messengers going where the living waited.
Rakhal came to stand beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. The crows were distant now—black punctuation against the sky’s pale sentence. He didn’t speak, but his hand found the small of her back for just a moment—a brief, steadying pressure that sent warmth cascading up her spine despite the bitter cold. His silence carried what words couldn’t: absolute trust in her vision, and the unspoken promise that any blade that sought her would first have to pass through him.
The Shadow within him seemed to reach for her, not in hunger but in recognition of its equal.
In her mind, the map redrew itself with the clarity of controlled fury. The river road. The dry wells. The gate’s weak hour. The boys with closed fists and the women who could pass bread and messages in the same motion. The Archivists with their secret keys. The Forgesmiths who could turn stone into blades. The apprentices fleeing west with cages that held mornings, not animals. And beneath it all, the old drains where water and children always found their way home.
If mercy is the law that holds them,she thought,then justice must be the blade that follows.
The first light of morning broke across the camp, cold and colorless. It caught in Rakhal’s hair, in the curve of his armor, in the frost that rimed the ground between them. He stood beside her without speaking, his presence a vow made flesh.
And for the first time since Maidan’s fall, Eliza felt the sharp edge of fear turn into something else entirely—resolve, fierce and burning.
When she finally spoke, her voice was steady.
“Ready the banners,” she said. “We march at dusk.”
Rakhal inclined his head once, as if the command itself was a kind of blessing.
Then they stood together, queen and warlord, side by side as the wind swept through the valley and carried the crows north—toward the city that waited to be taken back.
Chapter
Sixty-Five
Maidan looked deceptively close from the ridge. The city's towers and parapets caught the torchlight, their silhouettes sharp against the night sky. The wind carried familiar scents—river silt, stone dust, and the unmistakable smell of an overcrowded city. Below, Ketheri watchfires formed orderly grids across the approaches, like invaders' stars forced upon Maidan's landscape.
Rakhal surveyed the city that had once rejected him as enemy, now waiting for him as liberator. Tonight's mission was crucial to their larger plan for reclaiming Maidan from the Ketheri usurpers. While Eliza infiltrated the lower districts to rally support directly, his task was equally vital—planting her royal banners at three strategic points across the city to announce her return and legitimacy.
The symbolism would resonate with Maidan's citizens: their rightful queen had returned with the power of the Shadow at her command. The coordinated missions would divide the Ketheri's attention and resources, preventing them from mounting an organized response to either threat. More importantly, it would give the people courage to rise up when the time came for the final assault.
Weeks of preparation had gone into this night. Azfar had studied the city's magical defenses, identifying weaknesses in the ward network.
Azfar had warned that breaking the wards might stir things older than the stones themselves. “The city keeps its memories beneath the mortar,” he’d said, “and some memories prefer sleep.” Rakhal hadn’t asked what that meant, only promised that if they woke, he would be ready.
Shazi had trained a diversion force to draw attention away from both his and Eliza's infiltration routes. The Maidan defectors who had joined their cause had mapped every drain and secret passage beneath the city walls.
If all went according to plan, by dawn the city would know Eliza had returned, and the first cracks would appear in the Ketheri's hold.
Rakhal stood at the edge of the rocky outcrop, letting the cold seep through him to calm the Shadow within. Nightfall always stirred it—like a predator awakening at sunset, hungry and eager beneath his skin. The power wanted release. He allowed it to sense the world around them but kept firm control over it. Since his blood ritual with Eliza, controlling the Shadow had become both easier and harder—easier because her influence steadied him, harder because the Shadow resented their bond.
Beneath his breastbone, he felt the familiar tug—finer than thread but stronger than any cord. It was the bond-mark thrumming between them, the pulse of the blood they had shared. Azfar had called such marks echoes of the old law—links that allowed two wills to steady one another across distance. Through it he sensed Eliza—not as warmth or light, but as steady conviction. When she drew breath across the city, the tug shifted. When she steadied herself for action, calm flowed through the link to him.
The Shadow hated this influence over him, this leash it couldn't break, but even it had come to accept the reality of their connection.
Shazi approached from the hollow, her breath silvery in the cold air. As Rakhal's most trusted captain and an accomplished Shadow-warrior herself, she commanded the diversion force. Her scarred face showed the fierce anticipation she never bothered hiding before battle.
"Decoys are in position," she reported. "You have fifteen minutes before their captains realize it's a trap and start counting their men." She nodded toward the eastern gate where fires were brightening. "My forces will make enough noise to draw their attention. We'll convince them the eastern wall is our target while you plant the banners elsewhere."
"What about Azfar?" Rakhal asked about the ancient shaman who had mentored him since childhood, teaching him to harness rather than surrender to the Shadow power that would have consumed a lesser orc.
"He's in the marsh ruins, working his magic on the city's wards," Shazi said. "The old man may look frail, but his Shadow-craft remains unmatched. He says the protective spells are already weakened—'thin as bad soup' were his exact words. When you feel the air lighten, that's your signal to move quickly." Her mouth curved in a knowing smile. "He specifically warned me that you'd try to accomplish too much during that brief window."
Rakhal's lips twitched in something like an answer. "I don't keep coin."
"You keep promises," she said, the teasing leaving her voice. "Plant the colors and come back. Don't let the dark do your walking for you."
