When Rakhal’s gaze met hers, the Shadow rose through the hall, pressing against the walls until it filled her chest like storm pressure before rain.
“Leave him,” Shazi said behind her, low and urgent. But Eliza was already walking.
She pressed the ring to the center of Rakhal’s chest.
“Rakhal.” That was all—his name, steady, familiar.
The iron flared with freezing light. The Shadow shuddered, recoiling like something that had been tamed too long and suddenly remembered freedom. Azfar’s hands shook; light raced through the rings of his staff.
For one heartbeat, the darkness paused. It knew that voice. The glow in Rakhal’s veins dimmed. Color bled back into his eyes.
His body gave way. Eliza caught him. He was heavy, and the day was heavier, but she refused to let him fall.
His head dropped against her shoulder. His breath came rough, then steadied. Blood welled from the cut on his palm where her ring had bitten him again, and this time it drew blood that answered hers, warm and mortal.
Azfar let out a dry laugh. “It worked.”
The ring’s glow faded to dull iron—spent, empty, peaceful.
Around them, the soldiers murmured. It wasn’t celebration, not yet. It was the sound of people remembering gratitude instead of worship.
Eliza lowered herself with him until they both rested on the cracked marble floor. She kept her palm on his chest, feeling the slow, stubborn beat beneath it.
“Leave us,” she said quietly.
No one argued. Liron gathered the men. Maera and the twins moved to guard the doors. Shazi pushed Azfar toward the exit. The web of light sank and vanished.
Silence filled the hall again—small sounds only, a candle guttering, a crow shifting on the ledge. Rakhal’s breathing evened. His weight settled against her as if the world had found balance at last.
She looked down at the ring. Plain metal, edges worn smooth by sweat and blood. If a stranger found it, they’d think it worthless. To her it felt like the city itself—spent, cooling, ready for rest.
She set it on his chest, above his heartbeat.
From somewhere deep in the city came a new sound—hesitant, then strong. Not an army’s chant. A people’s. It took her a moment to realize they were calling her name.
Eliza didn’t turn toward the window. She stayed where she was, letting the noise rise through the broken hall until even the crows seemed to nod along.
Later,she thought.Later, we’ll count the cost. For now, we breathe.
The ring lay between them, cold and quiet. Beneath her hand, his heart kept its rhythm—steady, defiant, alive.
Chapter
Seventy-Two
Weeks taught the city how to speak again.
The first lesson was bread. Granaries opened under Shazi’s blunt efficiency; wagons rolled; ovens burned through the night. The first meal after a war always tasted like apology and relief. Children ate until their bellies hurt and cried anyway—the body doesn’t trust peace when the mind still waits for hunger.
Eliza left the palace each morning at first light and returned after the lamps in the lower quarters had burned low. She stood in workshops until the masters signed amnesty for apprentices who had run messages. She sat in the ruined council hall to hear old feuds and dismissed them with a single look. She cut down the keels of the patrol boats so they’d no longer move like predators and told the fishermen to tax fairly and sleep.
She pardoned the cruel who had been desperate and judged the cruel who had enjoyed it. She wrote laws by speaking them aloud, making the city repeat them until memory became the only record.
At night, she returned to the keep that had been Thalorin’s, then a lion’s, and was now half-open to the sky. She liked the emptiness; it told the truth.
Rakhal slept in a narrow chamber rebuilt by careful hands. His breath was shallow, veins still faintly luminous beneath the skin—as if a current moved under glass. Azfar had warned her. “The Shadow must finish forgetting,” he’d said. “It remembers disobedience better than rest.”
The counter-sigil hung cold on the chain at her throat. Azfar had studied it in the light and murmured, almost fondly, “It remembers mercy and has gone to sleep.”
