Azfar studied him like a carpenter judges a beam: what it once held, what it can hold now, what it might again. Relief crossed his face and rearranged itself into sternness. “You have been busy without leaving the room,” he said. “Do not be busy for a while.”
Eliza sat up so her words could carry without looking like affection. “He’s done with thrones.”
Shazi’s brows lifted. “He had one?”
“Three dozen men offered him one yesterday and a crowd offered a hundred more this morning,” Azfar said. “I told them to boil their banners.”
“I said he’s done with thrones,” Eliza repeated. That made it law. She rose, lifted the chain from her neck, and set it on the table so the dull ring caught the light. “This did its work. Mercy doesn’t belong in a vault.”
Azfar’s mouth twitched. “Nor in a crown,” he said, pleased to find he still had proverbs left.
Shazi looked from ring to man to woman, scratched a scab until it surrendered. “If not him, then who?” she asked. “The city’s a beast that likes a rider.”
“You and Azfar,” Eliza said. “The city gets two hands and no scepter. Hold it by law, not legend—mercy and grain. If anyone brings a statue, melt it for nails.”
Shazi grinned through the ache. “I’ll nail signs instead.No gods beyond this point.”
Azfar bowed in the old style, bones remembering dance. “With honor.”
Rakhal listened with the quiet that follows a storm, when trees decide to stand without dramatics. He reached for Eliza’s hand—it felt like finding a rope in the dark and not needing to pull, only to hold. “Take me someplace with fewer voices,” he said, like a child asking for air.
She nodded. “The forest. Just you and me.” She looked to Azfar and Shazi with the question she never wasted on the unready:Can you?
Azfar met it. “We can. We will.”
Shazi was already counting supplies, then discarding the list. “Go with empty hands,” she said. “The ground will give you what you need if you’re honest.” She bent and kissed Rakhal’s forehead like a rough blessing. “If you see a deer, don’t make friends until it agrees.”
Eliza helped him sit. He moved like something fragile learning to trust its own strength. The world tilted, then steadied, almost kindly. She dressed him in a plain shirt and cloak that had belonged to no lord, tied his boots with priestly focus, and let him lean on her to stand. He thought of falling and decided to do it later, where moss was soft.
They left before dawn to escape the weight of gratitude. The guard at the door started to rise, then sat again when Eliza shook her head. No procession. No eyes. The palace halls were long throats that once swallowed men whole; now they only breathed. They passed the room where the lion had learned shame, the room where Thalorin had made fear behave like science, and a window where the patch had finally given up and let the weather in. Rakhal paused, palm on the stone. It was cooler than the day he’d tried to kill the world.
At the threshold, Eliza stopped. She held the chain one last time, the ring cold and honest in her hand. The steps were wet with dew. She set the ring on the second stair—not the top, not the bottom—so anyone who needed it could find it without climbing too high or kneeling too low.
“Leave it,” Rakhal said, surprised by the certainty in his own voice. “Mercy doesn’t belong in a vault.”
“Nor on a chain,” she answered. “Let someone else find it and learn how to use it.”
They went out into a city that had learned to watch without freezing. A baker saw them and didn’t call out—his hands were in dough and the oven waited. He nodded instead. A woman carrying water stepped aside without ceremony. A boy with a stick-sword greeted a cat; the cat ignored him; no one took offense.
They walked north with no escort, no colors, no drum. The streets widened into lanes, then into roads, then into paths. Walls took their pride elsewhere. Frost lingered low; greenreturned high. The first trees met them stiffly, like guards drafted into welcome.
Rakhal’s steps shortened until they learned they had nothing to prove. Eliza matched his gait without performance. When his knee buckled once, the Shadow rose like a hound remembering its size. He let it steady him, then flicked his fingers; it went back to heel. It felt good to be obeyed without cost. Better to choose not to use the obedience.
“We’ll be gone a while,” Eliza said.
“How long?”
“Until you don’t listen for drums when the wind changes,” she said. “Until I stop counting loaves when I see a field.”
He nodded. It sounded like a vow because it was simply a plan—and plans last longer.
They reached the first trees at sunrise. Light slanted through pine and beech the way thyme threads a stew—slow, deliberate, kind. Birds argued about survival. The ground swallowed the sound of their steps and kept it.
They didn’t speak of crowns. They spoke of water, of fire that leaves no scar, of honest mushrooms. At a stream he drank, cupping his hands—the hands of an orc who had once been a weapon and was learning how to be a life.
Far behind, a bell found its hour and told it without fear. The palace steps held a dull ring, catching the first cut of sun. Someone would see it someday, pick it up, turn it, feel nothing—then press it to a chest, say a name, and mean it.
In the forest, two figures walked beneath the branches until the road decided to let them go. The Shadow followed at a respectful distance—and finally, finally, sat down.
