“He bound his own wounds,” Elgara said quietly. “With shadow magic. This amount of blood loss would have killed any ordinary mortal, but he…” His mouth pressed thin. “…he is something else.”
The healer—a woman in a long blue cloak, her hands still stained with his blood—nodded once.
“He will survive,” she said at last, her voice even. “Too weak to use his magic now, but his body is already knitting itself back together. Orcs are… robust.” She let out a soft, exasperated sigh. “Still, he will need a bed, a place to recuperate, poultices to ward off infection, and sustenance if he’s to recover fully.” Her gaze flicked up to Eliza, pointed, deliberate. “And of course… he must be heavily guarded. And warded. At all times.”
Eliza closed her eyes, weariness washing over her for the first time. But she did not let it linger. She could not afford to.
“Take him to the dungeons,” she ordered, the words bitter in her mouth, cutting against every instinct. She would have him in her chambers, safe under her watch, but to do so after what had unfolded—after blood spilled on Maidan soil—would be seen as madness by the soldiers, by the mages, by the council of lords.
“Make sure he is well taken care of,” she added, her tone hard as iron. “That he recovers fully. He is… valuable to us.”
Elgara stepped forward, his brows lifting in a warning. “At full strength… we are not certain the wards will be enough to hold him.”
“You have time,” she retorted without missing a beat. “I’m sure the Magic Tower will find a solution to contain him while he is still recovering.”
The elder mage regarded her with a strange, unreadable look before bowing his head. “Yes, my queen.”
They carried him away on the stretcher. The sight pierced her like a blade. His eyes were half-lidded, glazed, his chest rising and falling in a shallow, stubborn rhythm. His tunic was drenched with blood—most of it his own. She wondered if he even registered her presence at all.
The shadows, once his constant companions—terrifying, living things twined with his very being—were barely there. Faint flickers clung to him, thin wisps rather than the living storm she had seen him wield.
The orc assassin. The shadow prince. Now her captive.
How the tables had turned.
And yet, she felt no triumph. Only the ache of conflict. She stood barefoot in the courtyard, her body wrapped in his velvet garment, the scent of him still clinging to her. Exhausted, torn, and taunted by the memory of a vow—a marriage vow—that she no longer had to honor.
So why, then, was she left with this sharp pang?
Why did she feel… disappointed?
The promise of peace lingered in her mind like a fragile thread. And the mystery of him—ofthem—entangled her still. She, who had never found a suitor worth her time, who had been constrained by the suffocating rigidity of court life, of politics, of men who bowed and scraped to curry her favor.
He was none of those things. He offered something else entirely.
The promise of a different way.
The thought slipped past her defenses.What would it have been like… to be married to one such as him?
The place on her neck where he had kissed her still burned, as though his lips lingered there, an invisible brand.
Later… she would go to him.
But for now, she had to bring order to the chaos.
Chapter
Thirty-One
He woke to pain.
It tore through his chest, his shoulder, sharp with every breath. Weariness clung to him like lead, his limbs heavy, unresponsive. The shadows whispered at the edges of his mind, subdued but seething, a restless tide pressing against the bonds that held him. They carried with them the malevolence of the ancient wall, memories of conquest and slaughter, whispering their darkness into his thoughts, filling him with anger that was not entirely his own.
His hands were bound at his sides, warded irons biting into his wrists. The metal tingled, burning unpleasantly where it touched him. His ankles, too, were shackled. The runes carved into the restraints hummed softly, keeping the shadows at bay.
He tested them—once, twice—but there was no escape. The shadows could not answer him as they once would. Not here. Not bound like this.
It was not entirely to his surprise.
