Later, much later, I find myself on the balcony overlooking the city I’ve protected, the cracks in its stones glowing orange. Smoke curls from hearths below. Someone laughs at a distance, half joy, half relief. Kragna steps beside me, silent as a tree’s oath.
He brushes my hair back, voice rough as clay: “You were something else in there.”
I let out a breath that tastes like surrender. “Just someone who fought for us.”
He leans in and kisses my neck. The moment I melt—heat floods through my nerves, safe and sacred. “I’m going to build something,” he says, voice low and tender.
I twist in his arms. “What?”
He inhales deep. “A distillery. Down by the river, under the bridge. Bigger this time. Room for two.”
I laugh at that—warm, broken, glorious. “Home?”
He nods, fingers brushing my cheek. “Room for two.”
I close my eyes, pressing into him. “I want to go home.”
He cups my face, thumb grazing tears I can’t hide. “Where is that?”
I press my forehead against his chest—herald of hearth, armor of love. “Can’t you guess?”
He smiles, slow and fierce. He holds me there as night deepens and peace feels like something we built with our bones and our breath.
26
KRAGNA
Itaste thunder in the soil long before the horns reach my ears. At the edge of our camp, smoke drifts west, bitter and sharp like betrayal. Riders dart on the ridge’s horizon—flags torn, banners blackened—rumors carried in their stirrups.
Late dusk folds into the tents, sacks filled with bread and illness and hope. I sit across from Rizzo, Skeela, and River in the council tent, crammed into a half-circle of dust-stained rugs and a flame that sifts like sickle light.
Rizzo slams a gauntleted fist on the low table. “They’re forming a siege—Laertiez’s loyalists, rogue nobles, anti-human factions. They mass at the southern pass. Camp waits there. The moment we let them gather strength, we die.”
Skeela holds his gaze, hand pale on map. “We can’t rush. We need intel, infiltration—not just an assault. If we strike too soon, we give them martyrs. And we still don’t know how deep the rot runs.”
River leans forward, voice calm but steel-laced. “I can step in—move under cover to plant spies, weaken supply lines, disarm siege weapons. We strike smarter, not just harder.”
The night hangs tight. On the map, blood holds its breath.
I swallow, tasting something harsher than ale. I feel it in my bones—the buried stir of ancient power coiling tight. My heart picks up beat as silver as mourning. Full moon rises soon.
Veeto, Charen, and Bruce step into the glow at the tent’s edge, backs lit in torch flicker like smelted iron.
Veeto grins, blood-bright. “Count me in.”
Charen descends wings splayed, voice slurred with mirth. “Not because we like you,” she teases, “but because you idiots would die without us.”
Bruce’s sigh rumbles like distant hills. I don’t argue. We need them—all of them.
River sees the chase in my eyes. She walks over. I can smell night pine on her cloak and something deeper—fear, loyalty, love.
I inhale. I don’t say it, but everything shifts. “I might change,” I say, voice low as riverbed gravel. “Next fight… I might not be myself.”
River’s hands settle on my cheek, pale fires in candlelight. “You’re always you,” she says. “Just… occasionally extra.”
We ride east at twilight,moonlight glinting on rifles and the silver tips of stray branches, hooves soft on packed earth. River rides beside me, blade-sheathed at her hip. Her hand brushes mine, grounding me in what's real—and what might be lost.
Our small force moves like shadows: Veeto in the rear, grinning over campfire memories; Charen perched on silent wings above, web glimmering with her usual sardonic humor; Bruce—the living mountain—behind, breathing slow as stone.
