Ronan kept the dragons grounded. Their shadows shifted restlessly across the valley floor, wings flexing but never lifting. We would not risk flying over the Craggs blind. Vellos waited somewhere beyond those jagged peaks. Ballista might line the ridges. Chains. Nets. Fire. The unknowns stacked high, each another way to lose what little remained.
Night settled slow and cold.
I found myself drifting toward the stables, boots heavy with grit. The earthy perfume of hay and warm animals wrapped my senses as I stepped inside. Clay sat on a crate, elbow braced on his knee, hand resting against Lemella’s narrow neck—the goat Anna rode into Sol. It flicked an ear but did not stir. Her kidslay curled at her hooves, tiny sides rising and falling in uneven sleep.
“You’ve traded a bed for a crate,” I said, voice rough as gravel. I leaned against the stall door and let my weight hang there.
Clay smiled without opening his eyes. “It’s quieter here—peaceful.”
“Gayle?”
“Still asleep. Greaves as well. But Anna has improved. She moved out of the medical ward this afternoon.”
Greaves haunted my thoughts. Even if he woke, he wouldn’t rise the same man. No one walked away unchanged after being thrown from a mountain by a dragon. It brought lifelong consequences.
“You cannot fly over the mountains,” Clay said after a moment.
“I dare not risk it.” I tipped my head back against the wood and stared through the open rafters at a sky littered with stars. “Four dragons to counter the two compromised. If one turns on Radaan, she will never recover.”
“Where is your faith, oh king?”
A bitter sound left me. “Worn thin. Frayed down to threads. Bound by the limits of my own mortality.”
Elohios moved through me. But right now, my body felt splintered, my heart scattered like ash on wind. The paths ahead offered no clarity. Should I fly over and trust creatures who had already faltered—or tunnel beneath Sol and rely on divine light?
“Take Lemella and Er’oer,” Clay murmured. “Let them cross the Craggs first. They could scout a path, find your opening.”
He knew the climb might kill them. Predators stalked those heights. And still—he offered them without hesitation, the only goats sturdy enough to bear riders.
“And when they reach the other side?” I asked. “Then what? My army cannot cross the Andeluith in days. It would takemonths to move men, supplies, siege engines. By then…” I let the thought die.
Clay exhaled, slow. “Then we continue.”
Through the mountain. That was the plan I allowed them to believe.
But another path simmered and coiled within the shadows of my mind. Darker. Simpler. And my soul had already resigned itself to that fate.
An army might not cross in time.
But one man could.
A trade. A king for a queen.
If no passage revealed itself in three days, I would climb the Craggs alone. I would walk into Vellos and offer their king exactly what he desired.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Nienna
My throat was raw. From the screaming, from that tube—I would eat until I threw up if it kept Tallon from shoving that contraption back down my throat.
I slept from sheer exhaustion. Dreamless, hollow sleep, haunting me even in the faint stirrings of consciousness.
When I woke, Tallon dressed me once again in the translucent red fabric, a mockery of a dress that left my skin burning with shame beneath its gauzy threads. I had no strength left to fight it. My body betrayed me before my will could form.
“Why are you waiting?” I asked, my voice brittle, as the servant pinned my blonde strands in place.
Tallon only arched a brow, urging me to elaborate.
