“…won’t take much longer.”
“Commander will come.”
“You think so?”
“No doubt about it.”
A pause.
Then the words that freeze the blood in my veins.
“The Queen says when he arrives, we destroy the human’s other arm.”
My heart slams against my ribs.
No.
No no no?—
The door opens, and a guard steps inside. He notices my eyes open. “Awake again?”
I try to push myself up. I realise it’s a mistake as the room spins violently.
The guard sighs like he’s dealing with a stubborn animal. “Sleep.”
Something hard cracks against the side of my skull, and the world goes black again.
VAREK
The maps are wrong.
Not completely. That would be simple to correct. But wrong in ways that matter—subtle misalignments between reported patrol routes and observed movement, gaps where there should be consistency, patterns that almost hold and then fail at the edges. Those are the most dangerous errors. The kind that cost lives.
I brace one hand against the table and study the spread of parchment, charcoal lines, and weighted markers. Kael’s reports sit layered with Aelith’s observations, each accurate on its own and incomplete when combined. Kael thinks in structure. Aelith thinks in disruption. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient.
I adjust a marker by a fraction, aligning it with the latest southern report. The correction does not solve the problem.
Nothing does.
The pain in my chest spikes again.
It has been constant for days. A steady, internal pressure as though something vital has been pulled out of alignment and left that way. It is not an injury I can locate or treat. It does not respond to rest or discipline. It exists beneath both.
The bond.
Distance has made it worse.
I ignore it.
I have learned to function with worse.
“Still trying to solve the entire kingdom before sunrise?” Shanae’s voice, threaded with amusement, carries easily across the room.
I do not look at her immediately. “I am reducing variables.”
“That’s a generous way of describing what you’re doing,” she says, coming to stand beside the table. “From here it looks like brooding with charts.”
I glance at her. She leans against the edge of the table, armour set aside, weapons still within reach. She’s relaxed in a way few people ever are in Dathanor. She has always balanced readiness with ease in a way I have never quite understood.
