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Ridha could only nod.
The great hall of Kovalinn loomed over them, set high into the cliffs, alongside a half-frozen waterfall spilling into the fjord. Its walls and long, angled rooftops gleamed with snow.
“What about you?” Kesar gestured to Ridha, waving a hand over the princess’s own furs. “You have no reason to remain here. We expected you to be gone a week ago, off to rouse more enclaves to war. Or can you send, as your mother did?”
Ridha snarled in frustration. “No, I have none of the power my mother wields, but what I lack in magic, I make up for in sense. Would that I could send, and raise the immortal armies of the Ward.”
“So why stay?” Kesar said again, pressing closer.
Ridha drew back her broad shoulders. “I will not ride away from a fight I pulled you into.”
“I suspected as much,” Kesar said with a smirk, returning to her ice-breaking. “So did Dyrian.”
Grimacing, Ridha did the same, wrenching her ax from the fjord’s frozen grip. She tightened her grasp, raising the poleax high before driving it into the ice with all her considerable strength. It shattered beneath her, cracks spreading in every direction. It wasn’t the same as training, preparing for the war to come, but the exertion pleased Ridha all the same.
She glanced back up at Kovalinn, and the long, zigzagging road up the cliff face that led to the enclave. A few horses and Vedera moved along it, passing back and forth between the hall and the fjord docks below. Ridha’s keen eyes saw them all with hawk’s precision. Like the clans of the Jyd, the Kovalinn enclave was home to Vedera from all across the world, each varying in appearance and origin.
One of them stood out, perched on the ramparts crowning the walls. She was as still as the bears carved into her gates, and just as fearsome. Ridha noted her pale white skin, red hair, and steely disposition. Her manner had not changed since Ridha first came to the enclave and begged her son to fight.
“His mother does not like me,” she growled, lowering her eyes from the Lady of Kovalinn.
“Lucky the Monarch has a mind of his own, far sharper than his years might suggest.” Kesar added, “And Lady Eyda doesn’t like anyone.”
“She’s a cousin of my mother’s,” Ridha said. “Distant, but still family.”
Kesar only laughed. “Most of the older generations are by now,bound either by blood or our shared destiny in this realm. If you were expecting a warm welcome from one such as Eyda, you were mistaken.”
“Clearly.” The Lady of Kovalinn still stood the walls, staring out into the long, craggy jaws of the fjord, toward the Glorysea. “She seems to be made of stone.”
“She is Glorianborn.” Kesar’s joyful air faded a little, and a grim shadow Ridha recognized passed over her face. “We are graver than you children of the Ward.”
Ridha tasted bitterness on her own tongue.The light of different stars,she thought, remembering her mother and how she used to glare at the sky, as if she could will the stars of Glorian to replace the stars of the Ward.
“I know that more than most,” the princess muttered, cracking an ice floe to pieces. They scattered across the frigid waters, white against iron gray.
“Do not hold it against her, Princess.” Kesar dropped her voice. “Eyda did not cross to Allward by choice.”
In the great hall, Eyda stood taller than the rest, her long red hair plaited into two braids, with a circlet of hammered iron on her brow. Her gown was chain mail; a fine white fox fur draped around her shoulders. Every piece of her screamed warrior queen, but nothing so much as the scars. The ones on her knuckles were ancient, from brawling. But the other, the pearly white line across her throat? Ridha saw it in her mind.
Not the work of a blade. But a rope.
Her eyes widened and Kesar nodded gravely.
“She was forced into Allward as punishment. The old king ofGlorian gave her a choice between death and exile, and this is what she chose.” She raised her hands, gesturing to the fjord, and the lands beyond it. “Whatever joy she found in this mortal realm died with Dyrian’s father.”
That was a tale Ridha knew.
Dragonflame and ruin,she remembered. It was three centuries ago, and still she could smell the air choked with ash even miles away from the battlefield. The beast had been mountainous, ancient, its jeweled hide stronger than steel. Now its bones were dust, its shadow gone from the realm, like all the other Spindleborn monsters upon the Ward. So many Vedera had not returned, including Domacridhan’s parents. They had died bringing down the last dragon left upon the Ward, and so had the old Monarch of Kovalinn.
“Three hundred years since the enclaves came together and fought what the Ward could not defeat,” Ridha said, the weight of it sinking in.
Kesar nodded. “Until now.”
“Until now,” Ridha answered.
“How many will not return from this battlefield?” Kesar murmured.
Ridha steeled herself. “Everyone, if the battle is not fought at all.”
