Chapter 23: The War Room Revelation
The drainage pipe agreement was signed with a blob of wax and a satisfied grunt from the farmer. The betrothal dispute had been tabled pending a geological survey of the dowry lands—Mary’s suggestion, which pleased her to no end. The rhythm of practical problems was a welcome drone. For a moment, it almost felt like governance.
Then the doors at the far end of the throne room groaned inward, not with the hesitant shuffle of a petitioner, but with the synchronized thrust of two royal guards yielding to a force they couldn’t physically block.
Five figures strode in. Their clothes were rich, fur-trimmed, but dyed in the ochres and murky browns of the Sunless Reaches to the east. No bows. No formal pause. They walked to the center of the marble floor as if they owned the chill in the air, stopping just short of the first frost-rimed step of the dais.
The lead delegate was a man with a face like a hatchet, lean and sharp. His gaze swept over Ellie and Nancy on their thrones, and his mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something colder.
“Majesties of Eldoria,” he said, his voice carrying without seeming to raise it. “I bring words from King Borin of the Reaches.”
Ellie’s posture was perfect, a queen carved from ice. “You are received. Speak your words.”
The hatchet-faced man didn’t bother with formalities. “You occupy lands that bleed warm water into the glacier valleys. This geothermal bounty is a geological accident. Your claim is an accident of birth. We have need of these springs. Our forges thirst. Our people freeze.” He paused, letting the silence thicken. “You will cede the Southern Ventlands, the Eastern Hotstream Basin, and free access to the Firefall Gorge. You will do this by the next full moon.”
Nancy’s voice, when it came, was clear honey over steel. “We will do no such thing. Those lands feed our people. The fires beneath them are ours to steward. Your king’s thirst is not our decree.”
The delegate’s eyes flicked to Nancy’s swollen middle, then to Ellie’s, and that twitch became a full, disdainful curl of the lip. “We wondered at the silence from your borders. Now we see. The fabled dual monarchy is… indisposed. Breeding. Swollen with heirs while your realm grows weak with comfort.”
A gasp rippled through the courtiers lining the walls. My hand moved to the pistol grip of my slung rifle, my thumb finding the safety. Cool. Solid.
The man pressed on, venomously gentle. “Perhaps you are too full of mother’s milk to understand strategy. Or perhaps your minds are addled by the hormones of your condition. It is a common affliction. A kingdom led by pregnant women is a kingdom begging to be fed upon. King Borin offers a merciful alternative to the… inevitable violence. Cede the lands. Spare your soft bodies the trauma of war. We are not without pity for creatures in your delicate state.”
Every word was a calculated violation. He wasn’t just declaring war. He was stripping them of royalty, of authority, reducing them to biological functions in front of their entire court. The humiliation was a weapon as palpable as a blade.
Ellie did not move. But the temperature in the throne room seemed to drop another ten degrees. The blue fire in the great hearth guttered.
“Your message is received,” Ellie said, her tone flat, absolute zero. “Your king’s pity is rejected. Your demands are refuse. You have your answer.”
The delegate bowed, a shallow, insulting dip of his head. “Then you have your war. We will drink from your hot springs soon enough. And perhaps, when our soldiers are thirsty, they will find other… fountains to tap.”
His meaning hung in the air, crude and monstrous. He turned on his heel, his retinue following, and they strode out the way they came. The massive doors thudded shut behind them, a sound of finality.
For three heartbeats, there was utter silence in the throne room.
Then Ellie stood. “Court is dismissed. All of you. Out.”
It wasn’t a shout. It was a crack of authority that sent courtiers scattering like leaves before a sudden gale. In moments, the vast chamber was empty but for the four of us and the roaring silence.
Mary let out a low whistle. “Well. That’s that.”
A fierce, wild grin spread across my face. The planning was over. The abstraction was gone. “Southern Ventlands. That’s perfect terrain. Open approaches, sightlines for miles. We can set the 155s on the reverse slope of the Gorge, hammer them as they march from the Reaches. The 75s can enfilade the basin approach.”
“Yes,” Mary said, her eyes alight with the same fierce calculus. “They’ll be massed for a frontal occupation move. They won’t be expecting indirect fire from over the horizon. It’s not a tactic here. We can shred their supply columns before they even know we’re engaged.”
We turned, the tactical bubble wrapping around us. The insult was fuel now, converted into targeting solutions.
“Amy.”
Ellie’s voice cut through. I turned. She was still standing, but now she was trembling. Not with fear, but with a raw, violent fury that made the air around her shimmer. Nancy was beside her, one hand on her arm, the other pressed protectively over her belly, her face pale.
“You will be leading this army,” Ellie said, each word sharp as a glass shard.
“Well, yeah,” I said, my excitement faltering at the look in her eyes. “We planned for this. We have the guns. We have the plan.”
“You are six months pregnant,” Nancy whispered, the horror in her voice a stark contrast to our zeal. “Both of you. You’d be on a battlefield.”
“We’ll be behind the artillery line,” Mary said, frowning as if correcting a minor logistical error. “It’s the safest place. We direct fire. We’re not leading a cavalry charge.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Ellie’s control shattered. The sound echoed off the marble. “You think they fight by rules? You heard him! If a scout party gets through, if the line buckles and you’re overrun…” She choked, struggling for breath. “Capture isn’t death. It’s a workshop for monsters. What he said about the springs… that wasn’t just bluster. It was a promise. They would use your bodies as a message. They would break you open in ways you can’t engineer your way out of.”
The image hit me like a physical blow. Not of death—I’d factored that. But of the specific, inventive cruelty implied. Of being rendered down to meat and terror, of the lives inside us being used as leverage for torture. My hand went instinctively to my own stomach, to the firm, curved reality of it.
“You think we haven’t thought of that?” Mary’s voice was tight, defensive. “We have rifles. We have pistols. We have a round reserved. We won’t be taken.”
“You can’t guarantee that!” Nancy cried, tears spilling over now. “A stray arrow, a mage’s spell you haven’t seen, a slip on the ice! You’re not just soldiers. You’re my mothers. You’re carrying my siblings. I can’t… we can’t sit here in this vault waiting to hear that you’ve been dragged into some filthy camp!”
The enormity of it all crashed down. The cold equations of ballistics met the hotter, messier equations of love and terror. Ellie walked down the dais steps until she was right in front of me. She cupped my face, her thumbs brushing my cheeks. Her fury had melted into something desperate.
“Please,” she breathed, her forehead nearly touching mine. The scent of her, vanilla and milk and fear, filled my senses. “You taught them the physics of falling bodies. Now understand the physics of a breaking heart. If they take you, they break all of us. Forever. The war would be over because we would be over. We’d surrender everything to get you back, and they’d know it.”
I looked into her eyes, then at Mary, seeing the first crack in her analytical armor—a flicker of doubt, of imagining the unimaginable. I looked at Nancy, her body a twin to ours, her face wet with the future she was picturing.
The tactical thrill was gone, evaporated. What remained was the map, the guns, the enemy, and this terrible, vulnerable love pulsing between us, as tangible as a heartbeat. The war was here, in this room, already started.
“We have to fight,” I said, my voice husky. “We can’t show weakness.”
“Then we fight a different way,” Ellie murmured, her mind racing behind her eyes. “We don’t give them a front line. We give them a storm.”