Chapter 1: Oaths and Embers
The air in the war room tasted of charcoal and cold stone. Althea stood beside the massive obsidian table, her boots rooted to the flagstones as if she’d grown there. The torchlight, a dirty orange, guttered across maps pinned by daggers, each parchment a testament to a kingdom slowly bleeding out.
Prince Kael leaned over them, his silhouette sharp against the gloom. His silver hair, usually bound back, fell loose around a face all hard angles and focused fury. “Explain this,” he said, his voice quiet. It was the quiet that worried her.
His finger jabbed at a point on the northern map, where the inked borders of Eldrath frayed into the wild, unmarked forests of the elves. A small, carved obsidian raven—Lorcan’s sigil—had been placed there. Around it, several of their own wooden knight pieces lay tipped on their sides.
“Scouting patrols,” Althea said, forcing her voice steady. “The fourth this month. They’re not engaging our main forces. They’re vanishing the edges. Whittling us.”
“Whittling.” Kael repeated the word like it was a disease. He straightened, and his blue eyes found hers. The torch flame reflected in them, twin points of cold fire. “He’s not whittling.He’s laughing. He slips past our walls, our patrols, our dragons.” His gaze held hers, unblinking. “Especially our dragons.”
A flush crept up her neck. She could feel Zephyr, a distant, sun-warmed pressure at the back of her mind, a ripple of irritation at the prince’s tone. Easy, she thought, pushing calm down the bond. He’s just worried.
“Zephyr’s flight pattern was routine,” she said, defending her dragon, defending herself. “The mist off the Blackridge was thick that dawn. You can’t scent what isn’t there.”
“Can’t you?” Kael’s smile was a thin, unpleasant slash. He paced around the table, the sound of his boots the only noise in the cavernous room. “This ‘elf-kin bastard,’ as the council so delicately puts it, was raised in this court. He knows our routines. He knows our weaknesses.” He stopped directly opposite her, palms flat on the obsidian. “He knows you.”
The words hung in the smoky air.Lorcan. The word was a key that turned in a lock she kept tightly shut. Memories, unwelcome and bright, tried to surface: sparring sessions in the sunlit yard, laughter shared over stolen wine, a conversation that had lasted too long into a starlit night. She shoved them down, hard.
“He knew a junior rider with more enthusiasm than sense,” Althea corrected, her tone flattening. “That girl is gone.”
“Is she?” Kael studied her, a tactician assessing a battlefield. “The report from the outpost at Briargate said the attack was preceded by a single, low dragon pass. A reconnaissance. The green they described? It matches Zephyr.”
Ice water trickled down her spine. “Impossible. We were fifty leagues south that day.”
“Were you?”
The implication was a physical blow. Her chin came up. “You question my loyalty? My oath?”
“I question everyone.” He pushed off the table and walked to the narrow window slit, staring out at the darkening sky. “This war is changing. It’s no longer about field formations and cavalry charges. It’s about shadows and whispers. And he’s winning. He’s making us look weak. Ripe for the taking.”
He turned back, and all the frustrated royal weight was in his gaze. “The next time your patrol sights him, or his forces, or even a whisper of his standard, you will not hesitate. You will not engage. You will not attempt to capture the great Lorcan for glory.” He walked toward her, each step measured. “You will pour dragonfire on his position until the rock runs like wax and the air melts. You will burn him to cinders.”
The command was absolute, final. It was the law of the kingdom, the logic of total war. It was what she had sworn to do.
But her stomach twisted.
Kael saw it. He always saw the cracks. He closed the last step between them, his voice dropping to a growl she felt in her teeth. “You’re my best rider, Althea. So when I give that order, you will obey it. Unless you’ve forgotten what you swore to protect.”
Her own words, her childhood vow to a younger, less haunted prince, echoed in the silence. The air between them was thick with the scent of him—metal, wintergreen, and utter conviction. For a wild, treacherous second, she wasn’t looking at her prince, but at a man, close enough to touch, whose will was an iron cage around her own.
She broke the gaze, looking down at the map, at the little obsidian raven mocking her from the forest. Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. The pain was clean, clarifying.
“Never,” she whispered, the word scraping her throat raw.
For a long moment, he just looked at her. Then he gave a single, curt nod. “See that you remember. Dismissed.”
The words were a release of pressure. She turned on her heel, the clack of her boots too loud in the quiet, and strode for the arched doorway. She didn’t breathe until she was out in the broad, torch-lit corridor, the cooler air washing over her face.
He doubts us, Zephyr’s thought slid into her mind, a low rumble of offense.
He doubts everyone. It’s his job. She sent back, but the bond thrummed with shared agitation. She needed the sky.
She was halfway to the outer bailey when a hand caught her elbow. She whirled, reaching for the dagger at her hip.
It was Galen, one of the older stable-masters, his face ashen under the torchlight. “Rider Althea. You’re needed at the west gate. Now.”
“What is it?”
He just shook his head, his eyes wide. “It’s… they just brought in the scout. The one from the missing Briargate patrol.”
Althea ran.
The west gate was a chaos of murmured voices and torch shadows dancing on stone. A knot of guards and a few early-rising servants had formed, their faces tight with horror. They parted for her.
On the cobblestones lay a stretcher. On it was what remained of Arlen, a young scout with a quick smile. He was alive. That was the worst part.
He was utterly, completely blind, his eyes seared shut by a heat that had left the surrounding skin unnaturally smooth and pale. In his trembling hands, clutched to his chest, was a single, perfect obsidian raven, its wings folded.
But it was his mouth that held the silence captive. His lips, burned and blistered, were stretched into a grotesque, open-mouthed smile. A healer knelt beside him, weeping silently as she tried to drip water between those rigid, grinning teeth.
A guard nearby whispered to another, his voice cracking. “Found him just sitting on the road, facing the castle. Like he was delivered.”
Althea’s blood turned to slurry in her veins. This wasn’t a battlefield injury. This was a message.A signature.
Burn him to cinders.
The prince’s order roared in her head. But this was the answer. Not ash, but a living, breathing testament to a different kind of fire. A refined, cruel, and personal fire.
Her hand flew to her mouth. She turned away from the horrific, smiling face, her stomach heaving, as the first light of dawn began to bleed like a wound across the eastern sky.