The palace night had an easy hush—gaslit corridors, muffled conversations, the distant scrape of boots as lords and ladies dispersed. On a high balcony that faced the city’s river, Cassian and Selene leaned against the carved stone balustrade. Below, lanterns shimmered on the boulevard, and the last of the court’s laughter drifted into the cold air.

  Cassian looked softer in the night than he had in the hall—no throne shadows, no audience. The boy’s pride was gone for a moment, replaced by a private frustration. “My father’s been hounding me for a bride since I could walk in polished boots,” he said, voice low enough that the stone eavesdroppers might not catch it. “This was always a possibility." He shrugged his shoulders and continued,

  "You have no one to blame but yourself for being so obviously talented, clever, and alluring.”

  Selene arched one brow. The moon picked out a violet glint in her dark hair. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Crown Prince,” she teased. However, her fingers fidgeted in a thin, nervous rhythm against the balustrade. The smile was half humor, half calculation. “Your pleading compliments are rather effective.”

  Cassian feigned offense, then grinned. “Noted. I’ll remember that for the future.”

  Selene flicked her gaze to him, lips quivering. “Careful. If your flattery grows too heavy, I might think you’re sincere.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?” His grin widened.

  She shook her head, almost laughing despite herself. “You’re insufferable.”

  Selene turned back toward the river, smirking faintly to herself as if to end the banter there. But Cassian’s smile slipped, the warmth falling from his face in an instant. “Be cautious. My father forbids me from riding with you. Says I’ve been gone too long already. Whatever you face, it won’t be with me at your side.”

  Selene straightened. “I can take care of myself. Especially if Aelun of the Ashen Forest keeps to his neutrality.”

  Cassian glanced toward the far windows, where the library’s lamp was still brazenly bright. “Aelun’s neutrality is thin comfort. I’d still rather be there to see you don’t get carved apart. ”

  Selene tilted her head, letting the corner of her mouth curl. “Then you’d better pray I come back. Or else you’ll need to find another witch to flatter into liking you.”

  Cassian chuckled, but his eyes betrayed calculation beneath the charm. “Impossible. There’s only one who bites back properly." Selene sighed and then got more serious herself,

  "But while you're here, there is something you can do for me."

  "What would that be, my dearest?" Cassian smirked as Selene grimaced,

  “Please, don’t. And you can do some preliminary searching for those hidden bloodlines.” Her tone sharpened. “Your mother’s necklace, Cassian. It will heat up if any of the old blood still lingering-”

  Cassian cut off her train of thought by catching her hand. Before she could snatch it back, he turned her palm upward and pressed his lips to it, eyes fixed on hers. It was half-mockery, half-dare, a parody of devotion rather than the real thing.

  “I understand,” he murmured against her skin, the grin curling his voice. “I’ll do anything you desire, my—”

  “Stop it!” Selene yanked her hand free, glaring. Her cheeks burned, though whether from irritation or the sheer audacity of the gesture, she’d never admit.

  Cassian laughed under his breath, straightening with a flourish as though he’d won the exchange. “One day you’ll thank me for my charm,” he said lightly, already turning back toward the hall.

  Selene muttered something sharp in Old Valenforian under her breath — a word that meant both curse and promise — before pushing off the balustrade. He left whistling, smug as ever, and she walked away seething, determined not to let him think he’d unsettled her.

  The morning air in the royal training grounds was knife-bright. Woodchips flew as training swords met; men shouted cadence; the Inquisitors moved like a unit of coiled steel. Darius worked at the dummies with a violence that had nothing of sport in it—each strike was a question thrown at the world, each blow a desperate answer. Around him, Jareth, Calder, Tomas, and Kaelen—the twins’—Myrren, and a half-dozen hardened men watched without reproach. They’d all seen what words could fail to fix; they knew when a man needed to bleed the pressure out of his chest.

  The others made no joke. No one told him to compose himself. They understood.

  After a time, Myrren came up close, voice low. “Pontifex Tharion was here before dawn,” he said. “He told us—” Myrren’s face pinched as she imitated the Pontifex’s quell—“‘Follow the witch’s guidance. Protect her with your lives. Should she fall, so will the faithful.’”

  The words had a ring that stopped the blood in Darius’s ears. Jareth spat in the dust.

  “Crusades have been levied for smaller slights,” Tomas muttered. “And a crusade led by the Crown and two witch-kings—” He shrugged. “We die, the faithful die. That’s a lot of dead.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  The men glanced at Darius, pity braided with anger, and in that look lay an unspoken pact. They couldn’t put a blade through Selene’s heart — not with the Emperor’s decree hanging over them, not with the threat of war if she fell. But nothing forbade sharp tongues, cold silences, or small cruelties along the road. They’d make her life as hard and bitter as stone underfoot, reminding her with every mile that she was only tolerated, never welcomed. It was a promise of misery in place of murder, a blunt thing, ugly and human.

  Darius kept hitting the dummy. Every blow sent splinters. Sweat stung his eyes.

  Aelun arrived wearing the forest’s calm like a cloak. He walked into the ring with unhurried grace. “Darius,” he said by way of greeting, voice like wind through tall pines. “What poor form from someone calling himself Garran’s son.”

  Darius whirled before he could temper the blow. The training sword came up, shaking. “You have no right,” he spat. “You sided with her the moment she stepped into a hall that should have burned her.”

  Aelun tilted his head. “I sided with no one,” he said, mild as rain. “I spoke the truth. If you hear that as her banner, then that is your anger speaking.”

  His mouth quirked—not a smile but a softness. He picked up a spare wooden blade and tapped it against his palm as if it were a tambourine. “Then try me, if truth irks you so. Then beat lies into me.” The challenge was a gentle thing.

  Darius surged like an avalanche. His style was all weight and purpose: a man who’d learned to make steel answers with bone. He advanced in closed, single-minded bursts—short, brutal slashes, each one designed to end things quickly. Aelun folded and flowed like water around each strike, deflecting with the lightest pressure, letting Darius’ momentum create the openings he needed.

  Darius lunged low, a savage undercut meant to tear Aelun’s blade aside. Aelun shifted as though the floor itself tilted, the strike cutting nothing but air. Darius snapped backhand, a cleaving stroke. Wood rang against wood as Aelun’s wrist turned, redirecting the blow, his footwork sliding forward with a counter that never landed.

  Aelun fought like water, his wooden blade flicking out not to wound but to unbalance, touching Darius’s momentum and pulling it astray. To anyone watching, his movements seemed almost lazy, but the tempo shifted beneath that leisure. Darius had to fight harder just to keep up.

  His breath came ragged. Each strike thundered, arms trembling, rage poured into every swing. Force alone could not finish the tale he wanted to tell.

  Between the cracks of wood, Aelun’s voice threaded soft and steady.

  “Do you think Garran would want you to swing until your arms gave out over a body already cold?”

  “She murdered him!” Darius roared, the cry half accusation, half prayer. The yard blurred; wood chips flew.

  “No,” Aelun said, parrying with calm precision. “She ended an enemy.”

  “How can you say that?” Darius pressed, fury stumbling into his feet. “He was a man who protected people. He was—”

  “He was your father,” Aelun answered. His gaze did not waver. “I saw him do his duty. He slew witches. Some of those he slew were truly innocent. Do they deserve vengeance as well?”

  Darius’s fist glowed faint green with Vaylora as he struck again, grief burning in every blow. “They were witches. He did his duty. She was a witch!”

  “Is your thirst for revenge also duty?” Aelun’s voice was iron wrapped in silk. “What would your father have you do? Swing until the world collapses, until nothing of meaning is left?”

  The green in Darius’s hand flared; his breath came steel-hard. He launched into a flurry meant to end the lesson with broken wood. Aelun slipped one blade-tip under Darius’s guard, then another, then a twist: in a motion like wind peeling a leaf from a branch, he knocked the wooden sword from Darius’s hand.

  Wood spun. The training sword struck stone and clattered away. Darius’s chest heaved. He had not expected the sudden absence of resistance; he’d been carried by rage. The other Inquisitors stood around the ring as if hearing a bell; silence rolled out from them.

  Aelun’s face was close enough to count the tiny scars along Darius’s jaw. He did not press his advantage. He touched Darius’s shoulder with nothing more than a palm—the gesture small, human.

  “You are allowed to be angry,” Aelun said quietly, the world shrinking to the two of them. “The rage remembers what you loved. That rage is not pointless. But fire untended will consume you. Use it. Point it, or it will point for you.”

  Darius sank to his knees. He stared at his palms, at the faint green aura that clung like ash. Garran’s voice—memory and lesson—came soft as a ghost: If I can save a thousand lives by giving my own, I will. Better to leave work undone than to leave no work at all.

  He closed his eyes and tasted old iron and older promises. “He would have me do what he did,” Darius whispered. “Protect. Not pursue meaningless vengeance that costs nations.”

  Aelun’s hand rested there, steadying. “Then do it. Let your fire forge a path. Let anger be the bell that calls you to task, not the blade that severs you from it.”

  Darius’s shoulders dropped in a small, terrible surrender. “If it’s her death that brings more blood than it averts,” he said, the words a grinding thing, “then I will not have that blood on my hands. If killing her makes ten thousand die, then my blade will not—”

  He let the sentence trail. The men around him shifted, some with misplaced anger, others with a new weariness. Jareth wrapped a heavy cloak around his shoulders as if the cold might help the heat inside.

  Aelun’s smile was almost sad. “Good. Let us find them—those Apostates and Sorcerers. Let us cleanse what can be cleansed. If she stands with us, then you will have your chance to keep people safe. If she does not, then you will have answered your own heart.”

  Darius breathed, the decision settling like a stone placed at the center of his chest. He did not rise at once—not yet. The knees were both bruised and sore. He looked up slowly at the others. The men nodded, not in blind loyalty but in grudging acceptance of the narrow, necessary road.

  When Darius finally stood, his hands were steady. He picked up his spare sword from the bench, the wood heavier somehow. He met Aelun’s eyes and found there less patience than before—more like a promise kept between men.

  “We go,” he said, voice low and certain. “We find them. We cleanse the corrupt.”

  And though Garran’s absence ached like hunger, the work—sudden, cruel, and necessary—gave him a place to stand. Darius then shouted,

  "What are all of you standing around for? Get back to training! We have Demonkin to hunt!" The others nodded and smiled as they went back to their training. Darius looked at Aelun and pointed his blade at him,

  "Another round."

  Aelun nodded at his request and readied his wooden sword once again.