The battlefield stank of iron and smoke.
By nightfall, the river had turned black with silt and blood. Crows circled overhead, their cries sharp against the exhausted silence. Fires smoldered where oil-soaked arrows had struck. The victory was theirs, yet Meredith could not feel it.
She sat on her horse, shoulders trembling, hands numb around the reins. Her gown was stiff with dried mud, her face streaked with soot. She had spoken, commanded, screamed herself raw. Now the noise of war had drained away, leaving only the weight of what she had seen.
So many bodies. So much blood.
"Your Grace."
She looked up. One of Kael's captains knelt, helmet tucked under his arm. His voice was steady, but his eyes were hollow. "The field is secured. The wounded are being gathered. Harrow's survivors fled east."
Kael answered before she could. "Burn the bodies. We have no time for burials. Let the smoke carry their sins."
The captain saluted and left.
Meredith's stomach turned. Burn them. As if they were refuse, not men. As if the screams she still heard in her skull were not human. She gripped the saddle tighter, her vision blurring.
"Enough," Kael's voice cut through the fog in her mind. He rode close, his stallion brushing against hers. His armor gleamed dark, splattered in blood, his face unreadable. "Do not let them see you waver."
"I…" Her voice broke. She swallowed hard. "I can still see their faces. They looked at me like I—like I was salvation. And then they drowned."
Kael's gaze hardened, though his voice dropped low. "You saved more than you lost. That is war. Grieve later, but not here."
She wanted to scream at him. To tell him she wasn't made for this, that she hadn't been born with steel in her veins. She wanted to tell him she was just a girl who once painted signs for pep rallies and dreamed of college games, not mass graves.
But her throat closed.
That night, when the army made camp along the ridge, Meredith collapsed. She tried to hold herself upright, to walk among the wounded and offer words, but the strength bled out of her. She sank to her knees outside her tent, the cold earth seeping into her bones.
The healers called it exhaustion, shock. They said her body had given all it could. But Meredith knew the truth: her mind was fracturing.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the river swallowing men whole. She heard Harrow's chant—"Harrow! Harrow!"—echoing in her skull. Her chest tightened until she could barely breathe. She curled into herself, clutching her knees, the world spinning.
And beneath it all, a deeper terror gnawed.
This is who I am now. Not a cheerleader. Not a daughter. A queen who sends men to die. A queen who burns bodies.
Kael entered the tent sometime after midnight. He did not kneel, did not soothe. He only stood there, silent, watching as she shivered against her blankets.
"Is this the cost?" she whispered hoarsely, unable to look at him. "Is this what you wanted for me?"
"It is what survival demands," he said.
She laughed then, a broken sound. "Survival. You think I've survived this? My world is gone. My father's dead. I can't go home. And today I killed people, Kael. Me. Not just you. Me."
Her voice cracked into sobs, raw and helpless.
For a long time, he said nothing. Then, quietly: "You stood with me. You commanded. They will not forget. Neither will I."
But his words, meant as comfort, crushed her deeper. Because she realized then what she feared most—that history would write her name in the same ink as his. That she would not be remembered as Meredith, the girl who once laughed with her cheer squad, but as the queen who drowned men in rivers.
And as the night deepened, fever took her. She tossed and muttered, delirium dragging her into half-dreams of fire, smoke, and her father's burial. The hush of courtiers as his coffin was lowered. The whispers of a decree spoken too fast. The shadows of enemies moving in silence.
When she woke at dawn, her body was weak, her head pounding, and her hands trembling. The camp bustled with movement, Kael's men singing of victory. But all Meredith felt was a void, wide and echoing.
She whispered into the morning light: "If I am to live in this nightmare, I will master it. Or it will consume me."
And for the first time, she thought of magic. Not as myth. But as possibility. A key. Maybe to power. Maybe to home. Maybe to escape.