The ruins groaned around them like a dying beast, embers spitting angrily from broken oak beams that had once supported the most magnificent hall in all the southern provinces. Stone cracked and settled with sounds like breaking bones, and somewhere in the distance, a section of the outer wall finally surrendered to the flames with a crash that shook the very foundations.
Selene sat motionless in the ash-thick air, Isolde's lifeless body still cradled against her chest as if her warmth might somehow call back what had been stolen. Her sobs had spent themselves to a hollow silence more terrible than any scream. The tears had carved clean tracks through the soot on her cheeks, but now even those had dried, leaving her face a mask of grief and grime.
Alaric remained at her side like a sentinel, one strong arm wrapped around her shoulders. Though not bound to her by blood—he had been fostered here since childhood after his own family fell to plague—he had been more brother to her than many shared by birth. His face, sharp-featured and prematurely aged by loss, was streaked with the same soot and grief that marked her own.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with smoke and unspoken fears. In the distance, they could hear the occasional shout of soldiers still searching through the outer buildings, their voices echoing off stone walls like hunting hounds following a scent.
"We can't stay here," Alaric said at last, his voice rough from breathing smoke and swallowing his own tears. The words seemed to cost him, as if speaking them made the nightmare real in a way that silence could not. "The king's men will return to finish what they started. They always do—it's how these purges work."
Selene shook her head with stubborn desperation, her arms tightening around Isolde's still form. "I can't leave her." Her gaze remained fixed on her sister's pale face, peaceful now in a way that made the violence done to her seem even more obscene. "She's all I had left of home. Of family. Of everything that mattered."
Alaric's grip on her shoulders tightened, and she could feel the tremor in his hands that spoke of his own barely-contained anguish. He had loved Isolde too, in his way—had taught her to ride, had brought her trinkets from his travels, had listened patiently to her excited chatter about court gossip and pretty gowns.
"Selene, listen to me." His voice carried the authority he had learned from years of training in arms and leadership. "If you stay here, you'll die beside her before dawn breaks. Those soldiers will return with torches and spears, and they'll search every pile of rubble until they're certain no witness lives to tell what happened here. Do you want your sister's death to be for nothing? Do you want the story of tonight to die with you?"
Her lips trembled as the brutal logic of his words sank in. The thought of abandoning Isolde—of leaving her sister's body to lie alone among strangers—cut deeper than any physical wound. But somewhere beneath the grief, she could hear the truth in what he said. The soldiers would return. They always did.
"I promised her," Selene whispered, her voice breaking like glass. "When we were small and she had nightmares about the old wars, I promised I would always protect her from the monsters in the dark."
"You did everything a sister could do," Alaric said with fierce conviction. He reached down with gentle fingers to close Isolde's staring eyes, his touch reverent as a priest performing last rites. "You fought for her. You would have died for her. But you can't save her now—no one can. The only thing left is to save yourself. And one day, when you're strong enough, you can avenge her."
The word struck Selene like lightning illuminating a dark landscape: avenge.
It settled in her chest beside the grief, different in texture but no less intense. Where sorrow was cold and hollow, this new feeling burned with steady heat. She pressed her forehead to Isolde's still chest one last time, breathing in the fading scent of lavender water and the smoke that clung to everything now. The fabric of her sister's gown was cold beneath her cheek, stiff with things she refused to name.
Then, with hands that shook like autumn leaves, she laid Isolde down upon the scorched flagstones. The act of letting go felt like tearing out her own heart, but she did it anyway. She smoothed her sister's hair one final time and whispered a prayer to gods she was no longer certain existed.
Alaric helped her to her feet, his arm steady around her waist as her legs threatened to buckle. "We have to go now. Dawn isn't far off, and they'll search more thoroughly by daylight."
The halls of House Valen were unrecognizable as they picked their way through the devastation. Corridors where she had played as a child were now choked with fallen stone and twisted metal. The tapestries that had taught her the history of her bloodline hung in charred tatters, their proud stories reduced to ash and memory. Underfoot, the polished floors were buried beneath debris and things she tried not to examine too closely.
Selene's eyes lingered on every familiar detail made grotesque by destruction. The carved alcove where she had hidden to read forbidden romance tales was blackened beyond recognition. The portrait of her grandmother—the one who had worn the pearl combs now lost somewhere in the rubble—stared down from its frame with paint blistered by heat and smoke.
Every piece of her life, every anchor to who she had been, lay in ruins around her feet.
Alaric led her through a side archway that opened onto what had once been the main courtyard. Here, roses had bloomed in careful beds maintained by her mother's own hands. The fountain at the center had been carved from white marble brought from quarries three kingdoms away, its waters always running clear and sweet.
Now the courtyard was a charnel house. Bodies lay strewn across the cobblestones in grotesque poses, men and women who had served her family faithfully cut down as they fled. The fountain ran red in the pale moonlight, its carved dolphins and water lilies mocking witnesses to slaughter.
Selene's hand flew to her mouth, bile rising in her throat. She recognized faces among the dead—Old Marcus who had taught her to tend the hawks, young Sara who had been her favorite among the kitchen maids, Sir Garrett who had been her father's friend since boyhood.
"Don't," Alaric murmured, his hand firm on her elbow as he guided her around the worst of it. "Don't look too long. Don't let your mind put names to faces."
"But they were—"
"I know who they were." His voice cracked like a whip, harsh with his own suppressed grief. Then, more gently: "But if you try to mourn them all now, you'll never find the strength to move your feet. There will be time for that later, when you're safe."
They reached the stable yard, but the neat rows of stalls stood empty and broken. The horses—her beloved Starfall among them—had been taken by the raiders or cut down where they stood. The sweet smell of hay and leather that had always perfumed this space was now overwhelmed by smoke and the copper stench of blood.
Alaric stopped in the shadow of the stable master's quarters, his expression grim as carved stone. In the moonlight, she could see the conflict playing across his sharp features—pain at what they were leaving behind warring with determination to see her safely away.
"We can't travel together," he said at last, the words clearly costing him. "Not if we want to survive this."
Selene's chest constricted as if iron bands had suddenly tightened around her ribs. "What do you mean? Alaric, you can't—"
"They'll hunt survivors like hounds after a wounded stag," he interrupted, his blue eyes holding hers with desperate intensity. "If we stay together, we're easy to track, easy to corner. Apart, we each have a chance to disappear into the crowd of common refugees fleeing the king's justice."
Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting crescents into her palms. The thought of losing him too, of being truly alone in a world gone mad with violence, threatened to crack the fragile composure she had managed to build.
"I don't want to lose you as well," she whispered, and heard the child she had been creeping into her voice. "You're all the family I have left."
"And that's exactly why we have to part ways," Alaric said, reaching for her hands and wrapping them in his own soot-streaked palms. His skin was warm, real, alive—the only anchor left to her in a world gone mad. "You need to disappear completely, Selene. Become someone else, live in the shadows and learn to be invisible. Only then will you be truly safe."
Her throat ached with unshed tears as the reality of his words sank in. She nodded, though every instinct screamed against the wisdom of separation.
Alaric pressed her hands tighter between his, his eyes fierce with something that might have been hope or might have been desperation. "Remember their faces—all of them. Remember this night, the sound of your sister's voice, the way your parents smiled. Don't let time dull the edges of your anger or your grief. Keep the fire burning inside you, because one day you'll need it."
She wanted to tell him she was afraid, that she didn't know how to live with this yawning emptiness where her heart used to be. But the words tangled in her throat, too raw and desperate to speak aloud.
Instead, she managed to whisper, "Where will you go?"
His smile was sharp as a blade's edge, holding more pain than joy. "Wherever I must to stay alive. Wherever I can learn what I need to know about the bastard who did this to us." The name hung unspoken between them, but they both felt its weight. "But I'll find you again, Selene. However long it takes, however far you run, I'll find you. And on that day, we'll make King Damian pay for every drop of Valen blood spilled on these stones."
Selene's heart hammered against her ribs at the sound of the king's name spoken aloud. Damian. It settled into her bones like poison, burning through her veins until she couldn't tell where grief ended and rage began.
Alaric pulled her close then, pressing his forehead against hers in the gesture they had shared since childhood when words weren't enough. For a long moment they stayed that way, breathing the same smoke-thick air, holding onto each other against the darkness that waited to claim them.
"Go now," he whispered finally. "Don't stop running until you're leagues from here. Don't look back, don't trust anyone completely, and don't let them see who you really are underneath."
Her hands shook as she forced herself to let go of him, to step back from the warmth and safety he represented. The night beyond the broken gates yawned before her like the mouth of some great beast, ready to swallow her whole.
Every step away from him felt like tearing pieces from her own flesh, but she forced herself to keep moving. Her legs stumbled over the uneven cobbles, her vision blurred with smoke and the tears she refused to let fall. But Alaric's words echoed in her skull like a drumbeat: survive, survive, survive.
The cool night air hit her face as she passed through the ruined gatehouse, carrying scents of pine and wildflowers that seemed obscene in their normalcy. Behind her, House Valen burned itself to ash and memory, taking with it everything she had ever been.
Selene stumbled forward into the darkness, leaving behind her name, her family, her innocence, and every certain thing she had ever known. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled—or perhaps it was only the wind through the broken stones.