The first report reaches the capital just after dawn.
Fia is awake for once.
Not by choice.
Her lungs decided to remind her that she is still, technically, terminal.
She'd been in that drifting space between sleep and waking when a cough hit deep and hard, tearing up from somewhere behind her sternum like a hooked wire.
She sat up, hand clamped over her mouth before instinct could paint the walls.
Mira's hand was there instantly, holding a cloth, the habit drilled so deep in all of them now that nobody needs words.
Fia spat.
Not much.
Rust-red flecks.
Not the bowl-filling horror of months ago.
Still enough to turn Mira's mouth into a thin, unhappy line.
"Maybe the system is allergic to me being happy," Fia mutters, voice rough. "It kicks my lungs whenever I get too comfortable."
Mira's thumb rubs small, soothing circles between her shoulder blades as she breathes through the burn.
"Or," Mira says, "your body is adjusting to literally growing new support structures around your heart, which was not on its original to-do list."
"If it wanted less work," Fia says, dropping her hand, "it shouldn't have been born into a genre called Fire."
Mira opens her mouth, shuts it, sighs.
"…fair," she concedes.
Fia sags back against the headboard, the dragon-heart beating slow and steady under the frantic tap of her human one.
Seraphine stirs in the chair by the window, where she fell asleep in half-polished armor. Elira is sprawled at the foot of the bed on top of the blanket, sword within easy reach, as if daring some cosmic force to try anything. Lyriel is asleep at the desk again, cheek resting on a mess of diagrams and notes.
They all look…tired.
But not the bone-deep, haunted tired of a people who think they could be woken at any moment to a city in flames.
They look…like people who fought and survived and are trying to remember how to live in the after.
The knock at the door sounds polite.
Fia's stomach drops anyway.
Seraphine's eyes open instantly.
Her hand goes to her sword.
"Enter," she calls.
The door opens just enough to admit a messenger in the palace livery, breath visible in the cold air of the hall.
He stops at the sight of the room's occupants—future queen, saintess, Calamity, war-mage, knight—and visibly reconsiders all his life choices.
"It's all right," Seraphine says, gentler. "We're awake. Report."
He swallows, steps in, kneels.
"Your Highness," he says, "urgent dispatch from Vyrn Gate. Northern border."
Fia's skin prickles.
Vyrn Gate.
The northern fortress clinging to the mountain pass like a stone barnacle, the one that's taken the brunt of most raiding bands for decades.
Seraphine holds out a hand.
The scroll is placed in it.
The wax is still warm.
Seraphine breaks the seal, scans the contents, jaw tightening.
"Twenty thousand enemy troops sighted in the Vyrn valley," she reads aloud. "Banner of the Crimson Crown. Siege engines. War mages. Estimate: within striking distance of the fortress by midday."
Elira sits up fully, blanket falling around her waist.
"Twenty thousand?" she echoes. "They brought a picnic party last time. This is…serious."
Lyriel rubs the imprint of writing off her cheek and squints blearily.
"How many on our side?" she asks.
Seraphine's eyes flick farther down.
"Vyrn's regular garrison," she says. "Plus the northern levies we rotated in after the demon siege. Total defending force…thirty-eight thousand five hundred and some change."
Lyriel mutters something about commanders finally listening to her recommendations on redundancy.
Mira's gaze flicks to Fia, then back to Seraphine.
"No mention of…Calamity deployment," Mira says.
"No," Seraphine says. "And there won't be."
Her eyes meet Fia's.
They both remember the promises.
The arguments.
The compromises.
Fia swallows.
"I can see the map in my head," she says, voice quiet. "Narrow valley. Steep slopes. Good for defense, terrible if they get a foothold on the western ridge."
Lyriel nods.
"The new ward lattice I set up along the outer walls will hold better than the old one," she says. "If Commander Hadrien doesn't do anything exceptionally stupid, they can keep twenty thousand busy for days."
"Commander Hadrien is not stupid," Elira says. "He's just very married to his job and not enough to his wife. Different problem."
Fia doesn't laugh.
Her hands curl in the blanket.
Seraphine sees it.
She crosses the room in three strides and sits on the edge of the bed, free hand settling over Fia's.
"Say it," Seraphine murmurs.
Fia stares at their joined hands.
"I could end it in an hour," she says.
There's no brag in it.
No drama.
Just tired fact.
Mira closes her eyes briefly.
Lyriel's pen stills.
Elira looks away, jaw working.
"And then," Seraphine says softly, "I would be explaining to your parents why their daughter can't walk up a flight of stairs without collapsing."
Fia presses her lips together.
Her chest aches.
The dragon-heart beats on, calm and slow, not offering an opinion.
Yet.
The messenger shifts, hesitant.
"I…there's more, Your Highness," he says.
Seraphine looks up.
More.
Of course there is.
"Speak," she says.
"Additional dispatches from the east and southwest," he says, fumbling with two more scrolls. "Fort Verdant on the eastern border reports similar numbers. Twenty thousand under Crimson Crown banners pushing through the forest routes. And…"
He swallows.
"Highwatch in the southwest reports enemy movement in the foothills," he says. "Estimated twenty thousand there as well, supported by monster handlers. Timing suggests…coordinated strikes."
The room goes very quiet.
Lyriel's sleepy haze vanishes.
Her eyes sharpen.
"Three fronts," she says. "Northeast, east, southwest. Twenty thousand each. Sixty thousand total."
"Forty thousand defenders at each?" Mira asks.
"Forty thousand at Vyrn," Seraphine says, flipping through the reports. "Roughly thirty-five thousand at Verdant. Highwatch…" Her mouth tightens. "Less. Twenty-eight thousand, and that includes conscripts and militia. Their terrain is the worst."
Elira blows out a breath.
"So that's…one nearly even fight, one in our favor, and one where we're outnumbered," she summarizes.
Lyriel taps the sealed sections of the dispatches, eyes narrowing.
"Crimson Crown," she says. "Again. They're not probing anymore. This is…a campaign."
Fia's throat goes dry.
Crimson Crown.
The western kingdom with the too-pretty king and the entirely too dramatic diplomatic letters.
The one who has been sending increasingly unhinged proposals for a political marriage with the Final Calamity for months.
The one who, after her last refusal, sent a "regretful note" about "deteriorating relations" that read suspiciously like a threat.
Mira glances at her.
Fia stares back.
"…this is about me," she says.
It isn't a question.
Seraphine's mouth flattens.
"I don't care what twisted justification they're using," she says. "They're burning men and cities for it. We'll respond as we would to any invading force."
Lyriel's fingers drum a worried rhythm on her knee.
"Except this invading force might have orders to grab the Calamity alive if they can," she says. "Which complicates things."
Fia pulls her hand free.
Crosses her arms.
"It's a very inconvenient time to be extremely kidnap-able," she says.
Elira barks a short, humorless laugh.
"You are the least easy-to-carry thing in this kingdom," she says. "In all the ways that matter."
Fia huffs.
Seraphine stands, the queen-face sliding into place like a mask she hates but wears well.
"Get this to the war room," she tells the messenger, handing the dispatches back. "Tell the generals we meet within the hour. Send for the high priest and the minister of supply. And have the airship tower prepare scouts."
The messenger salutes and bolts.
Seraphine turns back to the bed.
"I want you to stay here," she says.
Fia lifts a brow.
"Where 'here' is…?"
"This room," Seraphine says. "Or at least this wing. The inner wards are strongest. If they're after you—"
"They won't get through four of us plus your entire personal guard," Elira says. "Plus the dragon glaring through her ribcage."
"The dragon is not a security system," Lyriel says absently. "It's a hazardous magical phenomenon that may incidentally incinerate intruders."
Mira just looks at Fia.
"How much does your chest hurt?" she asks.
Fia hesitates.
Mira's brows climb.
"Honesty," she reminds her.
"Less than it did before the dragon seed," Fia admits. "More than it does when I'm not having apocalyptic nightmares. I can walk. I can stand. I can probably do a little magic without immediately coughing up my internal organs."
"Define 'a little,'" Lyriel says.
"A ward," Fia says. "A shield. A push. Not a valley-clearing inferno. I'm not…there. And I don't know how much the dragon can cover the gaps if I push too hard."
Mira nods.
"Then that decides it," she says. "You're not going to the front. You'd be a liability to yourself and a temptation to them."
Fia bristles.
"Gee," she says. "Thanks."
Mira doesn't flinch.
"I mean it," she says. "Your presence on the field changes the entire shape of the fight. They'd focus every blade and spell on you. Our own troops would overextend to guard you. Commanders would make riskier plays. And every time you so much as breathed hard, we'd all be watching your chest instead of the enemy."
She lifts a hand before Fia can snap back.
"And the dragon is changing the equation in ways we don't understand yet," Mira adds. "If something goes wrong with that "second architecture" in the middle of a battle, we won't just lose your lungs. We might lose control of whatever it's growing into. I'm not willing to experiment with that while twenty thousand men with knives are running around."
Fia deflates.
She hates that Mira is right.
She hates that they're all looking at her like she is both precious and hazardous at the same time.
She hates that they're going to war again.
"Fine," she mutters. "I'll stay. But I'm not just…sitting here. There has to be something I can do that doesn't involve 'die dramatically' or 'set everything on fire.'"
Lyriel's eyes light with a familiar, slightly manic gleam.
"As a matter of fact," she says slowly, "there might be."
Fia eyes her warily.
"I'm not going to like this," she says.
"No," Lyriel says. "You're absolutely going to hate it. Which is how we know it's probably necessary."
Vyrn Gate is already under attack when the sun crests the eastern ridge.
From the fortress wall, Commander Hadrien watches the valley fill with red.
The Crimson Crown's banners are gaudy things—crimson silk emblazoned with a stylized, thorn-wrapped crown in gold—but in the cold morning, the cloth flutters like fresh wounds.
Twenty thousand soldiers march under them, scaling up the narrow valley in rough but purposeful blocks.
Not an undisciplined horde.
Not raiders.
An army.
Hadrien's jaw clenches.
He's fought smaller bands of these bastards before, pushing them back from northern villages when they got greedy.
He's not fought this many at once.
His second-in-command, a short woman with a scar across her nose and the permanent squint of someone who has seen too many winters, stands at his elbow.
"Ten to one they bring those ugly siege towers again," she says. "You think they'll try the same trick twice?"
"They're arrogant," Hadrien says. "But they're not fools. My money's on something louder."
As if summoned by his pessimism, the drums start.
Deep, booming strokes roll up the valley.
With each beat, the front ranks lift their shields in unison.
Behind them, mages raise staves and begin weaving.
Hadrien feels the hairs on his arms stand up.
"Shields up," he orders. "Archers on the outer parapet. Mages on the inner. Get the ward-lines ready. When they start glowing, you don't step off them unless you like being demon chum."
His voice carries down the line.
Vyrn's defenders move with practiced efficiency.
They are tired.
They are not afraid.
Not anymore.
The demon siege broke a lot of things.
It also burned away illusions.
The men and women on these walls know exactly what happens if they fail.
They also know the Final Calamity is not coming.
No one says her name.
They don't have to.
Everyone has seen the dispatches.
Heard the rumors.
Watched Commander Hadrien fold the queen's orders with care and tuck them inside his breastplate.
Hold without her.
Not because she's useless.
Because she is finally being allowed to be a person, not a tool.
Some of them are quietly furious about that.
More of them are quietly relieved.
"Archers!" Hadrien bellows. "On my mark!"
Below, the Crimson Crown's front line halts.
The mages' staves flare.
Energy gathers.
It's not fire, he notes with a grim sort of pleasure.
They're not stupid enough to pretend they can out-burn the kingdom that raised the Calamity.
They're going for ice.
Jagged spears of pale blue light coalesce in the air above their heads, humming with lethal intent.
"Wards!" Hadrien barks.
Lyriel's new lattice responds.
The lines carved into the stone along the walls and towers glow, threads of light racing along channels and symbols.
A translucent dome rises over the fortress like a soap bubble—faint, shimmering, beautiful and terrible.
The enemy mages fling their spears.
They slam into the dome with a sound like a frozen lake cracking.
The impact shudders through the stone.
A few archers curse.
One vomits over the side.
The dome holds.
Cracks spread out from the impact points, spiderweb-thin.
The ward-lines along the stone flare brighter, pouring power upward to patch the fractures.
Hadrien grunts.
"Thank you, Lyriel, you terrifying woman," he mutters under his breath.
His second smirks.
"You planning to tell the capital you took back some of those things you said about her?" she asks.
"Absolutely not."
"Thought so."
The enemy mages fire again.
Again, the spears slam into the dome.
Again, it holds.
The cracks spread faster now.
Hadrien can feel the drain in the air; the wards draw power from the old sunstone anchor in the keep's heart, from the mages along the inner wall, from every scrap of amulet and charm Lyriel insisted they collect.
He raises his hand.
"Archers," he says. "Welcome them properly."
Arrows arc out in thick, dark swarms, hissing down toward the shield wall.
Some glance off shields.
Some are burned mid-air by hasty counters.
Many find flesh.
The front ranks stagger.
The first cries rise.
Hadrien doesn't smile.
He's killed enough men to know there's nothing glorious about the sound.
"Keep it steady," he says. "Don't waste shots on heroes. Take kneecaps, not flags."
He scans the valley for the enemy command group.
He doesn't find it.
They're staying back.
Learning.
Adjusting.
Smart.
Annoying.
"Where's their general?" his second mutters. "Hiding in the back like a rat."
"Or waiting for us to reveal the new toys," Hadrien says. "Speaking of which…"
He nods to the inner wall.
The mages there stand in two staggered lines.
The front line has their hands on the stone, feeding the wards.
The back line has their palms pressed against circles of etched metal embedded in the rock.
Lyriel called them "projectors."
Hadrien called them "those things that had better not explode when we need them."
The circles hum.
Light gathers.
"On my mark!" he calls again. "Wait for them to overcommit!"
As if on cue, the Crimson Crown's front ranks surge, shields up, swords out, roaring as they charge.
They hit the kill zone at a full run.
Now.
Hadrien drops his hand.
"Project!" he shouts.
The circles flare.
Six lances of condensed, focused light erupt outward in a fan, slamming into the tightly packed enemy formation.
They don't burn.
They shove.
Like invisible battering rams, they plow through the front ranks, sending men and shields flying like toys.
The charge stutters.
Gaps open.
Arrows pour into them.
The enemy formation buckles.
Hadrien feels the ward-lines under his boots dim a fraction.
The projectors borrow power from the same reservoir as the dome.
Lyriel had warned him: nothing is free.
"Again!" he orders. "Short bursts!"
The mages obey.
Push.
Release.
Push.
Release.
Each time, the enemy lines ripple.
Archers exploit openings.
Defenders on the lower walls drop rocks and oil when the first of the enemy reach the base.
The valley turns into a meat grinder.
For a while, that's all it is.
Shouts.
Clash of steel.
Crack and hum of magic.
The sharp, ugly, wet sounds Hadrien's brain files in a box labeled "later."
Then someone shouts from the western tower.
"Commander! Movement on the ridge!"
Hadrien swears.
Of course.
He swings his spyglass toward the western slope.
For a moment, all he sees is stone and scrub.
Then a line resolves.
Dark dots.
Men.
Climbing.
They've used the main assault as cover, sending a smaller unit up the treacherous slope to try to take the tower from the flank.
"Signal the west," Hadrien snaps. "They're about to have company."
His second is already moving, yelling.
The fortress's alarm bells shift tempo, sending coded warnings down the line.
On the western tower, defenders reposition.
It won't be enough.
Not on their own.
Hadrien knows those numbers.
He's seen that formation.
This is no raiding party.
This is a specialized strike team.
Which means somewhere, down there in that sea of red, there's an enemy commander playing a game of knives with him.
He bares his teeth.
"Fine," he mutters. "Let's see how well you play when the board bites back."
He gestures to one of the younger mages.
"Get this to the airship tower," he says, tapping a quick note onto a scrap of parchment: WESTERN RIDGE BREACH IMMINENT. REQUEST REINFORCEMENT OR ARIAL STRIKE IF AVAILABLE. HOLDING FOR NOW.
The mage nods, eyes wide, and sprints for the inner stairs.
Hadrien turns back to the valley.
Down there, beyond the reach of his wards, in a circle of crimson and gold banners, the enemy general watches him through a spyglass of their own.
General Lysa Kharan of the Crimson Crown hates this valley.
It's cold.
It's narrow.
It stinks of iron and old demon blood.
She hates the way the fortress sits on the rock like it grew there. She hates the way the defenders move with the easy coordination of people who have already done this dance once and lived.
She especially hates the emblem carved into the stone above the main gate: a stylized flame, looped in a circle.
The mark of the Final Calamity.
The king's favorite obsession.
Lysa lowers her glass, jaw tight.
To her left, her banner-captain clears his throat.
"Your orders, General?" he asks. "The first wave is reaching the walls."
"I can see that," she says dryly.
Another volley of arrows hisses down from the parapets.
More of her men fall.
She grits her teeth.
"Push the shield wall forward another twenty paces," she says. "Tell the mages to switch to shatter-tuning on their next volley. That ward dome is eating too much of our power."
The captain salutes and runs off, shouting.
Lysa lifts the glass again.
Watches.
The ward dome gleams faintly, spiderwebbed with cracks that heal as she watches.
The projectors—whatever those damned circles are—shove another wedge through her front ranks.
She grimaces.
"The reports undersold their upgrades," she mutters.
Her adjutant, a thin man with prematurely gray hair, raises a brow.
"Regretting volunteering for this command, General?" he asks mildly.
She snorts.
"Please," she says. "We both know if I hadn't, His Radiance would've sent someone dumber."
The adjutant, Arven, winces.
"I do wish you'd use the formal title occasionally," he murmurs. "Just in case anyone is listening."
"If anyone is listening," Lysa says, lowering the glass to pin him with a look, "they already know I think this entire campaign is a waste of good soldiers and sane weather."
She gestures broadly at the blood-soaked valley.
"All of this," she says, "because our glorious king has decided he simply must marry the villainess from the demon war."
She spits the last words like they taste bad.
They do.
Arven glances at the nearest knot of officers.
Lower-ranked, younger, more nervous.
They pretend not to be listening.
Their knuckles are white where they clutch reins and sword hilts.
He clears his throat.
"His Radiance believes," Arven says carefully, "that binding the Final Calamity to our line will secure the kingdom's future."
"His Radiance believes," Lysa mimics, "that if he doesn't personally possess the shiniest weapon on the continent, he is somehow less of a king."
She paces along the slight ridge, boots crunching on frost-hardened ground.
Her armor is lighter than most—layered leather and mail instead of full plate—but her presence is heavier than any steel.
At forty, she's fought through three succession crises, two border wars, and one stupid holy conflict that never should have involved swords.
She's buried more friends than she cares to count.
She's not interested in burying fifteen thousand more so her king can play at romance.
"It's not just…possessiveness," Arven says, more quietly. "The diviners say her presence warps prophecy. That the system itself stutters around her. That marrying her into our house would—"
"—would make us the new center of someone else's story," Lysa cuts in. "Yes, I've heard the sermons. 'Bind the flame, shape the future.'"
She snorts again.
"The last time someone tried to bind a living calamity," she says, "we got demon rifts and a flooded lower quarter. You'd think they'd learn."
She lifts the glass.
Tracks movement on the western ridge.
"They're good," she admits grudgingly. "That counter-slope force will slow us down. But it won't stop us."
Her western flanking company is already scrambling up the slope, shields strapped to their backs, fingers digging into rock.
She sent her best climbers.
They'll be on the tower in minutes.
"Assuming the king lets us do our job," Arven says.
Lysa doesn't answer.
Her thoughts drift, unbidden, to the last council before they marched.
King Raelan had paced his audience hall like a caged cat, crimson cloak dragging on the polished floor, crown glinting in the lamplight.
"The time for dalliance is over," he'd said, voice rich and smooth and threaded with impatience. "We have offered terms. We have offered gold. We have offered mercy. The Flame Princess refuses me."
Heiress.
Villainess.
Calamity.
Fia had acquired more titles than she'd ever wanted.
Lysa had seen her once.
From a distance.
On another battlefield, months ago.
A small figure standing at the front, wrapped in white and red, hair whipping in the wind as fire rolled out in a wave that turned the ground to glass.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
Deadly.
Raelan had watched the same scene through a diviner's pool, eyes bright.
"I must have her," he'd said.
Not "I must ally with her kingdom."
Not "I must ensure peace."
"I must have her."
Lysa had felt something cold coil in her gut at the way he'd said it.
Possession, not partnership.
Obsession, not strategy.
"Your Radiance," she'd said carefully, "the Calamity is…ill. The reports say she barely survived the last engagement. If she dies, we will have sacrificed much for a prize that turns to ash in our hands."
"A candle burns brightest before it goes out," Raelan had replied, infuriatingly. "All the more reason to secure her now. Our seers say she will live long enough for my purposes."
His purposes.
Not hers.
Not her people's.
His.
"We will take the border forts," he'd said. "We will prove their defenses weak. And then we will offer terms: the Final Calamity's hand in marriage in exchange for peace."
"And if they refuse?" Lysa had asked, though she already knew the answer.
"Then," Raelan had said, smile curved and cold, "we take her."
Lysa had not asked what that meant.
She'd seen his eyes.
She'd seen his hands on frightened courtiers.
She'd seen the way he treated gifted people in his own kingdom: as toys, not tools.
She did not want to imagine that disposition applied to a woman who could level cities when cornered.
Now, as her men die on the walls of Vyrn, she thinks of all that and feels something hot and ugly rise under her breastbone.
Not dragonfire.
Just fury.
"All this blood," she mutters, "because a man can't stand to hear 'no.'"
As if summoned by the thought, a messenger rides up from the rear, flagging hard.
He dismounts before the horse has fully stopped and drops to one knee.
"General!" he pants. "Dispatch from His Radiance. Sealed for your eyes."
Lysa takes the scroll.
The seal is unbroken.
Raelan's signet pressed into wax, the imprint neat and deep.
She breaks it.
Reads.
Her jaw clenches.
"Well?" Arven asks.
Lysa folds the parchment carefully so she doesn't crush it in her fist.
"'Advance on all fronts,'" she quotes. "'Accept no surrender that does not include the Calamity's person. If the fortress falls and she is not there, press on to the next. Do not waste time garrisoning. Our goal is the capital.'"
She can almost hear his voice under the neat script:
Bring her to me.
Her grip tightens.
She looks at the valley again.
At the men throwing themselves against stone and magic.
At the western ridge, where her climbers struggle upward.
At the blood already soaking into hard, frozen ground.
"Twenty thousand here," she says. "Twenty thousand at Verdant. Twenty thousand at Highwatch. And if all of that fails, he'll send more. Just to plant his flag outside a woman's bedroom."
Arven says nothing.
He doesn't have to.
She can read the same disgust in his eyes.
She tucks the king's orders into her bracer.
She will obey them.
For now.
But there are…gray areas.
There are interpretations.
There are ways to follow the letter of a command while preparing for the moment when you might have to break it.
"Signal the western unit," she says. "Tell them priority is the ward anchor, not the gate. If they can disable the ward core, we can save hundreds of lives on both sides by not slamming ourselves against a shield dome for the rest of the day."
Arven nods.
"And if they can't?" he asks.
Lysa lifts the glass.
Looks up at the fortress.
At the flame sigil.
At the faint glow of wards.
"We keep bleeding," she says. "Until either the wall cracks, or someone in the capital decides this girl is worth more alive than everyone under my command."
Her mouth twists.
"Either way," she adds, "this doesn't end here."
Back in the capital, things are not catching fire.
Yet.
This is considered a victory.
Fia sits in the war room, wrapped in a cloak more for the comfort than the warmth.
The great table in the center is covered in maps, markers, small carved figures representing armies and units.
Light filters through high windows, catching dust motes and the faint shimmer of ward-lines Lyriel inscribed around the room after the demon siege.
They're subtle.
Just enough to give the room a faint hum.
Not enough to make Fia's teeth itch.
Generals, ministers, and advisors circle the table like planets in a very grumpy solar system.
Seraphine stands at the head, hands braced on the wood.
Mira sits at Fia's right, close enough that their shoulders touch.
Elira stands behind her, one hand on the back of Fia's chair like a casual guard dog.
Lyriel is on her left, sketching tiny sigils along the edge of the map, muttering about "stabilizing channels."
Fia stares at the markers.
Little carved blocks arranged in three different border locations.
Red for Crimson Crown.
Blue-gray for their own troops.
Arrows.
Numbers.
Ratios.
"…you're frowning," Mira whispers.
"I'm thinking," Fia whispers back.
"Same difference," Elira murmurs.
Fia elbows her lightly.
Her chest twinges.
The dragon-heart thumps.
Heat washes through her ribs.
She exhales slowly.
"Report," Seraphine says.
The general in charge of Vyrn, a grizzled woman with a voice like gravel, gestures at the northern section.
"Vyrn Gate engaged the enemy at first light," she says. "Our wards are holding. Their mages are probing for weaknesses. We've inflicted significant casualties, but they keep pressing. Their western flank is attempting a breach along the ridge."
"That will be unpleasant," Lyriel says. "But manageable, if Hadrien doesn't panic and reroute too much power to the projectors. If he does, I reserve the right to scold him later."
"He won't panic," the general says. "He's too stubborn. And he really wants to make you eat your words."
Lyriel looks pleased.
"Good," she says. "Stubborn commanders live longer."
"To the east," another officer continues, pointing at the Verdant border, "they're pushing through the forest routes near Fort Verdant. Our scouts report heavy use of beast handlers—wolves, dire boars, some minor demons."
"Demons," Fia mutters. "Creative."
"Bound ones," the officer clarifies quickly. "We're not seeing rifts. Yet."
"How many on our side?" Seraphine asks.
"Roughly thirty-five thousand with Verdant's garrison and the local levies," the officer says. "Their terrain is dense. Our wards are weaker there, but the trees make it harder for large formations to move. It's going to be…ugly. Close quarters. Heavy casualties on both sides."
"And Highwatch?" Seraphine asks.
The third report is delivered by a younger commander who looks like he didn't expect to be this important this week.
"Highwatch is the weakest," he says bluntly. "Steep, broken ground. Not enough walls. Too much space to skirt. They've got twenty-eight thousand, including militia. The enemy has at least twenty thousand there, plus pack beasts and what looks like siege engines breaking down into smaller components for the slopes."
Fia studies the map.
Three fronts.
Three fortresses.
Enough defenders to hold.
Enough attackers to keep them busy.
Enough blood either way.
She drums her fingers on the table.
Lyriel slaps her hand lightly.
"Stop that," she whispers. "You're making the wards nervous."
Fia glares.
"How can wards be nervous?" she whispers back.
Lyriel gives her a look.
"You can feel a dragon heartbeat," she says. "You don't get to be skeptical about anxious architecture."
"Fair," Fia mutters.
Seraphine's gaze sweeps the room.
"We cannot be everywhere at once," she says. "Our airships can move units quickly, but not entire armies. We have to decide where to reinforce and where to trust our existing defenses."
One of the older councilors clears his throat.
His name is Lord Traven.
He has made a career out of making Fia want to set things on fire.
"We could end this quickly," he says. "If Her Highness the Calamity were to make a demonstration at one of the fronts—"
Mira's head snaps around.
"So help me," she says, voice dangerously calm, "if you finish that sentence, I will personally schedule a public lecture on the long-term consequences of magical overexertion using your circulatory system as a diagram."
Traven pales.
"I simply meant—"
"I know what you meant," Mira says. "You meant 'use the sick girl until she breaks, and let someone else deal with the fallout.'"
Seraphine doesn't raise her voice.
She doesn't have to.
The room pivots toward her like she's the center of gravity.
"The Final Calamity is not a siege engine," she says. "She is not a tower to be rolled from front to front at your convenience. She is recovering. Her presence on the field would complicate these battles more than it would simplify them."
Fia resists the urge to sink lower in her chair.
She is used to being talked about as a weapon.
She is not used to being talked about as…something else.
Something worth keeping whole.
Lord Traven huffs.
"With respect, Your Highness," he says—by which he means none—"we built our defenses around her. Our enemies have seen her. They expect her. Removing her from the board entirely may embolden them—"
"You mean," Lyriel says, cutting in sweetly, "they might realize they can be killed by regular people and not just divine fire, which would make our regular people more important, which is obviously a tragedy for your belief that magic will solve all logistical problems."
A few of the younger officers choke on poorly concealed laughs.
Traven sputters.
Seraphine looks at Fia.
"What do you see?" she asks.
Fia blinks.
"Walls," she says. "Arrows. Too many little carved blocks considering this is technically a breakfast meeting."
Seraphine's mouth curves.
"Funny," she says. "Try again."
Fia exhales.
She looks.
Not with her eyes.
With the coil.
She lets her awareness dip inward, touch that second heartbeat, then spread outward along the thin, invisible threads that connect her to the wards, to the anchors, to the places where her magic has scarred the world.
It's not a full projection.
Ardentis made it very clear that you do not, under any circumstances, yeet your consciousness out of your body without proper preparation and consent forms.
But she can…taste.
Vyrn feels…sharp.
Cold.
The wards hum there with a tense, focused vibration, like a stretched bowstring.
She can feel impact rippling through them, little flares where projectors fire, cracks spidering and sealing.
Verdant smells like earth and sap and blood.
The magic there is muddier, older, tied to roots and stones.
Highwatch feels…fragile.
Newer wards.
Weaker anchors.
Fewer layered protections.
She opens her eyes.
"Vyrn is holding," she says. "The wards are under strain, but they're…handling it. Verdant will be…messy, but the terrain favors us. Highwatch…"
Her throat tightens.
"Highwatch feels like a plate someone stacked too much on," she says. "One good shove, and it shatters."
The room stirs.
"And what does your dragon say?" Lyriel asks quietly.
Fia blinks.
She hadn't realized she'd asked him anything.
She hadn't.
Consciously.
Under her ribs, the deeper heart beats, slow and steady.
There is a sense.
Not words.
Pressure.
A nudge.
She translates as best she can.
"He says…they're testing," she says slowly. "Not just our walls. Our…lines. How far they can push without me moving. Highwatch is the weakest, so they'll lean there. If we reinforce it visibly, they'll adjust. If we don't, they'll break it and assume I'll come running."
Seraphine's jaw tightens.
"They're trying to bait you," she says.
Fia nods.
"Yes," she says. "And also…no. Their king wants me alive, not in pieces. He needs a functioning kingdom to marry me off to. He won't burn everything to the ground. Yet."
Mira's hand tightens around her arm.
"How do you know that?" she asks, voice low.
Fia's mind flashes to the nightmare.
The lattice.
The fire.
She swallows.
"I saw their orders," she says. "In…a dream. From someone else's perspective. The system's still…looking. And so is the dragon."
Lyriel taps her quill against her lip.
"So we assume three things," she says. "One: they will keep pushing until either a fortress falls or Fia moves. Two: they have standing orders to secure Fia alive, which means kidnapping attempts are likely. Three: their king is an idiot."
"That last one doesn't help us much," the young commander of Highwatch mutters.
Lyriel shrugs.
"It helps me emotionally," she says.
Seraphine traces a line between the three fortresses on the map.
"We send air support to Highwatch first," she says. "Not Fia. Knights, mages, supplies. Enough to bolster the wards and the morale. Vyrn and Verdant get logistical support and long-range spells. We keep the capital on high alert in case they try a bypass strike toward the city."
Lord Traven makes a strangled sound.
"You would rather risk three forts than risk the Calamity on a field where she could end this—"
"I would rather risk three forts than risk her, yes," Seraphine says flatly. "And don't pretend you care about the forts. You care about looking decisive."
Fia's chest does something weird.
Not in a medical way.
In an emotional one.
She hates those.
"I can help," she says, before the argument can spiral. "Without leaving."
Mira gives her a look that says define help in ten words or less or we're both going to need a nap.
Lyriel leans in.
"The dragon's sense reaches further than your old system interface," she muses. "If we anchor you properly, you could act as a…relay. A living lens."
"Please do not call me a lens," Fia says.
Lyriel ignores her.
"We set up a focus in the war room," she continues. "We thread the ward-lines for Vyrn, Verdant, and Highwatch through it. You sit in the center, dip your awareness into the coil, and look. No casting. No channeling combat spells. Just…seeing. I'll translate what you see into tactical calls."
Mira looks skeptical.
"Will that strain her lungs?" she asks.
"Less than throwing fire," Lyriel says. "More than napping. I can build buffers. If her pulse spikes, we yank her out."
Fia grimaces.
"You make it sound like fishing," she says.
"Brain-fishing," Elira says helpfully.
"Stop," Fia says.
Seraphine studies her.
"You're sure?" she asks. "No fire. No direct intervention. Just…vision."
Fia takes stock.
Her chest aches.
The dragon-heart hums.
Her hands tremble slightly.
But she can breathe.
She can sit.
She can look.
"Yes," she says. "I can do that. If he's going to throw armies at us to see what I'll do, I'd like to at least see them back."
Seraphine nods.
"All right," she says. "We try it. Carefully. If Mira says stop, you stop. If Lyriel says your aura is doing something weird, you stop. If Elira so much as squints at you funny, you stop."
"What about you?" Fia asks.
"If I say stop," Seraphine says, "we stop and then have a very loud domestic argument later."
Fia's lips twitch.
"Deal," she says.
Lyriel cracks her knuckles.
"Excellent," she says. "I've always wanted to turn the war room into a magic theater."
"Again," Fia says, "you have a terrible way of reassuring people."
"Yet you keep letting me do things," Lyriel says sweetly.
Fia sighs.
"It's because you keep saving our lives," she says. "It's very annoying."
The first time they thread the wards through her, it feels like being dipped into cold water and hot sand at the same time.
Fia sits cross-legged on a cushion in the center of the war room, cloak off, sleeves rolled up.
Lyriel has drawn a circle around her.
Not in chalk.
In light.
Lines of woven sigils and runes, anchored in the room's ward-lines, looping up and over her like a cage.
"Not a cage," Lyriel says, when Fia points that out.
"A filter."
"I feel very filtered," Fia mutters.
Mira stands just outside the circle, hands hovering, eyes fixed on Fia's face.
Elira leans against the wall, arms folded, watching everything like a hawk.
Seraphine sits at the table with the generals, map in front of her, eyes flicking between Fia and the carved blocks representing armies.
"All right," Lyriel says. "Inhale."
Fia inhales.
The dragon-heart beats.
The circle flares.
"For the record," Fia says, voice already a little distant, "if I end up possessing the table again—"
"We burned that table," Lyriel says. "This one is new."
"Reassuring."
"Focus."
Fia closes her eyes.
Reaches.
Not all the way into the molten rivers—Ardentis would lecture her for a week—but far enough to touch the coil.
It responds immediately.
Heat blossoms.
Not in a surge.
In a slow, steady swell.
The feeling of something unfurling under her ribs, like wings stretching.
She doesn't let them fully spread.
She just…opens a window.
The world shifts.
She feels the ward-lines in the war room, the way they connect to anchors deep in the palace foundations.
And beyond that—
Threads.
Three thick cords of power, each leading outward in a different direction, humming with distance and strain.
Vyrn.
Verdant.
Highwatch.
She touches the first.
Cold hits her like a slap.
For a moment, she smells frost and iron and blood.
She sees, briefly, from someone else's height—a soldier on the wall, eyes stinging from ice spear shards, shouting as the projectors flare.
Lyriel's voice filters in from far away.
"Vyrn?" she asks.
"Cold," Fia whispers. "Wards holding. Western ridge breach—"
She shifts.
Follows the second cord.
Verdant.
Trees.
Smoke.
The cramped, chaotic magic of hundreds of lives tangled together in dense growth.
Close-quarters fighting.
Steel in wood-dark corridors.
Screams too close.
"Verdant is…ugly," she murmurs. "They're in the trees. Our people are holding, but it's…knife work. No clean lines."
The third cord.
Highwatch.
She braces herself.
It's…worse than she expected.
Highwatch's magic feels thin.
Stretched.
The wards hum like a plucked string on the verge of snapping.
She tastes dust and grit and fear.
The enemy there hasn't fully committed to a frontal assault.
They're probing.
Nipping.
Sending beasts to test gaps.
She feels someone's hands shaking as they tie a bandage.
"Highwatch needs more," she says. "Not just bodies. Anchors. Wards. They're…barely holding the edges of their lines."
Lyriel's quill scratches.
Mira's hand tightens on her shoulder.
"Can you see their command?" Seraphine asks softly. "Any indication of where their leaders are focusing?"
Fia dives deeper.
Carefully.
Ardentis rumbles in the back of her mind, a warning, a presence.
She follows the threads of aggression, of intent.
They lead…north.
West.
To Vyrn.
Back to the valley.
Back to a ridge where a woman in red-slashed armor watches a fortress through a spyglass, jaw tight.
For a heartbeat, Fia sees her clearly.
Dark hair braided back.
Light armor.
A scar along the jaw.
Eyes that look tired and furious and sharp all at once.
Lysa Kharan does not know she is being watched.
Fia, on the other hand, feels suddenly very aware of her own visibility.
The dragon coil tightens.
Careful, Ardentis murmurs. Eyes can see back if you push too hard.
Fia pulls back a fraction.
Even at that distance, she senses Lysa's mood.
Annoyance.
Grief.
Disgust.
No joy in the slaughter.
No glee.
Only a cold, simmering anger at something behind her, not in front.
"She hates this," Fia hears herself say.
"Who?" Seraphine asks.
"Their general," Fia whispers. "She's on the west ridge at Vyrn. She's…angry. Not at us. At whoever ordered this. She thinks this is a waste. She thinks the king is a lovestruck fool. She…"
The sense shifts.
Lysa turns, barking orders.
Her adjutant hands her a dispatch.
For a heartbeat, Fia's awareness brushes the parchment.
She reads Raelan's words.
Accept no surrender that does not include the Calamity's person…
She flinches.
Pulls back hard.
The circle flares.
The dragon-heart thumps, offended.
Mira's hands are suddenly on her face, cool fingers grounding her.
"Breathe," Mira says. "Back here. With us."
Fia sucks in a breath.
Her lungs protest.
Heat rolls through her chest.
Pain spikes.
Then eases.
She opens her eyes.
The war room swims into focus.
Lyriel looks like she's seen a ghost.
Seraphine looks like she wants to break something expensive.
Elira looks like she wants to break someone's neck.
"His orders," Lyriel says, voice thin. "You saw them."
"He wants me alive," Fia says, throat tight. "No surrender accepted without me. If a fortress falls and I'm not there, he wants them to keep going until they reach the capital."
A murmur ripples around the table.
Not fear.
Not exactly.
Something uglier.
The realization that they are not just defending land.
They are defending a girl in a bed.
Seraphine's hand curls into a fist.
"This is not a campaign," she says quietly. "It's a…kidnapping with extra steps."
Lyriel makes a strangled sound.
"It's an era-defining war based on the fact that a man cannot process rejection," she says. "This is why we should never let prophecy-sniffing nobles run kingdoms."
"Suggestions?" Seraphine asks.
The generals exchange looks.
One clears his throat.
"We can't exactly…send her," he says, nodding at Fia. "But doing nothing—"
"Is not nothing," Mira says. "She is not bait."
Fia lifts a hand.
"I have a stupid idea," she says.
Three pairs of eyes snap to her.
"That's my job," Lyriel says.
"Sorry," Fia says. "You can co-sign it."
Seraphine's brow arches.
"Let's hear it," she says.
Fia licks her lips.
"They want me alive," she says. "They're willing to bleed country after country to get me. They're assuming I'll either stay home like a good little princess or ride out dramatically to meet them like a romantic idiot."
"That's…a very specific jab," Elira mutters.
"What if," Fia continues, "we make it very clear that if they get me, they lose what they want?"
Lord Traven scoffs.
"That makes no sense," he says. "You are precisely what they want."
"Alive," Fia says. "In their hands. Cooperative or broken. Useful. What if we publicly bind me to something they can't control? Something they're afraid of."
Lyriel goes very still.
"Oh," she breathes.
Mira frowns.
"…oh," she says, a second later.
Seraphine's eyes narrow thoughtfully.
"You're suggesting," she says slowly, "we make it known that you are…not entirely human anymore."
Fia shrugs.
"I already cough fire metaphorically," she says. "Might as well do it literally in the rumor mill."
Lyriel taps her quill against the map.
"If the Crimson Crown's diviners hear that the Final Calamity has taken dragonseed," she says, "their risk models will explode. Dragon-corrupted assets are famously difficult to keep in cages."
"Dragon corrupted," Fia repeats, making a face.
"Dragon adjacent," Lyriel amends. "The point is, if they're only willing to sacrifice this many lives because they think they can use you, we undermine that assumption. Make it clear that anyone who takes you against your will is more likely to end up as ash than as a husband."
Lord Traven looks appalled.
"That is…politically unwise," he says. "Announcing that our princess is becoming some kind of—"
"—is becoming harder to kill," Elira cuts in. "Which is frankly the best news I've heard all year."
Mira's mouth tightens.
"I don't like using her as a threat," she says. "It's too close to the old story."
"I know," Fia says quietly. "But I'm tired of being a prize in someone else's. If they're going to write around me, I'd rather they write fear than desire."
Seraphine's gaze flicks to her wrist.
The dragon mark glows faintly under the skin, like embers.
"Dragon rumors will spread on their own," Seraphine says. "People already talk. But we can…nudge them."
Lyriel nods.
"Plant a few juicy details with the right mouths," she says. "Let it leak to their spies that the Calamity's illness has…changed. That she's bearing something older. That the system itself is wary."
"And in the meantime," Seraphine says, voice firm, "we hold. We reinforce Highwatch and Verdant. We let Vyrn bleed them. And we watch their general."
Fia thinks of Lysa's face on the ridge.
The anger.
The disgust.
"All that blood," Lysa had thought, "because the king wants to marry that villainess."
"She's planning something," Fia says aloud, before she quite means to.
"Who?" Elira asks.
"Their general," Fia says. "Lysa Kharan. She's good. She's angry. Not at us. At him. She's…looking for a way out of this that doesn't involve putting my throat on her king's leash."
Lyriel scribbles the name down.
"A discontented commander," she murmurs. "Interesting."
Seraphine's eyes sharpen.
"Can you tell what?" she asks.
Fia shakes her head.
"Just…that she won't follow him blindly forever," she says. "She's already bending his orders where she can to save lives."
"How do you know?" Mira asks.
Fia closes her eyes briefly.
"In the dream," she says slowly, "she aimed at their ward anchors, not the gates. She's trying to break walls, not people. It won't work forever. But it says something about her priorities."
Seraphine exhales.
"How very inconvenient of their side to have a conscience," she says.
Fia laughs, a short, surprised sound.
"I like her," she admits.
"You would," Elira says. "You have a type."
"Apparently my type is 'women with terrible bosses and good sword arms,'" Fia says dryly.
Mira coughs into her hand.
Lyriel doesn't look up from her notes.
"You say that like it's new information," she mutters.
Fia glares half-heartedly.
The dragon-heart beats, warmer now.
Not because of war.
Because of the people around the table, the warmth of their bodies, the stupid banter layered over strategy like a soft cloth over sharp edges.
She's tired.
She hurts.
She is not on the walls.
She is not hurling fire.
But she is here.
Looking.
Choosing.
Planning.
And somewhere, on a cold ridge under a red banner, an enemy general looks at the same walls and curses the same king for very different reasons.
They are, all of them, pieces in someone else's story.
For now.
But not forever.
On the third day of the campaign, as Vyrn bleeds and Verdant burns and Highwatch teeters, Lysa Kharan receives a letter she shouldn't have.
It arrives not by royal courier, but by a very nervous boy with ink-stained fingers and a cheap amulet around his neck.
He slips into her command tent between shifts, eyes darting, hands trembling.
"General?" he whispers. "From…from home."
Lysa frowns.
"Home" is not one place for her.
She opens the small, crumpled envelope expecting a mother's worry, a sister's gossip, a neighbor's complaint about taxes.
Instead, she finds three lines, written in a hand she recognizes as belonging to one of the palace scribes she bribed years ago to send her real information instead of doctored reports.
High diviner's notes intercepted. King Raelan consulted again. If Calamity is secured, you are to deliver her directly to his private tower. No council. No witness. "For alignment and binding."
Her stomach turns.
She reads the next line.
He has commissioned new restraints from the Iron Circle. The ones they used on the stormcaller in the last war.
She remembers the stormcaller.
A woman with lightning in her veins and madness in her eyes.
She remembers visiting the prison after.
She remembers the smell.
The third line is worst.
High diviner privately told the scribe: "If they bind her wrong, she will take the city down with her screaming."
Lysa folds the letter.
Very carefully.
Her hands shake.
All this blood.
All these orders.
All these lives.
Not for alliance.
Not for peace.
Not even for the cold, ugly, familiar hunger of conquest.
For this.
For a private experiment.
For a man who wants to put a leash on a dragon and call it marriage.
Arven steps into the tent as she is putting the letter into her tunic.
"You look like you want to stab something," he observes.
"Something," she says. "Yes."
He studies her face.
"Something wearing a crown?" he asks quietly.
She doesn't answer.
She doesn't have to.
He sighs.
"I thought so," he says.
Outside, the drums beat.
Men shout.
Another wave hits Vyrn's walls.
Lysa closes her eyes.
Calculates.
Her western flanking force at Vyrn is close to taking the ward anchor.
Her eastern colleagues report progress at Verdant.
Highwatch is weaker than it should be, but there is word of reinforcements from the capital.
If the forts fall and the Calamity doesn't appear, Raelan will order them onward.
To the city.
To her.
And if they succeed, she will be the one standing in that tower, handing over a woman whose power can end nations to a man who thinks "alignment and binding" is a fun way to spend a weekend.
She opens her eyes.
Looks at Arven.
"We follow orders," she says.
He nods, cautious.
"For now," she adds.
His brows rise.
She smiles.
It's not nice.
"The king wants her delivered alive," she says. "Fine. We will drive him to the capital's gates if we must. But once we're there…"
She taps the letter.
"…I intend to have alternative plans."
"Alternative," Arven repeats.
"Involving," Lysa says, "either a quiet arrest of His Radiance on grounds of treasonous incompetence…or an arrangement with the woman he's trying to chain, depending on which seems less likely to get us all killed."
Arven stares.
"You're talking about a coup," he says.
"I'm talking about not handing a dragon to a man-child," she replies. "If that means a coup, so be it."
He swallows.
"And if she burns us for it?" he asks.
Lysa thinks of the fortress flame sigil.
Of the girl on the battlefield months ago, coughing blood and still standing.
Of the music that came from the city after—soft, stubborn, full of life.
"She can try," Lysa says.
She folds the letter again.
Tucks it next to Raelan's orders.
Two futures.
Neither good.
One slightly less suicidal.
"But first," she says, stepping out of the tent into the cold air and the sound of war, "we have to survive long enough for any of this to matter."
She lifts her spyglass.
Looks at Vyrn.
At the dragon's country.
At the walls that, for now, still stand.
She smiles, sharp and humorless.
"Let's see," she murmurs, "how much fire a villainess can really bring when it's not a man writing the script."
The drums beat.
The battle rages.
In the capital, a girl with two hearts sits in a circle of light, eyes closed, watching it all come.
She doesn't yet know that the woman on the ridge is planning a third path.
Raelan doesn't yet know that his own general is contemplating treason.
The system doesn't yet know that its models are already wrong.
But the dragon does.
Under Fia's ribs, the coil hums.
Interesting, Ardentis murmurs, half-amused, half-approving. The board is finally learning how to bite back.
Fia grits her teeth.
"Good," she mutters. "Let it. I'm tired of being the only piece that bleeds."
And somewhere on that cold ridge, Lysa Kharan thinks, with startling overlap:
I am done bleeding for your fantasies, Your Radiance.
The war doesn't know it yet.
But something has shifted.
This is no longer just a campaign to capture a villainess.
It's the beginning of something messier.
More dangerous.
More human.
And whatever the enemy is planning next—
they are not the only ones with plans.