By the fourth day, the war stops feeling like a campaign and starts feeling like weather.
It's just there.
Constant.
Heavy.
Every few hours, a new report blows in like a cold wind, snapping tempers and stiffening shoulders.
Fia feels it in her bones.
In her chest.
In the circle.
She's back in the war room again, sitting cross-legged, the light-circle around her thrumming with quiet power.
Mira is rubbing a cramped hand along the back of her neck, checking her pulse every time she pauses for breath.
Lyriel is tweaking sigils at the edge of the circle, adding small dampeners and safety runes like overprotective stickers.
Elira has taken to pacing; every time the ward threads spike, her hand drops to her sword.
Seraphine stands at the head of the table, jaw tight, eyes on the map.
"So far," Lyriel is saying, "the relay pattern is stable. Small dips, small spikes, no signs of runaway feedback."
"That's the calm version," Fia mutters. "The inside version is 'it feels like being the world's worst radio tower during a thunderstorm.'"
"Technical term," Elira says.
"Shut up," Fia says without heat.
Seraphine doesn't look away from the map.
"Status," she says.
Fia exhales.
Lets the coil under her ribs unfurl just enough to brush the three big threads.
Vyrn first.
Cold.
Impact.
The dome is still there, but hairline cracks spider across it constantly, healing and re-fracturing under relentless bombardment.
"Their mages switched patterns again," Fia murmurs. "Less brute force, more…chipping. Like they're trying to abrade the wards instead of shatter them."
Lyriel grimaces.
"Annoyingly clever," she mutters. "Hadrien will have to start cycling his casters more often."
Verdant next.
The taste of sap and smoke hits her tongue.
The forest is on fire in places.
Not all of it.
Not enough to make it a single wall of flame.
Just pockets—burned clearings where defenders have decided trees are less important than not being mauled by demon-touched boars.
"Verdant's commanders finally decided they like arson," Fia says faintly. "They're burning strips to break up the undergrowth. It's slowing the beasts, but…" She winces. "I can feel trees screaming about it. They're not alive alive, but the old magic there doesn't like getting scorched."
"Tell the druids they can file a complaint after we survive," Elira mutters.
Highwatch last.
She always saves Highwatch for last.
It's like opening a door on a room you know is messy and pretending for two seconds that it won't be.
She reaches.
Highwatch feels worse.
The wards shiver.
The anchors hum at a higher pitch, stretched thin.
"They're pressing harder there," Fia whispers. "More beasts. More sappers. They're testing the lower wall near the south road. The militia is—"
She flinches.
A bright, sharp pain stabs behind her sternum.
Mira sucks in a breath.
"What was that?" she asks.
Fia grits her teeth.
"Ward stone cracked," she says. "A big one. Too close to the main anchor. They're patching it, but…"
Another stab.
She hisses.
Mira's hands are on her face now, thumbs gentle at her temples.
"Lyriel," Mira says. "We're done for now."
Lyriel hesitates.
"Another minute," Fia says quickly, eyes watering. "Just give me Highwatch's command line. If they lose that southern wall, they'll—"
"Fia," Mira says, low and serious. "You're shaking."
Fia realizes she is.
Not a full tremor.
A fine, tightly controlled tremble running through her arms and shoulders.
She could push.
She knows she could.
The coil is steady.
Her human heart is not.
Ardentis rumbles, unimpressed.
You are not a conduit, he says. You are a person sitting on a cold floor. Stop before you break something we need.
She exhales sharply.
"Fine," she mutters. "Pull me out."
Lyriel taps a rune.
The circle dims.
The threads slip from her awareness like ropes sliding out of her hands.
Pain eases.
Slowly.
Mira presses a cool hand to her chest.
Her face is carefully neutral.
Her eyes are not.
"How bad is it?" Fia asks, trying for lightness.
Mira gives her a look.
"It's bad enough that if you were anyone else, I'd already have strapped you to a bed," she says. "The only reason you get to sit upright is that dragon heartbeat doing half my job."
Fia sags a little.
"I'm helping," she says.
"You are," Mira says. "And you're going to keep helping by drinking this and not arguing."
She presses a cup into Fia's hands.
The tea smells like mint and something bitter.
Fia makes a face but drinks.
On the map, markers shift.
A messenger reads out updates in a steady monotone.
"Vyrn Gate reports: western ridge holding, minor breach contained. Enemy casualties heavy. Our forces…tired but stable.
"Fort Verdant reports: enemy beasts partially contained by controlled burns. Casualties mounting among rangers."
"Highwatch?" Seraphine asks.
The messenger hesitates.
"Highwatch reports: southern wall breached in one section," he says. "Street-to-street fighting. Requesting immediate reinforcement or permission to withdraw civilians to the inner keep."
Seraphine's jaw clenches.
"We have no spare armies," one of the generals says. "All we can send is air support and what mages we haven't already committed."
Lyriel taps the map at Highwatch.
"If we drop another anchor there," she says, "direct from the capital, we might stabilize their wards enough to hold the inner line."
She looks at Fia.
"So long as our relay," she says carefully, "can tolerate another strain."
Mira's head snaps up.
"No," she says.
"Yes," Fia says, at the same time.
They glare at each other.
Elira pinches the bridge of her nose.
"Do we have time for a lovers' quarrel about cardiovascular safety?" she asks the room at large. "Because if not, I vote we table that for five minutes and not lose a border fortress."
Mira inhales through her nose.
Lets it out.
"This isn't about me being overprotective," she says. "We push her too hard now, we might lose both a fortress and our Calamity."
Ardentis makes a vaguely insulted noise in Fia's head.
We would not break that easily, he says. We are not pottery.
"Okay, but my lungs are still pottery," Fia mutters.
Seraphine looks between them.
Her face is tired.
It's also very calm.
"Options," she says. "Lyriel?"
Lyriel chews her lip.
"I can build a one-way feed," she says slowly. "A tether from our main anchor here to a new stone at Highwatch. Fia stabilizes it just once, pouring in enough to lock it to the dragon coil. Then we shut the connection. After that, it draws from the coil indirectly through the existing ward network, not from Fia directly."
"And the risk?" Seraphine asks.
Lyriel winces.
"For the fortress? Lower," she says. "For Fia? That first push will hurt. It will also permanently tie Highwatch's anchor to her life."
Fia blinks.
"In what way?" she asks.
"In the 'if you die, the anchor dies' way," Lyriel says. "And in the 'if something catastrophic happens to that anchor, it tugs on you' way. Not enough to kill you. Enough to…register."
"So basically," Fia says, "if Highwatch gets blown up, my heart will know and file a complaint."
"Something like that," Lyriel says.
Mira's mouth is a hard line.
"That's a lot of pain for a 'might help,'" she says.
"It's a lot of protection for ten thousand people," Fia says quietly.
Silence.
Seraphine looks at Fia.
At the map.
At Highwatch.
"You're sure?" she asks.
Fia's chest hurts.
She's tired.
She knows this is going to make it worse.
She also sees the faces—through the threads—of terrified militia on half-built walls, of children being shoved down into cellars, of officers trying to look braver than they feel.
"Yes," she says. "I'm sure."
Mira closes her eyes.
Curses softly in a language Fia doesn't know.
When she opens them, they're wet but steady.
"Then we do it properly," Mira says. "No half-measures. No 'just a little extra' from you when Lyriel says stop. You pour once. Exactly as much as Lyriel says. Not one breath more. If you try to play martyr, I will sedate you."
Fia swallows.
"Okay," she says.
Lyriel nods, already sketching new sigils around the circle.
"It'll have to be fast," she murmurs. "Before the southern wall collapses entirely. I'll tune the anchor from here, send a pattern to Highwatch's mages. They carve, they place, we connect."
Seraphine snaps orders to messengers.
Airships to Highwatch.
Mages on standby.
Runners to the tower.
Outside, bells change tempo.
The war room hums.
Fia closes her eyes again.
Grasps the coil.
This time, when she touches Highwatch's thread, she dives deeper.
The fortress fills her senses.
Broken stone.
Shouts.
The metallic stink of fear.
She hears a child crying somewhere underground.
A commander yelling for the militia to fall back to the inner gate.
"Ready," she whispers.
"Do it," Lyriel says.
The world narrows to a line between her chest and a point miles away, where a handful of terrified mages are pressing their hands to a newly carved stone etched with fresh sigils.
Fia reaches down.
Not outward.
Down.
Into the dragon coil.
Ardentis watches.
He does not stop her.
Fire rises.
It's not the wild, roaring surge she used on the monster army.
It's a tight, contained blaze—thick, molten, heavy.
She cups it.
Focuses.
Pushes.
Heat floods her veins.
It squeezes her chest, clamps around her lungs, runs down her arms and out through Lyriel's circle, along the ward lines, racing toward Highwatch like lightning in slow motion.
Pain spikes behind her eyes.
She hears someone shout her name—Mira? Elira?—and then—
Connection.
Something snaps into place.
The new anchor at Highwatch lights up.
The wards there—thin, trembling—suddenly thicken, brightening as they drink in the power, threading themselves into the broader lattice that runs under the whole kingdom.
Highwatch's walls stop screaming.
Her ribs start.
Fia gasps.
For a second, she can't breathe at all.
Her lungs seize.
Pain detonates in her chest.
Not soft.
Not mild.
Full, raw, unfiltered agony, like the first time her illness flared—except now it rides on top of fire, not under it.
Mira is there before she can fall.
Hands on her face.
Heal-magic sliding under the pain, blunting the sharpest edges, shoring up tissue that had not signed up for dragon duties.
"Enough," Lyriel snaps. "Break the flow."
Fia tries.
The coil doesn't want to.
We can give more, it rumbles, warm and eager. We have plenty.
"We do not," Fia hisses through her teeth. "I'm not a power plant, I'm a person, let go—"
She yanks.
Hard.
The thread between her chest and Highwatch stretches, then thins, then narrows to a hair-fine filament—still there, still humming, but no longer a gushing conduit.
The pain drops from blinding to…loud.
She sags forward.
Mira catches her, pulling her into a sitting lean against her chest, one hand splayed over Fia's sternum.
"Breathe with me," Mira murmurs, voice low and steady by her ear. "In. Out. In. Out. That's it."
Fia drags in air.
It hurts.
Less with each breath.
Her vision clears.
The war room swims back.
Lyriel is pale.
Seraphine's knuckles are white on the edge of the table.
Elira looks like she wants to punch the circle for existing.
"Highwatch?" Seraphine demands.
The messenger—who has been watching all this with huge eyes—checks the next report as it comes in.
"Highwatch reports: wards strengthened," he says, voice shaking. "Southern breach contained. Enemy pushed back to the lower slope. They…they say it felt like the walls 'woke up'."
Fia laughs weakly.
"That's one way to put it," she says.
Mira glares at her.
"That was reckless," she says. "Even by your standards."
"It worked," Fia whispers.
"That is not the point."
Fia doesn't argue.
She's too busy trying not to throw up from the aftershock.
Ardentis hums, mildly impressed.
You pulled away, he notes. You did not let the flow take you. Good. Pain is information, not instruction.
"Next time," Fia thinks back, "you can do it."
Next time, Ardentis says, with infuriating patience, you will be stronger. That is the point of practice.
She sighs.
Loudly.
Mira makes a face.
"If I hear one more person call this 'practice,'" she mutters, "I'm going to prescribe rest as a mandatory war measure."
"Can you do that?" Elira asks.
"Yes," Mira says. "I have holy authority and a very sharp pen."
Despite herself, Fia snorts.
It hurts.
She does it anyway.
At Vyrn, the air tastes like chipped ice and blood.
Lysa Kharan lowers her glass and wipes sleet off the rim with a gloved thumb.
The fortress is still standing.
Barely.
Her western flanking unit is halfway up the ridge, locked in a brutal, cramped fight with the defenders around the ward anchor.
From up here, it looks like ants fighting on the side of a knife.
"How long can they keep that dome up?" Arven asks at her elbow.
"As long as their anchors hold," Lysa says. "As long as their mages stay alive. As long as someone in that capital keeps throwing power at them."
Arven glances sideways.
"You're thinking of the rumors," he says.
"Of course I am," she says. "Dragon seed. Double heartbeats. Wards that 'wake up' like they're attached to a living thing."
He makes a face.
"Dangerous rumors," he murmurs. "Our men are already spooked enough fighting someone called the Final Calamity. Adding 'dragon' to that—"
"They're not afraid of her," Lysa snaps. "They're afraid of him."
Arven's jaw tightens.
He doesn't argue.
She lifts the glass again.
Watches.
Her men push higher.
The defenders countercharge.
The slope is steep and slick with frost and melted ice.
Several soldiers slip, fall, are trampled.
Arrows hiss down from the tower.
A mage on her side raises a shield just in time to catch a spell that would have shattered a dozen men.
She hates this.
Close-up, she hates the way men die here.
From too high up, she hates that she can't see their faces.
Her orders echo in her head.
Break the ward anchor. Don't waste time on the gate.
It's a good order.
Strategically.
She's the one who wrote it.
It will save lives on both sides.
If they can take that anchor, Vyrn's dome will fall.
The defenders will be forced to fight without that protection.
They'll still hold, for a while.
But every spell will cost them more.
Every arrow will hurt more.
And if word of the dragonseed is true…
"General," one of her aides says, approaching with a fresh dispatch. "From the eastern front. Fort Verdant."
Lysa takes it.
Breaks the seal.
Reads.
Her eyes narrow.
"Verdant's commander reports partial success," she says. "They've driven our beasts back in some sectors. Heavy casualties on both sides. The forest is burning in patches."
"Spirits save us," Arven mutters. "They're burning their own forest?"
"They value land less than lives," Lysa says. "I'd call that sane."
Another dispatch arrives even before she finishes that one.
"Highwatch," the aide says.
Lysa opens it.
And stares.
"Highwatch's wards strengthened," she reads aloud. "Additional anchor activated. Our sappers repelled. Casualties high. They compare it to 'the walls waking up.'"
Arven whistles low.
"Dragon," he says.
Lysa's teeth grit.
"Or very clever mages," she says automatically.
Arven raises a brow.
"You don't believe that," he says.
She closes her eyes for a second.
Remembers the brief, sharp shiver in the air earlier.
Like a harp string plucked deeply under her skin.
Not her magic.
Theirs.
Something pulsed outward from the capital.
Just once.
Steady.
Deep.
Old.
She opens her eyes.
"I believe," she says slowly, "that we are about to find out exactly how much our king has underestimated the woman he's trying to chain."
Arven looks at her.
"Plans?" he asks.
She smiles, thin and humorless.
"They're still forming," she says. "In the meantime, we bleed. Carefully."
She turns to a nearby runner.
"Signal the western flank to prioritize enemy mages over the anchor if casualties climb too high," she orders. "Tell them to live long enough to see the next set of orders, or I'll drag them back from the afterlife just to yell at them."
The runner salutes and bolts.
Arven watches him go.
"You are," he says, "a very strange loyal general."
"I am," she agrees. "I wonder how long I'll stay that way."
The war does not stay politely on the borders.
On the evening of the fourth day, as the sun sinks and the sky over the capital turns orange, the first attack aimed past the forts arrives.
Not an army.
Not a siege.
A knife.
Fia feels it the moment the knife touches the wards.
She's in her room this time, not the war room.
Mira has strictly limited her "relay sessions" to three a day.
Any more, and Fia starts slurring her words and forgetting how many hearts she has.
So she's sprawled on the bed, blanket up to her waist, trying to read a book Lyriel insisted would "distract your brain from catastrophic thinking."
It's a treatise on household ward optimization.
She's on page four.
It is not working.
Seraphine is at the small desk, frowning over logistics reports.
Elira is on the floor, sharpening her sword for the third time in an hour.
Lyriel has been banned from bringing work into the room, so she's sulking in a chair with a novel.
The feeling hits like a cold fingertip dragged down her spine.
Not at the borders.
Closer.
She sits up fast.
Mira, who'd just stepped out to harass a nurse about tea supplies, is not in the room.
Elira is.
Her head snaps up.
"You felt that?" Elira asks.
"Wards," Fia says. "Inner net. Someone's poking."
Lyriel is on her feet already, eyes unfocused as she reaches for the architecture.
"Outer shield intact," she mutters. "Inner net…something just brushed the west-quarter lattice. Not a demon. Not a beast. Human. Stealthed."
Fia swings her legs off the bed.
Immediately regrets it.
Her chest twinges; she winces.
Elira is there in an instant, arm under her elbow.
"You're not going anywhere," Elira says.
"They might be coming here," Fia says. "I'd rather be somewhere with walls."
"This room has walls," Elira points out.
"Walls with windows," Fia says. "And because the universe hates me, any assassin with decent taste in drama is going to pick the window of the princess with the dragon, not the laundry room."
Lyriel glances toward the far wall, eyes narrowed.
"…she's not wrong," she says.
Seraphine is already moving.
She straps on her sword with practiced speed.
Her face is set.
"Inner guard will be moving," she says. "We don't panic. We don't run. We let the wards work, and if they fail, we kill whatever comes through the door."
Fia's skin prickles.
"This feels different from the demon siege," she murmurs. "Less…rage. More intent. Focused. Tight."
"Kidnapping attempt?" Elira asks.
"Or test run," Lyriel says. "See how close they can get to the capital before something bites them."
The wards shiver again.
Fia closes her eyes.
Reaches, not full relay, just taste.
A thread.
A presence skimming along the ward lines like someone tracing them with a fingertip.
Trying to avoid the bright lines.
Looking for dimmer spots.
"Weak points," she mutters. "They're feeling for weak points."
"Can you tell where?" Seraphine asks.
Fia focuses.
There.
Near the river gate.
A small flicker of magic, tuned to slip between the larger nodes.
She sees, briefly, through unfamiliar eyes—a cloaked figure pressed against stone, breath slow, hands moving in practiced signs as they whisper a thin, precise spell.
"River gate, lower level," Fia says. "Single caster. Maybe two. They're good."
"Too good," Lyriel mutters. "I didn't train them. Which makes them rude."
Seraphine snaps a command at a guard outside the door.
"Alert the river gate watch," she says. "Two stealth casters probing the inner wards. Tell them to lock down now."
The guard salutes, boots pounding down the corridor.
Fia keeps her eyes closed.
The caster by the river gate doesn't know they've been spotted yet.
They slip a thin knife of power between two ward threads, tuning it just so, trying to pry them apart.
Fia feels it.
The wards feel it.
The coil feels it.
Ours, Ardentis rumbles.
The dragon seeds in her lungs and heart twitch.
Heat spikes.
The wards flare—not from the palace anchor.
From her.
The light-lines in the stone around the river gate flash, bright and sharp.
The caster jerks back, eyes wide.
Their little knife of power shatters.
They swear.
Try again.
Fia's throat tightens.
She could push.
Just a bit.
Shove power down that line, slap the caster like an angry cat.
She hesitates.
Mira is not here.
Lyriel is.
Lyriel's eyes snap to her.
"Don't," Lyriel says sharply. "Not through that path. It's not tuned. You'll fry your own lungs."
Fia grits her teeth.
"I hate being responsible," she mutters.
"Welcome to adulthood," Elira says.
Instead of pushing, Fia does something smaller.
She tugs.
Not a surge.
A tap.
Just enough to make the ward line hum.
The caster flinches.
Their own spell bounces, tingles up their arm.
Their aura hiccups.
For a moment, Fia feels their fear—a flash of they're awake they're awake she's awake—and then the connection snaps as the guard squad at the river gate barrels around the corner.
Steel rings.
Someone shouts.
The caster drops the spell entirely, bolts for the sewer outlet.
They don't make it.
Fia doesn't see the killing blow—just the sudden absence where their presence was.
She opens her eyes.
Her chest aches like she's run a long way.
Lyriel exhales.
"Good," Lyriel says. "You didn't listen to the idiotic voice in your head that said 'more power.'"
"That was your voice," Fia mutters.
"I know," Lyriel says. "I'm very persuasive."
Seraphine's hand, still on her sword hilt, relaxes fractionally.
"Report," she calls, as the guard from before returns.
"River gate secure," he says, breathing hard. "Two intruders down. One caster, one knife-man. Both in Crimson Crown colors under the cloaks. They had restraints on them, Your Highness."
"Restraints?" Fia asks.
The guard nods.
"Not rope," he says. "Iron bands. Strange markings. The priest says they feel…wrong. Like they were made to bite magic."
Iron Circle.
Fia's skin crawls.
Seraphine's eyes go cold.
"Destroy them," she says. "Safely. Catalog the markings first for Lyriel, then melt them down. I don't want a single intact shackle reaching our walls."
The guard bows and leaves.
Lyriel is already scribbling.
"Binding metal," she mutters. "Probably keyed to dampen mana flow. If they'd gotten those on you…"
Fia swallows.
She doesn't need the end of that sentence.
"If they'd gotten those on me," she says anyway, "you would have found out exactly how much dragon is already in my bones when he tried to drag me through a warded city."
Elira's gaze sharpens.
"He's escalating," she says.
"Yes," Seraphine says. "And he's sending hunters ahead of his hounds."
Fia flexes her fingers.
The after-echo of the caster's fear lingers under her skin.
"Ardentis," she thinks. "You felt that?"
Small teeth, the dragon rumbles. New metals. Old greed. Annoying. Breakable.
"Can we break them without breaking me?" she asks.
Yes, he says simply. If you listen when the healer says stop.
She sighs.
"I am surrounded," she tells the room, "by people and dragons who all say the same thing."
"Good," Mira says from the doorway.
She's holding a tray with tea, expression like a recovering storm.
"I hate when you all agree," Fia mutters.
"You love it," Elira says.
She kind of does.
Even when it hurts.
Especially when it hurts.
Because the hurt, now, comes with hands on her shoulders, voices in her ears, a dragon in her chest, and a whole kingdom's ward-lines humming like a net thrown over the world.
The attacks are getting worse.
The war is getting darker.
But she is not alone in it.
Not anymore.
On the fifth day, the Crimson Crown pushes harder.
At Vyrn, their siege engines finally arrive—ugly, iron-bound towers that grind up the valley, belching smoke.
At Verdant, beast handlers unleash bigger demons, things with too many eyes and teeth that make rangers grit their teeth and keep firing anyway.
At Highwatch, the enemy stops probing and starts throwing itself at the new-strengthened walls, desperate to find out what woke them.
Fia feels every surge.
Every impact.
Not as sharp as that first tether.
But enough.
She sits in the circle again, teeth gritted, sweat beading at her temple, Mira's hands steady on her shoulders as Lyriel calls out what she sees and Seraphine translates it into orders.
"Vyrn west tower under heavy pressure," Fia says through clenched teeth. "Siege tower approaching. Anchor holding. They're aiming for the parapet—"
"Tell them to shift projectors to vertical arc," Lyriel says. "Hit the tower joints, not the front beams."
"Already on it," Seraphine says, signaling a messenger.
"Verdant's east flank is collapsing," Fia continues. "Too many beasts. They're dragging down the pikes. The ward lines there are thin—"
"Airship support?" a general suggests.
"We can't spare the gunships," another says. "Not without leaving Highwatch—"
"Use thunder-casters," Lyriel says. "Short bursts into the undergrowth. They don't need precision, they need shock."
"Highwatch?" Seraphine asks.
Fia braces.
The tether there hums.
It hurts.
Not as much as before.
More like a permanent bruise that throbs every time someone hits the wall.
"Still holding," she says. "Inner wards strong. The enemy is…confused. They weren't expecting this."
She sees faces—enemy soldiers in crimson, staring up at the suddenly bright walls with a mix of anger and fear.
She sees one of their captains spit and shout something about "dragon tricks."
She sees a young conscript hesitate at the edge of the killing zone and think this isn't what I was told, this isn't what I signed up for before an officer shoves him forward.
It's dark.
Ugly.
Human.
She files it away.
Later, she'll remember that boy's face.
Later, she'll probably have another nightmare.
For now, she breathes.
Gives Highwatch one more small, measured push of strength.
Enough to thicken the wall under a particularly heavy impact.
Not enough to make Mira curse.
Much.
As dusk falls, the reports shift.
"Vyrn Gate holds," the messenger says, almost disbelieving. "Verdant still engaged, but beasts in retreat. Highwatch…still stands."
A ripple runs through the room.
Relief.
Fear.
Both.
"This is unsustainable," one general says bluntly. "We can't keep trading blood like this. Sooner or later, one of those anchors will crack, and then—"
"And then we deal with it," Seraphine says. "Like we always do. Day by day."
She looks at Fia.
Her fiancée looks exhausted.
Pale.
Eyes shadowed.
But her breathing is steady.
Her hearts are beating.
Both of them.
Seraphine's jaw sets.
"We hold," she says.
"For how long?" someone asks.
"As long as it takes," she says. "Until their king realizes we won't give him what he wants. Or until someone on his side grows a spine."
On the ridge above Vyrn, Lysa Kharan reads her latest dispatch from the capital and feels something in her finally, quietly, snap.
Our spies report the Calamity's condition deteriorating, the letter says in Raelan's neat hand. Proceed with all speed. I expect her in chains before the month's end.
She folds the letter.
Looks down at the fortress.
At the ward dome that refuses to fall.
At the men dying at her order.
"At some point," she murmurs, "you stop blaming the weather for the flood and start blaming the man who refused to move his house."
Arven glances at her.
"Is that a yes?" he asks.
She smiles, sharp and tired.
"It's a 'start preparing the ones we trust,'" she says. "If this king wants his dragon bride so badly, he can come ask her himself. On a battlefield where everyone has choices."
The war darkens.
The attacks keep coming.
But under all the blood and orders and maps, something else is moving now.
Not prophecy.
Not the system.
People.
A sick girl with too much fire, holding the ward-lines of three forts together with sheer stubbornness.
A general on the other side, quietly deciding that maybe loyalty to a crown ends where its folly begins.
And a dragon, coiled under a fragile ribcage, watching it all with an ancient patience that has nothing to do with kings and everything to do with what survives the fire.