Kaelen's POV.
The explosion didn't kill us, but it felt like the world turned upside down. The central square had buckled, dropping a section of the market into the silver mine shafts below.
I clawed my way out of a pile of rubble and pulverized limestone, my lungs felt like they were burning from the heat.
"Fenrir!" I coughed, wiping blood from my face.
A massive hand pulled out from the debris to my left. I grabbed it, pulling with everything I had left. Fenrir came out, his armor battered and he just grabbed his sword and stood up, swaying on his feet.
The explosion had severed the rebel front line, but the traitors with white armbands were already pouring into the streets.
"We have to get to the keep," Fenrir rasped.
"No," I said, pointing to the narrow alleyways of the lower district. "The keep is a cage. If Hecate has the internal gates, she'll starve us out in a day. We fight in the streets and turn every corner into a butcher's shop."
We scaled the side of the collapsed square, reaching the street level. It was a slaughterhouse.
I saw a young boy, no older than twelve, being cornered by two traitors. I didn't think, instantly I threw my short-sword. The blade pierced into the traitor's neck. I sprinted forward, drawing my second blade, and drove it into the other man's chest before he could turn.
"Torin!" I shouted, seeing the Captain holding a barricade of overturned carts fifty yards away. "Fall back to the Weaver's District! Burn the bridges behind you!"
"Regent! The Emperor is bleeding!" Torin yelled back.
I turned. Fenrir was leaned against a stone wall, his hand pressed to his shoulder. A crossbow bolt was buried deep in his arm.
"It's nothing," Fenrir growled, snapping the shaft of the bolt with his teeth.
"You're a fool," I hissed, rushing to him.
"Not a shield."
"I'm a man who doesn't like his mate being turned into a pincushion," he countered. He looked at the traitors closing in from the north. "They're coming, Linus."
"Let them come." I turned to the remaining loyalists, about a hundred men who had scrambled out of the dust. "Listen to me! No prisoners! If they wear a white armband, they die! I don't care if they were your brothers this morning. Today, they are betrayers! Set the houses on fire! If we can't hold the street, nobody gets it!"
"Linus, these are civilians' homes," Fenrir said, his voice strained.
"These are obstacles," I snapped. "Torin, do it! Burn the Weaver's District!"
The fires rose instantly.
Every time a traitor begged for mercy, I silenced them. It was like the rage from a thousand years was coming back and I was feeling it heavily.
"You're being too brutal," an officer shouted, his arm severed at the elbow.
"Where is the Prince's mercy?"
"I buried it in the Black Ridge," I said, and took his head.
We pushed them back, inch by bloody inch. Any soldier caught wavering was executed on the spot by Torin's inner circle. By midnight, we had carved out a perimeter around the East Barracks.
Fenrir sat on a crate in the middle of the street, a medic finally tending to the bolt wound.
"You've broken their spirit," Fenrir said. "They're terrified to move into the fire zones."
"Good. Fear is the only thing that will keep us alive until dawn," I replied.
A scout emerged from behind, dragging a trembling man in a servant's livery.
"Highness, we found him trying to slip through the sewer grates. He's carrying a royal signet."
I walked over, grabbing the servant by the hair. "Who do you serve?"
"The... the Queen Mother," the man whimpered. "Please, I'm just a messenger."
"What's the message?" I asked, placing my blade against his throat.
"She... she told me to tell the Emperor that the New Fang has a guest," the servant stammered. "In the Northern citadel. She said to tell him that the Princess Lyra is enjoying the mountain air."
Fenrir stood up so fast the medic stumbled backward. He grabbed the servant by the throat, hoisting him off the ground.
"Lyra?" Fenrir's voice was low. "My sister is in the capital's convent. She's under the protection of the Holy Order."
"The Order... they opened the gates, Majesty," the servant choked out. "The Queen Mother took her three days ago. She said... she said if the Emperor doesn't surrender the city by noon tomorrow, she'll send the Princess back piece by piece."
Fenrir's face went completely still.
"She has my sister," Fenrir whispered. "Lyra is only fourteen."
"It's a trap, Fenrir," I said, stepping toward him. "She wants you to abandon the defense and ride into an ambush."
"I don't care!" Fenrir roared, turning on me. "She's my blood! The only family I have left who hasn't tried to kill me!"
"If you go, you die, and Lyra dies anyway," I said, my voice cold. "Hecate doesn't keep hostages for long. She uses them to break the enemy, then she discards them."
"I am going to the North," Fenrir said, his hand on his sword. "Stay here and burn the city if you want, but I am getting my sister."
"You'll go over my dead body," I said, blocking his path.
"Don't test me, Linus. Not tonight."
"I'm not testing you. I'm ordering you." I looked him dead in the eye. "She's not just a hostage, she's the bait for the final kill. And the messenger didn't tell us everything."
I turned back to the servant, pressing my boot into his chest. "What else? Talk, or I'll start with your fingers."
"The... the Blue Moon fleet," the servant wailed. "They aren't at the bridge! They're already in the bay! They're flying the Queen Mother's colors!"
I looked at the horizon. Beyond the smoke of the burning city, I could see the silhouettes of masts moving through the mist.
"The pincer is closed," I said. "We're trapped between a rebel army, a traitorous guard, and a fleet of warships."
Fenrir looked at the ships, then at the servant, then at me. "She has Lyra and the sea. We have a burning street and a hundred men."
"Then we'd better make those hundred men count," I said.
"Fenrir," I said, my voice dropping. "We aren't defending the city anymore."
"Then what are we doing?"
"We're going to steal a goddamn warship."