Chapter 270
Elara’s POV
“Show me the rider.”
The north road opened in strips of dry grass and ruts. Wind pushed the treetops. Vessa paced at my left with two from Dawn Wing. Mira ran the flank with a shield on her back. Thorne matched my stride and watched the tree line like it owed him an answer.
Eden’s voice clicked in my bead. “Outer picket set. No banners in sight. Your rider sits alone.”
“Distance,” I asked.
“Two bends,” he said. “He has not moved.”
We rounded the turn. The rider waited on a gray mare by the milestone. Cloak hood up. One gloved hand on the reins. The other on the horn of the saddle. A ring flashed when the light cut through the cloud. Reversed wolf.
Thorne spoke low. “Your call.”
“Walk me in,” I said.
We closed the last twenty paces. The rider lifted his head. A man in his middle years, bones sharp, eyes wrong. He did not smile. He held the reins like a clerk holds a pen.
“Name,” I said.
“Courier,” he answered. “Not yours.”
“Ring,” I said.
“Message,” he said.
“Speak,” I said.
He tipped his chin. “Kneel.”
Vessa started forward. My palm cut the air. Hold. I watched his shoulders. I watched his hands. He watched nothing. Wrong.
“Move,” I said,
We split. Vessa drifted right. Mira slid left in the grass. Thorne stayed with me. The rider kept still. His hand left the saddle horn. He dropped a small metal bead. It hit the dirt with a dull pop and exhaled pale dust.
“Masks,” Vessa snapped.
I threw a scarf over my mouth. Thorne pulled me back one step. The dust drifted low across the road like fog
on the ground. My chest tightened for a breath, then held steady. Not poison. Cover.
The arrow came from the branch to our rear. Jace’s warning shout cut late. The shaft grazed my side under the ribs. Hot bite. Breath gone. I hit a knee and punched the ground to stay up.
“Find him,” Thorne barked.
Mira spun, shield up. Vessa pointed, eyes hard. “Tall oak. Second fork.”
Two of Dawn’s fighters went up the trunk like cats. The branch shook. A figure dropped, rolled, came up with a knife and a cord. He saw my blood and ran at me, fast and quiet.
I rose slow, blade ready. He feinted for my throat. I blocked. He changed hands and slid the cord toward my wrist. The cord had a small hook. It would lock. I cut the hook off and drove a knee into his thigh. He staggered. Quick, trained, not a brawler.
He went for my side where he had already cut me. Smart. I turned, caught his wrist, twisted, and slammed his hand to the post. The knife dropped. Vessa’s boot pinned it. Mira’s shield pinned his shoulder. He looked up at me with empty eyes. Not hate. Not heat. Nothing.
“Yield,” I said.
He shook his head once. He bared his throat like he was offering it. That was when I saw it.
A pale ring of scar tissue encircled his neck. Not a collar. Not a rope burn. A bond mark, smooth and cruel, with tiny puckered points where the clasp bites. Forced bond. Outlawed in every council I respected.
“Hold,” I said.
He went still. Vessa’s mouth turned cold. “Not this trick.”
“Look at the skin,” I said. “He did not choose it.”
The rider on the gray horse watched us like a man at a play. He lifted his reins. “You have ten counts to kill him or you lose the next ten days.”
“Ride,” Thorne said.
Two from Dawn knocked the rider off his horse before the count reached two. He hit hard and lost the ring in the dust. They pinned him. He did not fight. He laughed once and thanked us for saving his boots.
Mira cut a strip and pressed it to my side. “Deep line, not a hole. You hold.”
“I hold,” I said. The pain burned clean. My eyes stayed on the assassin under Mira’s shield. His pulse thumped at the bond mark like it was trying to leave his throat.
“What do they call you,” I asked.
He stayed silent. His eyes flicked to the rider. The rider smiled at me and then at the sky.
“If you plan to die, do it later,” I said. “I want the hand that tied that ring.”
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He spoke for the first time. The voice was rough, like he had not used it in days. “If I live, they cut my sister.”
“Name,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “Theo.”
Vessa’s brows jumped. “Direstone has a Theo,” she said to Thorne. “Not him. Younger.”
“Mark is the same use,” I said. “Bond a hand. Threaten the family. Point him at a throat.”
The rider spat dust. “You are wasting clean daylight. Take the head and get on with the grief.”
I stared at the ring in the road. I stared at the thin scar around Theo’s neck. I felt the weight of law sit on my shoulder and then slide off. Law did not fit today. Mercy did. It tasted bad. It was still the right cup.
“Vessa,” I said. “Bind both arms. Gag. Feet loose. He walks between us.”
Vessa blinked. “We take him in alive.”
“Yes,” I said.
The rider laughed again. “Soft.”
Thorne walked over to him and crouched. “Look at me.”
The rider did not. Thorne took his chin and turned it. “Soft is a word for men who bring borrowed knives to kill women and then call it brave.”
The rider shut up.
Mira tied Theo’s wrists. She used the cord he had brought to lock. She cut the small hooks off first and tossed them in the ditch. He flinched when the cord touched the mark on his neck. It looked like pain and shame. It looked like a boy who had run out of road.
Eden stepped from the brush with two from Dusk Wing. He eyed my side, then the gagged rider, then the assassin. “You should be on a bench,” he said to me.
“Later,” I said. “Check the bead dust.”
He knelt and brushed the pale powder. “Sleep ash with cedar. Blurs eyes, slows the blink. Not poison.”
“Find the bag on the branch,” I said. “He had a second plan.”
Ilia’s voice came soft in my bead. “Got it. Thin cord, small bell, two vials. One clear, one brown. Brown smells like almonds.”
“Burn the brown,” I said. “Bottle the clear.”
We marched the rider and Theo back the way we came. My shirt stuck to the cut. I kept my shoulders square and my breath even. No one spoke. The wind did the talking until the keep rose over the trees.
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Chapter 270
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At the gate, the yard caught fire with sound. Not celebration. Rumor. The kind that swells when blood hits stone. I heard my name under it like a thread. I heard soft. I heard betrayed. I heard alive. All true in small
parts.
Garron stepped into our path with three officers. He looked at my side. He looked at Theo. He smiled a little, the way men smile when they want a fight they can win with words. “You bring him in walking.”
“He is bound,” I said.
“He is breathing,” he said. “After he cut you. After he hunted your throat.”
“Bound and breathing,” I said. “That is my answer.”
Garron tilted his chin toward the crowd that had formed at the rails. “Then hear the rest. They call you weak already. They say you like rogues more than law. They say you will trade our dead for a story.”
Thorne stepped up beside me. “Stand down, Garron.”
Garron kept his eyes on me. “I am speaking to the one in the chair.”
I held his stare. My voice stayed flat. “Your men answer to my mark inside the fight. This is still the fight.”
“They will not march behind mercy,” he said.
“They march behind results,” I said. “Watch me get one.”
I turned to Vessa. “Bronze corridor for the rider. Inner cells for Theo, alone. No men near him. No torches within reach. Water if he speaks truths only.”
“Copy,” she said.
We moved. The yard noise followed like a bad smell. Theo kept his head down and his steps small. The bond mark rose and fell with his breath. The rider hummed under the gag until Vessa put a finger to his throat and stopped the song.
Inside the inner hall, the stone cooled the air. Eden’s table was already set. He unrolled a clean cloth and put down a bowl and a small jar. “Sit,” he said to me.
“Later,” I said. “Give me one minute with him first.”
Eden looked at my side and then at my face. “One minute.”
I stood in front of Theo. He would not look at me. I kept my voice quiet. “Who put the bond on you.”
Silence. His hands shook. The cord held.
“Who,” I asked again.
His eyes lifted to mine for the first time. There was a boy under the dirt and the empty. He chewed the answer like it would break his teeth. “Ruvan,” he whispered. “Her father.”
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The name cracked the air. Vessa swore. Thorne went still. Eden’s jaw set.
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Theo swallowed. “They took Kaia when I ran. They cut a line on her wrist. They said every time I missed a target, they would take a finger.”
I tasted iron. I did not look away. “Where is she.”
He shook his head. “They move her.”
The minute ended. Eden pushed me down on the bench and cut my shirt. The pain sharpened and then dulled. He worked fast and neat. “No hero runs,” he said.
“No hero runs,” I said back, breath steady.
The door opened and Cael stood there, pale but upright, a band at his wrist. He looked at me. He looked at Theo. He took in the cut and the cords and the jar on Eden’s table. He nodded once. “Report.”
I gave it clean. Rider. Dust. Arrow. Bond. Name. Ruvan. Kaia. No spin. No pause.
Cael’s eyes moved to Thorne. “You stand with this.”
Thorne did not blink. “I stand with her. We use him to cut the leash.”
Cael nodded. He turned to Garron, who had followed us halfway into the hall like a shadow. “You spread one word against my Gamma while you breathe my air and I will feed you your badge.”
Garron shut his mouth. The sound felt like a gift.
I stood. Eden grunted. I stood anyway. “We run two paths,” I said. “Path one. Find Kaia and cut the bond. Path two. Follow the ring to Ruvan. The rider is bait. Theo is the line.”
Theo flinched. “You said mercy.”
“I did,” I said. “Mercy does not mean you walk free. It means you walk first.”
He nodded. It looked like relief. It looked like fear. Both useful.
Mira appeared in the doorway with a cloth bag. “Rider had a map sewn into his saddle. Three stamps. A mill. A line of trees. A broken bridge.”
“Fenreach border,” Thorne said. “Old mill on the river bend.”
“Then that is where they store the girls,” Vessa said. “Or where they want us to look.”
“Both can be true,” I said. “We send Night to the bridge. Dusk to the trees. Dawn with me to the mill.”
Cael’s mouth tightened. “You bled an hour ago.”
“I bleed later,” I said.
Eden sighed. “Of course you do.”
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Thorne fixed my bracer. His fingers were careful. His voice stayed quiet. “You will hear worse before we reach that mill.”
“I already did,” I said.
He met my eyes. “Then say the words that close the yard.”
I faced the door and raised my voice. “Hear me. Mercy was mine. Rumor is smoke. I am not smoke. I am command. We move.”
The hall answered with boots and breath. The noise felt clean. The room emptied to work. Only the rider’s laugh tried to follow. A guard hit him once. The laugh stopped.
I leaned toward Theo. “You walk on my left. You point with your chin. You speak when I ask.”
He nodded, eyes wet for the first time. “If she dies because I talk, I will not live through it.”
“She will not die,” I said. “Not before I pull her from that room.”
He swallowed. “Then take me there.”
Thorne touched my sleeve. “Say go.”
“Go,” I said.
