The shadows inside the charcoal burner's hut didn't just move; they solidified. One moment, Gerald was standing before Marianne, his face etched with a royal, desperate terror—and the next, the air was sliced by the hiss of a weighted net and the dull thud of a sap hitting bone.
Marianne didn't even have time to raise her wooden branch. A figure clad in midnight leather seemed to materialize from the very soot of the walls. She felt a gloved hand clamp over her mouth, tasting the bitter salt of old sweat and iron.
"Don't kill her!" Gerald's voice was a ragged scream, but it was cut short as a knee slammed into his gut.
Marianne struggled, her heels digging into the dirt, her mind screaming for the strength of her past life. But her sixteen-year-old frame was no match for a Black Vanguard assassin. She saw a second man bring a heavy, leather-wrapped cudgel down toward her temple.
The world didn't go black all at once; it shattered like glass. She saw Gerald being dragged backward, his eyes fixed on her with a haunting, silent apology, his fingers clawing at the earth until the darkness finally swallowed her whole.
Gerald was a whirlwind of fury and grief. Even with his hands bound in cold-iron manacles—designed specifically to damp the spirit of the North—he fought. He kicked, bit, and threw his weight against his captors, his voice hoarse from shouting her name.
"She's just a peasant girl, Your Highness," the Commander of the Vanguard rasped, shoving Gerald through the dense briars of the ravine. "Forget her. You are a Prince of the Obsidian Throne. You don't belong in a mud-pit with Aethelgard filth."
"She is worth more than your life and mine!" Gerald spat, blood trickling from a cut on his lip.
They moved toward the "Black Gate," a narrow, jagged crack in the cliffs that only smugglers and ghosts knew. It was their way out—a secret passage that bypassed the fortified border towers. At the mouth of the crack, their contact, a grease-stained smuggler named Vane, was supposed to be waiting with fresh horses.
But as they rounded the final bend, the Commander skidded to a halt.
The mouth of the pass was not empty. It was lit by the orange, flickering glare of a hundred torches. The Aethelgard Commander of the Southern Garrison,Denmark, a man who had been humiliated by the report of a "Dwelfinth spy," had not been idle. He had tightened every loose end. He had closed the "unclosable" paths.
Vane the smuggler was there, but he wasn't holding horses. He was hanging from a makeshift gallows tree, his feet swaying in the wind. Beneath him stood three rows of Aethelgard heavy infantry, their shields locked, their spears leveled like the quills of an angry porcupine.
"Going somewhere, North-men?" the Commander stepped forward, his armor gleaming in the firelight. "We heard rumors of a 'trader's son' and his 'friends.' It seems the rumors were modest. You look like the King's own hounds to me."
The Vanguard reached for their blades, but the sound of fifty crossbows clicking into place ended the thought of a fight. They were outnumbered ten to one, trapped in a narrow gorge with a Prince in chains.
"Lay down your steel," Denmark ordered. "The King wants to see the faces of the men who think they can walk through our lands like shadows. And he especially wants to see the boy who caused so much trouble for Prince Alaric."
The journey back to the palace was a grueling, public humiliation. Gerald was not put in a carriage; he was chained to the back of a supply wagon, forced to walk the dusty road while the Aethelgard soldiers jeered at him.
The news traveled ahead of them like wildfire. The "Dwelfinth Spy" had been caught. The girl's "accomplice" was being brought to justice.
As they entered the capital's main gates, the streets were lined with citizens. These were the people who remembered the Pale Rose plague. They threw rotten fruit and stones, screaming curses at the "mountain-rat" who had dared to enter their city. Gerald didn't bow his head. He walked with his spine straight, his gray eyes searching the crowd—for a girl with dark hair and a spirit of iron.
Is she alive? the thought hammered in his brain. Did they leave her in the dirt?
The doors to the Throne Room were thrown open with a violence that shook the tapestries. The Aethelgard King, Valerius, sat on his throne, his face a mask of cold fury. Beside him stood Prince Alaric, looking down at the prisoners with a smirk that was almost feline in its satisfaction.
Gerald was shoved forward, the heavy chains rattling against the marble floor. He fell to his knees, not out of submission, but because a guard kicked the back of his legs.
"So," King Valerius said, his voice echoing through the silent hall. "The Shadow-Striders of Dwelfinth. And you..." He looked at Gerald, his eyes narrowing as he took in the boy's noble features, the quality of his undershirt beneath the grime, and the way he refused to lower his gaze.
The King stood up, walking slowly down the steps of the dais. He stopped in front of Gerald, reaching out to tilt the boy's head up with the tip of his sword.
"You are no common spy," the King whispered, a look of dawning, horrific realization crossing his face. "I know that brow. I know those eyes. I saw them on your father twenty years ago when we begged for the cure."
A gasp rippled through the gathered nobles. Alaric's smirk faltered, replaced by a sharp, hungry curiosity.
"You haven't just caught a spy, Commander," the King said, turning to his officer. "You've caught a Crown Prince. You've caught the heart of the North."
Alaric stepped forward, his voice a low, jagged purr. "A Crown Prince? How delicious. And where, I wonder, is the girl? The one who harbored this 'Prince' in her bed and her home? If he is the heart of the North, then she is the hand that guided him. Bring her in! I want them to face their sentences together."
"She... she was not with them, Your Highness," Denmark reported. "We believe she is dead or dying in the ravine."
Gerald let out a guttural, wounded sound, lunging at Alaric despite the chains. "If she dies, I will turn your kingdom into a graveyard!"
The guards slammed him back to the floor, but the threat hung in the air, heavy and poisonous.
The King looked at Gerald, then at the empty space where Marianne should have been. "Detain him in the High Dungeon. Prepare the messengers for the North."