6
The tomb was silent. No priests. No banners. No mourners.
Just the king, standing alone before the sealed stone door, staring at the runes he couldn’t read.
They told him it was protection. They said the wards were necessary, in case something lingered. As if he hadn’t already lost him once—the friend who stood too straight, spoke too carefully, always waiting for permission to breathe.
You should never have gone south.
He hadn’t said it aloud. Hadn’t said it at the council table, either. Not when the suggestion came, veiled in duty and strategy. It had seemed reasonable at the time—a proposal from those who handled the finer points of logistics and defense. Sir Justin de Laurant was the First Knight of the Golden Pride. The king’s unshaken right hand. What better way to reassure the provinces?
But he wasn’t supposed to be there. The Golden Pride didn’t ride for distant borders. Their place was the royal city—the throne’s last shield. To send him away was no ordinary order. And he hadn’t questioned it. Not then. Not soon enough.
The thought burrowed deeper than guilt. It festered there, heavy and bitter. Because it hadn’t been courage that kept him silent. It had been convenience. Cowardice, maybe. Or something worse—ignorance dressed as reason.
And I sent him to his death.
It had gone on too long—the lingering, the quiet drain of time and favor, the whispers growing louder and the doors closing tighter around Eliane’s demands. The court was bracing for a reckoning. Someone would’ve had to act. Someone would’ve had to stop her.
And if she wouldn’t yield—if she kept pushing—they would’ve turned to him. Forced the question no one dared ask aloud.
Why let him linger?
One way or another, he would’ve had to end it. Not by choice. Because they would’ve left him no other way.
But now... now there was no decision to make.
The chamber was sealed. The ashes were buried. The kingdom could mourn in peace.
And so could he.
He bowed his head, not in prayer, but in silence.
I’m sorry. And I’m grateful. And I hate that both can be true in the same breath.
Mud filled his mouth. The taste was iron and ash.
He couldn’t lift his head. Could barely breathe. But his right hand still moved.
Fingers dragged through the filth, shaping lines he’d only traced in silence. The form was rough, half-remembered—fragments handed down behind closed doors, never spoken of twice. It wasn’t meant to be understood.
He didn’t know what the spell would do.
He didn’t need to. It wasn’t his to question.
Only to remember that it was final. Taught for one purpose: when all else failed, when surrender wasn’t an option, when nothing else remained.
Victory, no matter the cost.
The magic stirred beneath his skin, slow and steady. It gave no sign, no warning. Only presence.
Still, he waited.
The ground trembled—five sets of claws circling, slow and deliberate. No fear. No urgency. They knew he had nothing left.
Heat breathed across his back.
His fingers hovered over the last mark.
He spoke the word.
And the world was gone.
Justin woke with a gasp.
The breath snagged in his throat, as though something had been torn from it mid-scream. His chest seized. His eyes burned. Heat still roared through his ribs like a fire not yet spent. The taste of earth clung to his tongue, thick with blood and ash.
He tried to move, and the world reeled. The bed beneath him was too soft. The air too still. No smoke. No iron. No sky.
His right hand reached instinctively for a sword that wasn’t there. His right arm—
Gone.
The weight of it, the absence, hit him all at once. Panic clawed up his spine, raw and unformed. He flinched, tried to rise, but his limbs gave out beneath him, heavy and slow, as though time still hadn’t quite let go of him.
“My lord—!”
The voice came quick and close, followed by hands catching him before he could collapse. He struggled without meaning to, chest heaving, vision blurred, but the hands only steadied him—firm, careful, familiar.
“It’s all right, my lord. You’re safe now. Breathe, if you can.”
He blinked. The room swam back into focus. Stone walls. A shuttered window. A fire guttering low in the hearth. No guards. No banners. No gold.
Just Tomas.
The boy looked like he hadn’t slept in days, but his eyes were bright with something close to joy—fragile, uncertain, but real.
“You’re awake,” Tomas said quietly, as if afraid the words might undo it. “Truly awake. How do you feel, my lord?”
Justin didn’t answer at first. He glanced around the room again, slower this time, trying to understand why it felt both strange and familiar. The light from the window caught his face, and his right eye flinched at the brightness—too sharp, too clean. Something ached deep in his chest, hollow and cold, as though he had left something behind in sleep and could not name it.
“I feel,” he said at last, voice rough with disuse, “as though I’ve been trapped in a nightmare.”
He didn’t look at Tomas. His hand drifted to his chest, slow and aimless, and closed over the amulet as if it belonged there.
He drew in a breath, unsteady and thin, and let it out slow.
“Hot. Endless.” He closed his eyes. “Like it wanted to burn me out from the inside.”
The light through the shuttered window was thin and grey—summer light, pale and early. Enough to see by, not enough to warm. He kept his eyes half-lidded against it, the right still too raw to bear the full weight of daylight.
Tomas sat nearby, quiet as always. The boy had taken to reading aloud in the mornings. Simple things—travel records, dull court notices, old cavalry reports. Justin never asked for it. He didn’t stop it, either. The sound helped fill the quiet, though it did nothing for the hollow weight in his chest—a shape of grief with no name.
The healers came twice a day. Never more than two at a time. Never speaking more than necessary.
“Skilled healers, arranged by Her Highness,” Tomas had said when Justin first asked. The words had stuck with him—odd in how careful they sounded, like something memorized. Still, he let them work. When their hands hovered above his chest and the spell took hold, the fever would ease for a time. The fire in his blood would settle. His skin would stop aching.
They said nothing of the rot. But he could see it in their faces—the way they watched his breathing, the way they checked the old wounds. His leg still ached deep in the bone. His face stung whenever the wind touched it. But the smell of decay was gone.
He’d started sitting up three days ago. Tomas always helped, one hand behind his back, the other steadying the ruined leg. He could stay upright for a little while now. Long enough to sip broth. Even eat, when the nausea passed. It wasn’t much. But it was more than before.
The healers said little, but they watched him closely. Yesterday, one of them lingered longer than usual. After the spellwork, they pulled Tomas aside and spoke to him in a low, measured voice—just enough to carry, not enough to make sense. Tomas had only nodded.
This morning, he lit the hearth early. Brought fresh water. Swept the stone floor without being asked.
Justin watched him move through the quiet, hand resting over the amulet at his chest, waiting for the shape of it.
Tomas straightened from the basin, drying his hands on a cloth. For a moment, he hesitated—then stepped closer to the cot.
“Her Highness is to arrive soon, my lord,” he said quietly.
Justin just nodded. That was enough.
The door opened without ceremony. No servant to announce her. Just the quiet shift of the hinges, and the faint rustle of cloth as she stepped inside.
Justin looked up. He was already sitting up in bed—Tomas had come earlier, steadying him with quiet hands, adjusting the pillows until the weight was bearable.
She crossed the room without urgency and closed the door behind her. No words. No escort. Only her.
He straightened slightly, instinct more than comfort, and met her eyes—then dipped his head, not quite a bow, but as much as he could offer.
“My lady.”
Her gaze passed over him—the hollowed frame, the claw scars carved deep into the right side of his face, the way his sleeve hung loose and empty. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. But he did. He felt it then—not just the weight, but the sight of himself. The ruin. And the quiet shame of being seen.
She sat in the chair beside the bed and folded her hands in her lap.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said.
The silence stretched. Then she drew in a breath, slow and steady, and spoke—not with comfort, but with something quieter beneath it.
“The court believes you are dead.”
She let the words settle. His face didn’t change. He only watched her, still and unreadable.
“I didn’t see another way,” she said. “You weren’t getting better. No one could find a way through it. Even the private ones—the ones I trusted—began to say there was nothing left to try.”
Justin shifted, barely. Not in protest—just a slight tilt of the head, as if bracing for the rest.
“And around the court,” she went on, “people started asking quiet questions. I knew what they meant. I didn’t wait for them to say it aloud.”
He didn’t doubt what kind of questions they had asked. Not after what he’d overheard—voices just beyond the door, low but never careful. A burden. A mistake. A body taking up space.
The worst of it was that they weren’t wrong.
She held his gaze. “I told them you were gone. The rites were performed. The rooms were cleared. They mourned you politely, and then they moved on.”
Justin did not speak. The light on the wall had shifted, brushing his right eye, and he turned slightly away from it. His gaze dropped to the shadowed space beneath the window, as if listening more than watching.
“I didn’t expect anything else,” he said, finally.
There was no sharpness in it. No accusation. Just the shape of something long accepted.
Eliane didn’t respond. The stillness held. He turned back toward her.
“You said no one could find a way through it.”
“No,” she said. “No one.”
He watched her a moment longer.
“Then these healers… who are they?” he asked. “And how is it they can do what others could not?”
“They are not of the court,” she said carefully. “You will not find records of them, nor hear their names spoken beyond these walls. They’ve kept to the shadows for a long time, and they intend to remain there. I trust them.”
Justin’s hand moved slightly, brushing the blanket, then returning to stillness.
“They cannot be exposed. Not to the court. Not to anyone. Even Tomas is kept outside this, and I intend to keep it that way.”
Justin’s gaze lowered, thoughtful. Still, he said nothing.
“They’ve held the curse back,” she went on. “That’s all. It hasn’t broken. That work lies ahead, and they can’t do it alone. There’s something more they intend to attempt, but you’ll hear it from them.”
He gave no reply, but he did not look away.
“They will ask something of you. I won’t speak for it, and I won’t speak against it. It is a choice only you can make.”
He didn’t answer. His hand came to rest over the amulet at his chest, fingers closing around it as if holding on to something he couldn’t name.
Justin didn’t look up as they entered. He knew their manner by now—measured, restrained, never wasting movement or voice. When they worked, it was through spellcraft, not speech. Today, they came not to cast, but to speak.
He glanced once at Eliane. She remained still.
“Her Highness says you’ve come to ask something of me,” he said. “I doubt a dead man has anything worth the taking.”
The taller of the two stepped forward—Vaeril. His voice was quiet and level.
“That piece you carry—the amulet—where did you get it?” He asked.
Justin met his gaze, then looked down, brow drawn. “I… don’t know,” he said slowly. “It feels like I’ve always had it. But I couldn’t tell you when, or how.”
Sira, the other, spoke then, her voice calm and measured.
“Tell me if you remember Castella.”
Justin’s brow pulled tight. The name struck oddly—not unfamiliar, but distant, just out of reach. He tried to follow it, but there was nothing to hold. No face. No voice. No shape. Only the sense that something should be there, and with it, a faint warmth he couldn’t place. Almost forgotten. Almost real.
Then the pain hit.
It came without warning—sudden, sharp, anchored behind his eyes. His breath caught. He winced, turning from the light, and brought his left hand to his head, fingers digging into his temple. A sharp sound escaped him—not loud, but torn out all the same. The pain left no room for silence.
Across from him, Sira raised a hand and made a simple motion in the air. The pressure vanished as quickly as it had come.
“That was expected,” she said. “We won’t use that name again.”
Justin blinked against the returning stillness. His gaze drifted to Eliane—sharp, questioning—but she remained still, offering nothing. The pain still echoed faintly behind his eyes, and his jaw had tightened without him noticing.
“She is sealed in the amulet,” Vaeril said. “Your soul is tied to hers. That bond is the only reason you survived.”
The words felt detached—as if spoken for record, not comfort.
“To protect her, the amulet suppresses your memory of her,” he continued. “If you remember too clearly, the link begins to draw her back. And she cannot withstand that. Not yet.”
Justin frowned. His fingers drifted to the chain at his chest, finding the amulet by instinct.
“This makes no sense,” he said quietly. “But if any of it’s true… why help me at all?” His grip tightened slightly. “Why not just take it and be done?”
“You were struck by a curse,” Sira did not answer directly. “Not a simple working—not even by our standards. It should have ended you.”
Her voice remained level, without emphasis.
“To stop it, the Keeper infused herself into the counterspell. Not just her magic—her soul. She gave everything she had to keep you alive.”
Justin’s hand stayed at the amulet, fingers motionless.
“We cannot simply take it,” she went on. “Part of her is in you now. To remove the link, it must be done carefully—or you both die.”
Justin said nothing at first. The words sat heavy, not for what they claimed, but for what they tried to make him believe—devotion, sacrifice, all for his sake. It didn’t sit right.
He looked between them, slow. Fragments gathered—things said, things implied, things he already knew. His gaze sharpened, colder now. The shape of it was becoming clear.
“Your standards,” he said, voice low but edged. “You speak as though you’re dragons yourselves.”