GREGORIA THORNE POV

  “Why in the name of the Goddess did you have to break his nose, Viperyan?” Gregoria's hand found the table before her voice had finished. The sound carried down the hall.

  Viperyan crossed her arms. “Why do we have healers?”

  “By Yewsia—”

  “Would you rather I took the punch?” Her chin lifted.

  "You will not speak to me like—" Gregoria was on her feet before she had decided to rise.

  She stopped.

  The anger was real. The target was wrong.

  It wasn’t the broken nose. It was that Viperyan had done with her fists what Gregoria couldn't do with the Resurrected.

  Viperyan stood still. Her fists, clenched at her sides, her breathing slow—waiting for her grandmother to speak, not her Queen.

  "Next time," Gregoria said at last, "hurt our enemies. Not our men."

  Viperyan nodded once and turned to leave.

  "Would you like to come see the preparations for your Meckhala?" Gregoria called after her.

  Viperyan stopped, turned to her.

  She scrunched her mouth thoughtfully then opened her radiant and disarming smile—one that made her look more like her mother than Gregoria could bear to admit.

  She agreed with her head before saying with a glint of mischief: "Did Rezal show you his new spell?"

  "He did." Gregoria's gaze did not waver. "How did you plan to be a Bones Commander being that lazy?"

  "Laziness," Viperyan said, "is not the word I would use. I prefer the better placement of energy."

  Gregoria did not answer. She took her granddaughter by the arm, and with a flick of her wrist, the world came apart. Air swallowed them whole, and in the space of a single heartbeat, they stood within the Temple of Yewsia.

  The smell hit first—sage and crushed lavender, dense as incense smoke, threaded with the faint metallic tang of hexes. She had always loved when I brought her here as a child.

  At the chamber's heart sat the pool: a wide basin of dark granite, filled with simmering water and herbs drifting across the surface.

  Viperyan stepped to the edge and looked down as though she’d have a hint of her future in the swirling greens. "Hopefully I'll have a Seal," she whispered, almost like a prayer.

  You will. Gregoria was certain of it. She rested her hand upon Viperyan’s shoulders. "You will. Though between us," she said, "I doubt the herbs have much to do with it."

  "Then perhaps you ought to bring the Inverdon wardstones. Add them to the circle." Viperyan's mouth curved with that particular mischief of hers. "Perhaps then I'll finally manage some measure of control."

  Gregoria laughed. Truly laughed — and felt the surprise of it, the way it loosened something behind her ribs that had been wound tight for days. Tomorrow every High Lord will stand in this hall. Zaryan. Ramidur. Osfrey. Marcus. All of them watching. All of them waiting to see what her girl becomes.

  She looked at Viperyan and saw, for just a breath, not a future Skull Marshal but a child who had once found the magic too loud. Clever. Brave. Mercifully, stubbornly funny.

  So unlike her mother, in that.

  She moved to the nearest energy stone and adjusted it—an unnecessary correction, but it gave her something to do. The stones encircled the basin at intervals of an arm's length, their glow weaving into a subtle current that would fuel tomorrow’s rite and anchor Viperyan’s ascension.

  "Some Magicals," Gregoria said, "do not master their Seal until they have found their sacred animal. Until the Triad is complete." She glanced up. "Maybe that’s what’s waiting for you.”

  “I won’t set my hopes too high,” Viperyan murmured. “We don’t even know if I’ll be granted one.”

  Gregoria said nothing. She watched Viperyan's hands instead—those restless fingers that could not seem to find stillness. She knew her girl fought more than one battle within.

  She had watched Viperyan wait for a boy who no longer looked at her as a mate but as a woman—a boy pulling away slowly, like ice cracking before it broke. A boy fighting something he can’t name while letting her granddaughter stand in the cold.

  Viperyan had done a brilliant job so far, pretending not to feel it.

  Should I tell her Rezal asked? And then what? That I denied him? In the South, feelings were not spoken of. They were set beneath the earth like worms that eat its surroundings gradually.

  The Queen had been raised that way as for her children. It had not always served them well.

  Gregoria took a slow breath and reached into her coat. A heavy jingle of metal.

  "I was going to give you this after the ceremony," she said, and placed a small velvet pouch in Viperyan's palm.

  The girl's eyes changed at once. Whatever weight had lived there—lifted away. "Oh," Viperyan breathed, drawing out the ring. "It's beautiful."

  A basilisk curled in a perfect white gold circle, tail to jaw. Its eyes, two chips of green gem that caught nature's pale light and held it.

  She slid it onto her middle finger and turned her hand to look at it.

  "It works both ways," Gregoria explained. "If I need to reach you—or if you ever need to reach me."

  Viperyan tilted her head, a habit wherever something snagged her curiosity. "So I can veloport to you through this? That's what you're saying?"

  "Yes—but you'll need to feel my presence through it before casting. As will I, to find—"

  From above, Cyrillus sang.

  What began as one of the brummalis's idle morning chords shifted, to something known. The bird could learn names. It was among the gifts they carried. One of Cyrillus's ways of protecting her was singing the names of those who approached, so that Gregoria was never caught unaware.

  The name fell over the temple like snow.

  When she understood who had come, something warm moved through her chest.

  Viperyan caught it. She always did. "Didn't know my Meckhala was more important than whatever is happening beyond the Rift."

  "Bring him to me," Gregoria said—in old Hashyew— a tongue the brummalis understood far better than the newer ways of speech.

  Cyrillus dropped from the stone arch above.

  "It seems it is, ponkan," Gregoria kindly replied.

  Viperyan's mouth curved, briefly. Then she stepped sideways out of the moment entirely. "The book is here?"

  "Tomorrow only."

  The book. Magicals’ most sacred book. Every sacred writing their Goddess had seen fit to leave behind. Every vision set down by the seers. The chronicles of what the khasuh people had built, what they had defeated, and what they had sworn never to become again. Tomorrow Viperyan would lay her hands upon it before every High Lord in the realm and speak the oath aloud.

  Viperyan will serve the Mother and swear to never let her own power consume herself.

  She would turn eighteen.

  “Now that Oiregor is here,” Viperyan began as they crossed the narrow bridge connecting the temple to the castle, “perhaps it’s better if I plan something else for my birthday’s eve.”

  Ah. There it is. The fear that was not being named. A girl with any pride at all would rather invent an excuse than risk being the one left waiting.

  "He would never, Viperyan." She kept her voice even. "Rezal may be… It is your eighteen birthday. The most important of them all." She glanced sideways at her granddaughter. "He will not let you dine alone."

  I hope I am not lying to her, Gregoria thought. I hope the boy has that much sense left in him.

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  Viperyan's next words came too suddenly. "Is it true he killed his brother, Grandma?"

  Gregoria slowed. So we are done talking about Rezal, then. She recognized the tactic—had used it herself, in another life. When the heart grew too loud, the mind found other questions to quiet it.

  "No child is born a monster, Viperyan." Her gaze drifted toward the far end of the corridor, where the tapestries stirred. "His brother wasn't fortunate enough to come back home." She paused. "If there is anyone deserving of blame, it is the one who threw two boys of eleven to a battlefield in the first place."

  Viperyan said nothing. And then: "We agreed to go down to the candle prayers after dinner—but we didn't settle on a time."

  She heard none of the Scaster boys. Viperyan's mind was somewhere else entirely, turning the same worry over and over the way a tongue finds a sore tooth.

  "Did you tell him you wanted to dine with him?" Gregoria asked, already knowing.

  "Yes. I told him I wanted to have Damascus pie." A small pause. "He said he'd rather have meat."

  Viperyan turned then, and those unsettlingly violet eyes found the fading light—Goddess, those eyes. They could have conquered kingdoms, if the girl dared to use them that way.

  "You are thinking too much, child." Gregoria drew her close, the same way she did when Viperyan was little. "He will be there. And tomorrow—all of us will be there for you."

  Viperyan smiled. She rested her head against Gregoria's shoulder for just a moment before straightening and pulled away.

  "I'll go find Brycent." She was already moving. "Tell the esteemed Lord Warden that his goddaughter sends her regards." She pressed a kiss to Gregoria's cheek and hurried down the corridor before Gregoria could answer.

  Gregoria watched her go—cloak snapping behind her like a battle flag—and felt the familiar press of something she would not call guilt.

  Better Rezal tells her he asked. They need to speak honestly with each other, Gregoria had told herself.

  She did not have to climb to her office to find Oiregor. He was already in the castle, standing beside Baaron—which was its own victory.

  "Well." She curled a corner of her mouth. "Baaron inside these walls after noon. Is that what miracles look like?"

  Baaron cleared his throat. "I'm taking things more seriously. After—well. My way to repay you, Greg—"

  “Oh, shut up! You’re my grandson!” Gregoria said, messing her nephew’s hair.

  "About—" Oiregor began.

  "By Yewsia, do not bring me bad news." Gregoria raised both hands as though she could hold the words physically at bay.

  "By the Goddess, woman." Oiregor drew himself up with exaggerated offense. "I am not always the herald of catastrophe."

  Gregoria narrowed her eyes. "I never thought you'd show your face here with everything happening beyond the—"

  "Rezal came to visit me," he said, and let that sit.

  She lowered her hands. Ah. "The day of miracles. Indeed. Veloporting is becoming fashionable," she meant it as relief.

  "I was right about what I told him, then." Baaron's grin spread slowly and satisfied across his face.

  “What did you tell him?” Oiregor asked.

  "That I've no need to craft spells when I have the best doing it for me." Baaron smirked. "Now. I'll leave you two lovers to your reunion." Before either of them could draw breath to protest the word lovers he was gone. The air folded shut around where he'd been standing.

  Wherever he went, it was nowhere within my walls. Gregoria knew that much.

  She turned to Oiregor. Pride lived plainly in his face.

  "You ought to stop expecting the worst of him," she said, walking past and motioning for him to follow. "He may not manage matters of the heart. But his spellcraft is beyond reproach."

  She found a small, empty room off the corridor and went inside. Privacy. She had learned to want it.

  "Nature's balance," Oiregor murmured, more to himself than to her.

  Gregoria arched an eyebrow. "That is the first thing you have to say to me after all these months?"

  "I was here a few weeks ago."

  "You didn't stay a day, Lord Warden of my Rift, Lord Commander of my White Owls." She teased.

  He stepped closer—only a few fingers taller than her—took her by the waist, and kissed her. Not a tentative kiss, the kind poets describe as fierce and searching and weighted with months of absence. She let herself have it. The warmth of his breath. The faint smell of wood smoke and worn leather that always clung to him.

  Her knees did not falter the way they had once, when she was younger than Viperyan and the whole world was made of yearning. A trembling that belonged only to the youth. What she felt now was quieter, but held its own magic.

  "By the Goddess," he murmured against her lips. "I missed you."

  Ten years, she thought. Ten years since it had begun—though they had known each other their entire lives. Love hadn’t crossed their minds. It began after his wife left. Whispers had moved through all three kingdoms like wind through summer wheat—a monarch and a High Lord, at their age.

  Who would dare oppose it? She was the Queen.

  Gregoria had not remarried after her husband's death—shortly after Baaron was brought to court. She had been sure love was finished with her.

  Oiregor had proved her wrong. Her pride had not entirely forgiven him for it.

  "We need more Owls," he said. "Skilled men." The warmth of a moment ago had left his voice entirely. This wasn’t Oiregor—was the Lord Warden.

  "Are you bribing me with a kiss, Lord Warden Rellum?" She jested.

  "As if that would work." He laughed softly and kissed her again anyway.

  She brushed a hand across his chest and sighed. "Perhaps it's time to send Odraud back with you."

  "He won't like it."

  "Luck enough I am the Queen." The steel had returned to her voice, quiet and absolute. "He'll do as I say regardless."

  Oiregor folded his hands. "We've had no further episodes since Alwin. The refugee flow is slowing."

  Gregoria's fingers found the rim of her cup. "The B?llards? Any sign?"

  "Gone. The outcasters, the whispers about the dark creatures—all of it. Vanished." He held her gaze.

  Her breath caught. "What are you telling me?"

  He sank into the chair across from her and exhaled slowly. "Honestly? I only trust what I saw because I wasn't alone. Otherwise—" He shook his head. "I'd question my sanity."

  When a man doubts what his own eyes have shown him, Gregoria’s father's words echo in her skull, the truth is worse than the suspicion.

  "I believe you," she said. "I saw it myself." Her chest was loud against her ribs.

  He said nothing.

  "The more than thirty thousand outcasters sent there—what of them?"

  "Seven thousand pledged harbours at the Rift. Women and children with us, the men still requesting passage." He spread his hands. "The Owls are still searching for the rest."

  "Did you send them back into the Valley?"

  "By the Lady, Gregoria." Something snapped in his voice. "You want me to welcome rapists and assassins among our people?"

  "You're not wrong," she said. "But consider what it means to use their families against them." Her tone hardened.

  His expression darkened to match hers. He had known her long enough not to flinch from it—long enough to understand she had not held her Crown by preferring easy answers.

  "Are you warning the other kingdoms?" He asked.

  "Nothing concrete to warn them of. Not yet." She leaned forward.

  "We must begin our own records. Every banishment, a name, a number and the reason for it." Her eyes were iron. "Those who killed children, who killed for sport, who raped—they are to be executed."

  The room smelled faintly of wax and old parchment as air grew colder.

  "Gregoria." Oiregor's voice dropped. "We still need more men."

  "By the Goddess." Her patience broke clean. "If the Souglaves come, more men won't change a thing." Her voice rang off the stone.

  "Some can survive them," he said. Bold, though not wrong.

  Gregoria let out a harsh breath. "We are so bloody doomed." She rubbed her fingers to her temples. "Find the Magicals among them. Begin training immediately."

  "That will serve us well." A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face.

  Gregoria straightened and moved toward the door. "I have news of my own."

  Oiregor went after her. "What could have happened in a matter of weeks?" He asked as they stepped into the corridor.

  Her jaw tightened. "Sunsdom Paladins raided magical villages in the North. Claiming that the Zihem were hexing commoners into servitude." She glanced up at him. "It seems Zihem is fashionable once more."

  The old slang resurrecting—a word born of fear, used to diminish them, as tainted. More than a millennium and someone had decided the grave was shallow enough to dig back up.

  “Bloody northerners!” Oiregor spat. Shaking his head, incredulous.

  "Almost fifteen years of peace," Gregoria said quietly. More to herself than to him.

  He turned to face her. "Have you called off the wedding?"

  "She is my last hope." Exhaustion clad her voice. "Otherwise I would never have considered it."

  Oiregor's expression darkened. "The fair woman is dangerous, Gregoria. She never became an eagle." He held her gaze. "She's the last scorpion. And her sting is full of venom."

  Gregoria's hand closed around his arm. She had not worn that particular worry since Venilhu died—her second brother, gone in a way she had never fully set down.

  Fifteen years of peace. Undone in months by Lords’ whispers and something far older than politics. A threat most of Easeror had decided was myth. The ones who once were guardians of the Baellards, creatures older than the twelve kingdoms, creatures that have always caused fear but creatures far different from what was sealed away in Valley of Ice.

  "I could go back on my word," Gregoria pondered, "and marry Viperyan to your boy." She let it settle. "It wouldn't make everything worse."

  Oiregor exhaled. The relief in his face was brief and honest—he understood that Rezal had asked. Guilt moved through his eyes like a cloud crossing water—every hard word he'd thrown at the boy over the years, coming back to the surface. Pride held his tongue.

  The sound of running boots broke the silence before either of them could speak again.

  Auror appeared at the end of the corridor—breathless with a folded parchment pressed to his chest, its caramel seal visible from twenty paces.

  "Steady, man!" Oiregor snapped. "Our Queen cannot afford to lose you in times like these."

  Auror said nothing. He just extended the letter, arm trembling. "You need to read it, my Queen."

  Gregoria's eyes narrowed at the broken seal. She snatched it from his hand with a deadly gaze.

  "I won't—" He bent forward, catching his breath in ragged pulls. "I won't let my Queen suffer—whatever hate the paper holds—"

  "I forgive you." She was already reading. Her eyes moved steadily down the ink—and stopped. Stopped, and did not move. Then the fury came, cold. "How are we receiving visitors tonight?" Her voice echoed against the ceiling. "This letter arrived days ago, didn't it?"

  "Someone at the gates," Auror said, nearly whispering, "decided it more productive to collect the weekly correspondence, rather than daily."

  "By the Ancients! Who banned beatin—" She caught herself. Pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, then hissed through her teeth. "Right. I banned beating the staff. I did that."

  She dragged a hand across her face. "Auror. Dismiss whoever made that decision. Then have the maids prepare the west wing chambers on my floor—the main room as well. For one guest, alone."

  "Royals," Oiregor muttered darkly.

  "It appears we are receiving another one." Gregoria stared at the parchment as though it had personally offended her. Her fingers tightened around it. "Let’s find out if he’s more of an eagle than a scorpion."