The journey back to the capital was somber. The victory over Lord Karst was complete, but the cost was heavy, and the triumph felt hollow. The road back was rough, churned with mud and the broken remnants of the skirmish. Aedric rode ahead, blackened armor scraping the wind, eyes scanning the horizon as if he could will the world itself into submission.

  Behind him, a low, creaking carriage jostled along the frozen path, carrying Varin his right arm gone, his bandaged shoulder darkening where blood had already bled through, his body bruised and battered. The man's pride warred against pain; he held himself upright, but the leather straps did little to ease the indignity of being transported like a wounded beast.

  Aedric watched him from behind and approached Varin, his jaw ticking, his armour dented and streaked with blackened soot. The heat of the fight still clung to him, leaking through in little bursts ghosts of rage not yet cooled.

  "You almost died," Aedric muttered. Not loud. Not soft. Just... honest.

  Varin gave him a crooked breath that might've been a laugh. "You saved me. Again."

  "You shouldn't make a habit of it."

  "You give me no choice, my King. Someone has to keep you alive."

  Aedric didn't rise to the tease. He stared ahead, eyes narrowed on the frostbitten horizon. Something heavier pressed at him, an unspoken weight that had nothing to do with the rebels they'd left dead behind them.

  The King's face was unreadable, the exhaustion of the battle replaced by a cold, frightening clarity. Finally, as the sun dipped, turning the northern snowfields to purple and gray.

  After a long silence, he spoke quietly, the wind trying to steal the words from the air.

  "I have made my decision regarding Maria."

  Varin shifted, the movement a painful effort. "Your Grace?"

  Aedric's fingers tightened around the reins. "I'm sparing her." The words came sharp, final. A vow sealed not with softness but with the remnant fury of the battlefield. "And I'll speak of her power to no one. Not the High Court. Not the Guard. Not even the gods if they ask."

  Varin nodded once slow, sure. He had expected this.

  Aedric stated, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. "She is the mother of my children. I will not make their father a public murderer."

  Varin hesitated, then replied flatly, "She will remain confined in the tower, then?"

  Aedric's gaze flicked back, sharp as a drawn sword, his jaw hard, but there was a glimmer in his eyes, a raw, unbroken thread of devotion. "No. She will not be hidden like some fragile relic. She will have her place, Varin. Her old place. My Queen. I will have my Queen back, where she belongs."

  "Your Grace, with all respect," Varin pushed himself up, wincing as the movement pulled at his bandaged shoulder.

  "I think she cursed me. She looked at me last time we were in the castle, and now my arm is gone. She is not a woman to simply have in a corner. She will conspire."Aedric's eyes flashed with a dangerous, raw emotion.

  "It's all in your head, Varin. Maria wouldn't hurt a fly." He cut Varin off before the Captain could argue about her being a witch. "If she wanted to hurt you, she'd have hurt you then. Let her plot and scheme and use those sharp wits of hers. I will watch her. I will keep her within three rooms of me for the rest of our days, if I must. But she will be in light, Varin, not in shadow."

  "but she's still a witch who was involved in sorcery, probably –"

  "Enough, Varin." Aedric cut him off, his voice hardening with finality. "You've challenged her ever since she's been my wife and didn't do anything, but the moment you knew she's a witch, you think she used her power. if she wanted to hurt you, she'd have hurt you then."

  Aedric shook his head slowly, his gaze drifting to the carrier's roof as if he could see the distant capital.

  "The tower is no longer an option," Aedric stated, his voice quiet, lacking the cold command he usually reserved for strategy. "The rebellion is crushed. We return triumphant. If the Queen is not seen, questions will be asked. Questions that might lead back to that cursed power."

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  "A simple illness—"

  "No," Aedric interrupted, firmer this time. "I will have her back In her rightful place, beside me."

  Aedric's eyes flashed with a dangerous, raw emotion, a turbulent mix of resentment and something agonizingly tender.

  He leaned closer, the truth ripping through his discipline. "You speak of threats and safety. The truth is, I cannot bear the thought of her rotting in that cell. I cannot bear to have saved my throne only to lose the only thing... the only person... that ever felt like home."

  His eyes were haunted. "She will be my Queen, Varin. She will attend court. She will wear the jewels. She will sleep in my bed."

  Varin stared, aghast. "But... the betrayal? The lies?"

  "I have not forgiven her," Aedric whispered, the words heavy as stone. "I may never forgive her. But the fury I felt has been replaced by this... this absolute emptiness. I cannot destroy her. And if I cannot destroy her, I must keep her close, where I can see her, where I can touch her. I choose the visible threat over the invisible wound of her absence."

  Varin slowly sank back against the cushions, his one remaining hand resting over the stump of the other. The King's choice was insane, politically disastrous, and utterly human. It was love, raw and unforgiving, choosing self-inflicted torment over freedom.

  "As you command, Your Grace," Varin conceded, the bitterness in his voice clear. "But this choice will cost us more than my arm."

  He looked away, jaw tight, defeated but unyielding in principle. "And if she refuses? If the bitterness hasn't passed?"

  Aedric's eyes softened for the briefest instant, and the ice around his fury cracked to reveal a man who had loved too fiercely to let go. "Then she will have to remember," he said quietly, voice rough as gravel, "who I am. And that she is still my Queen, whether she believes it or not."

  Aedric merely nodded, his gaze already distant, lost in the terrible memory of a woman who had betrayed him, and a future he still desperately wanted.

  "But," Aedric continued, voice dropping to a darker register, "anyone who already knows... any man who saw even a hint of what she is..." His eyes hardened, steel closing over storm. "They cannot be allowed to live."

  "I will not see the stability of my reign broken by the hysteria of magic-hunters. The knowledge of her power is a far greater threat to this kingdom than the woman herself, provided she stays locked away."

  Aedric leaned in, his tone dropping to a lethal whisper. "This secret, the secret of the Queen and her children, is now the foundation upon which this throne rests. You and I hold it, Varin. And we will kill anyone who threatens to expose it."

  Varin felt a familiar, chilling certainty in the King's words. He understood the unspoken order: loyalty demanded not just silence but action.

  "The healers who tended to the children when they were born," Varin rasped, the effort of speaking a long phrase pulling at his fresh wound. "The midwives, the witnesses to her illness..."

  Aedric nodded slowly. "They know enough to ask the wrong questions. They cannot be trusted to keep silent under fear or coercion. They must be silenced completely. Every last one."

  "It will be done, Your Grace," Varin affirmed, his voice returning to its soldier's pitch, despite the crippling pain in his shoulder.

  Varin swallowed. "You trust no one with this."

  "I trust her least," Aedric murmured, the confession grimly tender, "but I fear the world more."

  The carriage lurched over a frozen rut, and Varin winced, clutching the straps. Aedric spurred his horse, riding just a pace ahead, glancing back only briefly, as if to anchor his promise in the man behind him. His heart ached in a way only love tempered by betrayal could achehard, jagged, unrelenting.

  But far behind them in the capital, a single voice had already begun to unravel the King's fragile mercy.

  Mara.

  She waited until the city felt the absence of its wolf. Until the King's armor thundered far beyond the horizon and his command no longer weighed upon the palace halls.

  Only then when the fortress exhaled in his absence did she act. A perfect opening carved by war.

  She did not waste her poison on servants or ladies-in-waiting. Her target was the absolute pillar of faith, the man whose fury required no evidence, only suggestion.

  She climbed the oldest stairwell of the cathedral, her steps careful, her breath steady, as if she were carrying a confession meant to save the world. The granite walls smelled of cold stone and centuries of incense.

  At the top waited High Priest Rameon, the man who loathed witches more than he loathed the Devil himself. His sermons were fire. His judgments were ash. His eyes saw sorcery where others saw shadows. His very presence seemed to drain the warmth from the air.

  Mara bowed low, trembling just enough to be believed, enough to convey terror rather than malice.

  "My lord... forgive me, but a sin has taken root in the royal chambers. I fear for the King's soul."

  Rameon's head lifted sharply, his features thin and severe beneath the shadow of his cowl. His eyes, usually fixed upon scripture, were now fixed entirely upon her.

  "Speak."

  "It is the Queen," she whispered, letting her voice crack with feigned distress. "Maria."

  "I have witnessed things... unholy things. Movements with no hands. Water rising. Air bending. Her wounds heal too fast. Her eyes shine when they shouldn't."

  She didn't rush — she let each accusation fall like drops of oil onto flame, crafting the exact kind of heresy that paired too well with Rameon's darkest convictions.

  The priest slowly rose from his chair. He was a tall man, and his shadow stretched across the ancient altar stone. His face was not angry; it was luminous with dreadful, righteous purpose.

  "Sorcery... within the walls of our sanctified King?"

  Mara lowered her gaze, voice almost reverent, as if she could not look upon the enormity of the crime.

  "I fear," she breathed, "that the Iron Wolf has been sleeping with a viper."

  And in that moment, without a shout, without a bell, without even a breath out of place Rameon stepped forward, his shadow falling completely over her.

  The cathedral held its silence like a held breath, heavy with divine assent.

  A death sentence began to shape itself in holy stillness... whispered not by a witch, but by a loyal servant, one who waited, patiently and precisely, until the King was far away and unable to stop her.