Page 115 of Heart Cradle
Eiran stood over him, breath shaking, sword lowered. He looked at the boy’s face, soft with adolescence, mouth slightly parted, as if in mid-question. “A child,” he said. “He was just a fucking child.”
Dragon wings beat from above and more were arriving. It was Orilan who appeared first, stepping through the doorway like icy vapour made flesh. Virekhal’s cry followed, a raw, echoing scream that cracked through the stillness like a warning. Then the dragon descended, vast as a blizzard, his glacier-blue wings beat once, twice, and he dropped from the sky like judgement made of scale and claw. Runes shimmered faintly across his hide, ancient and cold as the peaks he was born from. His eyes, like chips of ice, locked on the body below with ageless fury, but Eiran didn’t look away from the boy. “It was a skeld and when it died… this is what was left.”
Orilan’s face didn’t change. He crouched, examined the boy in silence, then he stood again, voice heavy. “Poor sod. He must have been conscripted. Avelan’s reach is bleaker than we feared.”
“They sent him to die,” Eiran said bitterly. “Or worse, to become more.”
Orilan turned towards the gathering thunder, the dragons landing in silence. Their riders acknowledged them from the courtyard and Orilan’s voice rang out. “We are not facing an army of fae. We are facing something older, something that should not be. If Vargen is raising skeld and sending them to our gates…” He looked to at the boy. “Then we are already at war.”
Chapter Fifty-Two –Endured, it Must
The next three weeks were relentless. No one in Elanthir Keep had the luxury of rest. The entirety of the Fae Lands were bracing for war, and the pace reflected it. Every hall, courtyard, and tower buzzed with motion. Training rotations expanded, patrols doubled and the supply chains to the northern ridges were reinforced under Aeilanna’s heavy magical warding.
What had once been an ancient seat of power had become a fully mobilised war citadel and Maeve threw herself into it completely. She trained in the mornings with Soren, Calen and Nolenne in the outer ring, physical conditioning, bladework and hand-to-hand sparring. Calen drilled her footwork until her calves screamed. Soren made her repeat blocks and counters until both arms bloomed with bruises. Nolenne never held back, and neither did she. She learned fast and by the end of the first week, she was holding her own in full-speed combat sessions. She beat a younger guard captain in a mock duel that ended in disarmament, and the Keep’s weapons master remarked she was “functionally combat-capable, but still sloppy under pressure.”
Afternoons were spent with magicers, Maeve rotated between the three instructors: Aelianna in elemental control and weaving, Hettae in illusion detection and rune use, and Yendel in pure intention magic. All were stunned by her progress, especially Yendel, who speculated often about her connection to the Chain and its recent evolution.
By the second week, she could cast defensive wards and hold them under sustained strain. Her elemental control still needed work, her fire burst wider than intended, and her ice formations came with unpredictable strength, but her focus had sharpened. The Chain, still on her wrist, responded more and more as her confidence grew. It pulsed when she aligned her intention well, guiding her in subtle ways, amplifying runes and enhancing her awareness. Yendel continued to study the Chain and its effect on her magic, he said he would update the Runekeepers.
Her breakthrough came during a live combat exercise at the Brimvale outpost. She was meant to observe, not engage, but when the skeld emerged, silent, fast and lethal, Maeve stepped in. She moved without hesitation and warded a wounded guard. Took a defensive stance, letting it come to her. When it reached, she met it head-on with a spell she hadn’t been taught, pure intention magic forged into a force that blasted the skeld backwards. She killed it with a strike from her blade, reforged under Orilan’ssupervision and etched with multiple runes of wind, fire, water, ice and earth. When the skeld died, it became another boy. No more than fourteen, another Avelan conscript. She didn’t cry, she just stood there, and promised herself she’d remember his face.
The commander debriefed her for what felt like hours. Orilan listened in silence, then signed off on her unrestricted training access. After that, no one questioned her inclusion in war briefings again.
The threat kept rising, there were five more skeld encounters in the following weeks. One reached the southern slope watchtower before Fenric, Rivakar, and two unpaired thunder dragons brought it down. Another made it into the Keep’s outer gardens but was intercepted by Calen, the Skyflame Venleo, and Jeipier. Each time, the pattern was the same, coordinated infiltration, no communication, suicide-level aggression, and always, when killed, they left behind Avelan youths.
Maeve fought in two of these incidents. She didn’t escape unscathed, during the second, a skeld forced her over a thirty-foot drop from the outer city walls. She barely managed to slow her fall with intention magic, wrenching her shoulder out of place on impact. Cira healed the worst of it, but the pain still lingered, she never hesitated. She took her place beside the others, her name added to the patrol rota by Taelin’s own hand. The commander didn’t offer praise, but he no longer offered caution, either.
Jeipier improved rapidly. His wings stretched, he was almost fully grown, and his control in the air had sharpened. Though still young, he now trained with the thunder, flying in staggered patterns above the eastern cliffs. The adult dragons treated him with growing respect, especially after he flew a tight protective loop around Maeve during a skeld breach drill. Brontis had taken to personally training his son, and the two worked in remarkable tandem, their aerial formations fluid and fierce. Xelaini still monitored him closely, but no longer hovered. Jeipier’s flame was large but precise, and his telepathic reach had matured enough to sense skeld presences from almost a mile away.
When Maeve wasn’t training, she flew with Jeipier or rested against his warm, scaled side in the stable’s courtyard. The bond between them deepened quietly. He was fiercely protective but playful, and increasingly sensitive to Maeve’s emotional shifts. Once, when she returned from a field engagement bloodied and close to a now-rare panic attack, he pressed his nose to her cheek and said simply,“I’m so proud of you.”
Other bonds grew stronger, too. Maeve and Eiran had little privacy during the day, but they carved out their evenings. Some nights, they simply ate and collapsed into bed. Others, they wandered the city, slipping intotaverns to listen to the music, and sometimes, they made space for more, for long baths, soft touches and shared laughter in the dark.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Maeve said, voice low.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to ruin me again.”
A slow smile tugged at his mouth. “I am about to ruin you.”
He moved through the bath water with lazy grace, kneeling between her legs. His hands slid up her thighs, gripping just beneath the waterline as he leaned in to kiss her, slow, deep and unhurried. The kiss melted her, she clung to his shoulders as he pressed her back against the warm stone, lifting her legs. His cock nudged against her, already thick and hard under the water. She rolled her hips in invitation, breath catching at the delicious pressure.
Eiran broke the kiss to drag his mouth along her jaw, her throat, her collarbone. “You looked like war incarnate today,” he murmured. “And now you’re mine to worship.”
He guided himself to her entrance and pushed slowly, inch by inch, until he filled her completely. Maeve gasped, clutching at his back. Water rippled around them as he began to move, each thrust drawing a moan from her throat. She tilted her hips to meet him, chasing the friction, the pressure, the sharp edge of release. Eiran wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her close, his mouth never far from her skin. “You feel like fucking heaven,” he growled.
She tightened around him in response, biting her lip to stifle a cry.
“Let me hear you,” he said, voice rough, breath hot against her ear. “Let them all hear who you belong to.”
Her nails raked down his back. “Yours…” she cried. “Always.”
They moved together, water sloshing and steam rising in curling tendrils. Every glide of his cock inside her made her nerves spark, every deep, deliberate thrust stoked the fire building in her core. He pressed his forehead to hers, breath ragged. “Come with me, love.”
Maeve did, shuddering, legs trembling around him, body spasming in wave after wave of sharp, exquisite release. Eiran followed with a groan, sinking into her as he spilled inside, holding her through it. Kissing her like the world had narrowed to this single, sacred moment. For a long while, they simply stayed there, entangled in enchanted warmth, water curling around their bodies like silk, Maeve reeling from the thought of theceremony that they rarely spoke of, but its presence lingered between them like a promise.
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