Page 148 of Heart Cradle
“Now?”Hervour’s tone was dry.“You want dramatic or direct?”
“Very fucking direct.”
Hervour twisted in a tight, vicious curve and flared her wings. Nolenne unstrapped mid-turn and dropped, boots hitting the packed earth with a heavy thud, which sent shocks of pain up her calves, she didn’t baulk, but she didn’t run to the entrance either. She strode to the tent and her blade slashed a jagged line through the wall, canvas flapping as she shoved her way inside. Smoke billowed in behind her, and time seemed to snap around the edges of the space.
He stood at the centre table. Short and scarred, his cold eyes gleaming like oil in lanternlight. His armour was Avelan-black, etched in red runes. She knew that face, dreamt of that voice. She had heard it order executions, training beatings, and send child soldiers into lit pyres. She heard him laugh as they killed her parents, she saw him drop Davmon and Varen in the fighting pit.
“Jenveld,” she said, voice low and thick with old fury.
“The traitorous bitch returns.” He cried, while leaping towards her. “All is not forgiven!”
She barely dodged the first strike, he was fast as he came at her with a shining obsidian sword, swinging with brutal efficiency. She ducked low, slicing at his neck, but he pivoted and backhanded her so hard she saw stars. She hit the ground and rolled, already up on one knee. He advanced, no words now.
They fought blade to blade. Fist to fist. He was stronger and older. He knew her style, he’d taught her, long ago, in that hellhole of a childhood, and now he used it against her. She grunted as he landed a punch square to her ribs, another to her cheek, blood in her mouth. She spat at him and smiled. “You always were too slow on the backswing,” she snarled.
He growled and lunged, but she caught his arm mid-strike, twisted, slammed her elbow into his throat. He staggered, but not far. Grabbed her by the collar and threw her back into a pillar. Wood cracked and pain flared in her chest again, but she rose, not because of Aeilanna, or because she had technique left, not because of discipline, because she was fucking done.
She launched herself at him, tackled him back, teeth bared. Both blades gone now, she fought with fists, elbows and knees, fuelled by blistering, unending rage. They crashed into the war table, splintering it beneath them. He tried to throw her off, but she sat astride him, knees tight around his ribs, and brought her fist down into his face, again and again.
“You took everything,” she hissed, sobbing now, blood, tears and fury mixing. “My brothers, my parents, my fucking name. Me!”
He tried to reach for a dagger, but she grabbed it first and rammed it straight into his throat. He gasped, trying to speak as she twisted the blade.
“I’m not yours anymore, never again!”
Chapter Sixty-Eight – The Line Must Hold
Orilan moved like ice through fire. All around him, the battlefield roared, screams and steel, smoke and flame, but he walked calmly, cutting down Avelan soldiers like dry wheat. No wasted movement, no hesitation, just cold, precise annihilation.
He didn’t ride his dragon today. Virekhal circled above, watching and guarding, his presence loomed like a glacier on the horizon. Immense, patient and absolute, but this fight belonged to Orilan alone. He fought not like a king, but like a weapon forged before memory. Avelan troops surged around him, they tried to flank him, overwhelm him and they died for the effort. Orilan lifted his hand and the air shimmered. Ice bloomed in a perfect circle from his palm, spearing upward like a crown of jagged teeth, impaling seven soldiers mid-charge. He stepped through the centre of it, expression indecipherable, frost clinging to his cloak.
A younger soldier, a boy, charged, screaming with blade raised. Orilan parried without looking, steel rang, he turned and drove his fist, just his fist, into the soldier’s chest. The boy flew backwards ten feet and didn’t rise.
“My brother does not even use magic sometimes,”Virekhal murmured from above, voice calm over the link. “He simply is.”
Flames rose to the east. A spell detonated behind him, Orilan didn’t flinch, he just turned to Taelin, who fought not far from the front line, his blade dancing in a constant blur.
“The north line’s folding,” Orilan called, voice amplified, tone even. “Send the Armathen mages. Crush it inward.”
Taelin nodded once, deflecting a strike with a snarl. “Done.”
The king turned again and walked straight into the mouth of the breach, six Avelan captains came at him at once. They never had a chance, he drew his second blade, this one ancient, veined with frostlight, and crossed both hilts in front of him. Runes flared as the air cracked.
He struck once, and the world shuddered as frostfire rippled from his blades in a wave, erasing armour, extinguishing flame and freezing the blood in his enemies’ veins mid-scream. The captains collapsed as one,bodies half-turned to crystal, shattering on impact. For a moment, the field stilled around him, and then it screamed forwards again.
Orilan exhaled, low and measured. “Virekhal,”he said through the paired link.
“Yes, brother?”
“Mark the northwestern rise. We move there next.”
“Shall I burn it?”
“Not yet,”Orilan said, already walking. “First we must break their teeth.”
?????
Taelin knew the line was buckling. He’d seen it too many times before, in tomes, in drills and in real blood and soil. The Avelan reinforcements had hit back much harder than expected, crashing through the outer barricade like a flood of sinew and fire. The Armathen shield wall was holding but barely. Edhenvale casters were flagging, the veils had dropped, the tidebeasts had turned, and yet he stood at the centre of the field. Blade drawn and voice ragged from shouting commands, his armour cracked at the shoulder.
