The southern road was a ribbon of dust and memory.
Each mile we put between us and the capital felt like peeling back a layer of someone else's skin. I rode in silence beside Arven, the rhythmic clop of hooves doing little to distract from the voice in my head—the one that still echoed Lyara's scream.
She was alive. And I was carrying her prison in a velvet pouch tucked under my cloak.
We traveled in a tight envoy: two guards ahead, two behind, and Serra riding in a modest carriage just behind us. Arven rode alone, always slightly ahead, like a blade leading the charge.
He hadn't said much since our departure. But I caught him watching me—when I adjusted my saddle with practiced ease, when I scanned the horizon like someone trained to expect ambush, not etiquette.
I was slipping.
And he noticed.
"Did the fever sharpen your reflexes too?" he asked casually, not turning his head.
"Maybe I just got tired of being helpless," I replied, lifting my chin.
His mouth twitched. "Kaereth doesn't breed softness. Maybe it finally woke in you."
Or maybe Kaereth never bred me at all.
We made camp under the shadow of a crimson rock formation locals called The Widow's Crown. The stars came early in the South, glittering in a dome of deep indigo. I pretended to sleep early, curling on my bedroll while Arven spoke with the guards over maps and travel routes.
When the fire crackled low and voices faded, I rose.
I walked a short distance from camp and pulled the pouch from my cloak.
The shard felt colder now.
I closed my fingers around it and whispered, "Show me where she is."
Nothing happened.
I tried again. Still silence.
Was it just a one-time thing? Or did it require something more—blood? Intent? Desperation?
I sat on a sun-warmed stone and stared at the moon.
"If you can hear me," I whispered, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take your place."
The wind shifted. A dry breeze carried dust across the camp.
And for a moment, I thought I heard it.
Adaleine.
Just a breath.
But enough to make me curl my fingers tighter around the shard.
—------
The next morning, we reached the edge of the southern settlement: Tor Varien.
It wasn't a city—it was a fortress masquerading as one. Massive sandstone walls ringed a central keep, its towers sharp as fangs. Banners in ochre and black flapped in the wind. The people here were sun-browned, wrapped in loose silks and armor etched with tribal sigils. These were not Kaereth's loyalists. They were allies by force, not blood.
And they knew it.
Arven dismounted, handing his reins to a stable boy who wouldn't meet his eyes.
"Smile," he told me under his breath. "We're not here to conquer. Not today."
I forced a polite curve to my lips. "Let's hope they remember that."
Inside the council hall of Tor Varien, we met Chieftain Kael Darim, a man whose face was as cracked as the land he ruled. His daughter, Shira, sat beside him—a girl near my age, with braids woven with copper wire and a stare that could melt steel.
The greetings were civil.
Barely.
"You send the general's daughter instead of your king's seal?" Kael asked.
Arven answered before I could. "You've dealt with soldiers and tax men for years. We thought a more… diplomatic face might be refreshing."
Kael's eyes flicked to me. "And what does the girl say?"
I raised my chin. "I say Kaereth wants peace. Real peace. Trade, not tribute. Dialogue, not demands."
It was what Lyara might have said.
But it was also what I believed.
Kael leaned back, studying me. "You speak like someone who's tasted war. Not just watched it from marble windows."
I met his gaze without flinching. "I have."
His lips curled—not quite a smile. "Interesting."
Later, after formalities and tea that tasted of smoke and crushed berries, Shira approached me in the stone courtyard.
"You're not what I expected," she said plainly.
"What did you expect?"
"A knife disguised as a smile. Or a spoiled flower afraid to touch the dirt."
I shrugged. "I don't like dirt. But I've bled in it."
She looked at me sideways. "If you're lying, you're very good at it."
And then she reached into her robe and pulled out a necklace.
A simple pendant—an oval shard of stone etched with the same runes I'd seen in the obsidian chamber.
My blood froze.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"My mother," she said. "Before she disappeared."
Disappeared. Not died.
"What was her name?" I asked.
"Elaine. She was Solmiran."
Everything in me stilled.
So the old magic hadn't just survived in Kaereth. It bled south. Into forgotten tribes, into whispered bloodlines.
Into daughters with shards like mine.
—------
That night, I didn't sleep.
I waited until Serra snored softly beside me, then slipped out into the night with the shard in my palm.
Shira was already waiting by the southern gate.
She wasn't wearing royal silks or desert robes tonight. Just plain leather riding gear, a scarf around her neck, and eyes too sharp for someone still considered a girl. She looked like someone who had stopped waiting for permission years ago.
"How did you know I'd come?" I asked.
Shira glanced sideways. "You asked about the stone. And you flinched like someone who already knew what it was."
I couldn't deny it.
She began walking, and I fell into step beside her. The guards at the gate pretended not to notice us slip out. Or maybe they were bought. Maybe Kael wanted us to go.
The wind kicked up dust as we followed a narrow path down a ravine carved by centuries of forgotten rivers. The stars were our only light, and the further we went, the more the world felt unreal. Like stepping out of one story and into an older one, already half-told.
Shira finally spoke again.
"My mother disappeared when I was eight. She said she was going to meet someone who remembered the old songs. I didn't understand then. But I remember what she carried—a book bound in ash-colored leather. And the pendant."
"What happened to her?"
"No one knows. She never returned. My father never speaks of it. But I think… he loved her too much to believe she's dead."
A silence stretched between us.
I pulled the pouch from inside my cloak and held up the shard. It pulsed faintly—barely—but enough.
Shira's pendant responded. Not with light, but a hum. Low and quiet, like a voice deep underground.
"That's why I need your help," she said. "Because whatever this is—it wants to be found. And I think it's been waiting a long time."
—------