15 Chapter 15 – Siege Horizon
She handed him a sealed vial-the original water sample, vibrations still humming
inside.
Not because of power.
“I never asked what you wanted,” he murmured. “After all this.”
“Your blood *hears* what we miss,” he whispered. “You’re more than a weapon. You’re
a *shield.*”
She squeezed his hand.
Soft. Steady.
He didn’t turn.
“But now…” He turned to her. “I don’t care how it ends. As long as you’re with me when it begins.”
He wanted to say no.
Within it: a resonant shard, carved from her own healing spell.
*Then I’ll burn bright.*
“I might die with you.”
Inside Frostfall Citadel, hope stirred.
She stepped beside him and placed a note on the table.
She shook her head. Then wrote: *I’ll guide them. I know how.*
*But not alone.*
“Send scouts to the mountain stream,” Cyr ordered. “We switch to backup immediately.”
“We hold them at the ridge,” he said. “Narrow field. One entrance.”
*Let me help awaken them.*
“Then we do it together,” he said.
“Sire,” he said, panting, “the water reserves-they’ve been poisoned.”
But because two souls-once broken-now stood as one.
In his chamber, he lit no candles.
“I don’t want you to see me like—”
But for *each other.*
*Peace.*
He turned to her. “You saved us again.”
She nodded.
Just firelight and moonbeams.
“Awaken wolves mid-combat?” Varek said. “You’ll blow their minds apart.”
His breath caught.
“I had *zero* two weeks ago,” Cyr snapped. “And I still lived.”
Then turned back toward the window, watching the siege fire begin to glow beyond
the mountains.
“You’ve got eighty men,” a scout objected.
“You don’t have to fight.”
Later, as dusk fell over the fortress, Cyr stood on the parapets, gazing out at the dark
horizon.
–
“You’ll burn yourself.”
“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered.
Then whispered, “You stood for me.”
He stopped her.
*
Not because of numbers.
“I mean it.”
Then traced a word across his chest with her fingertip:
“Then I’ll make that my last command as prince.”
He smiled faintly. “That’s unfair. You always win.”
She kissed him again.
Eileen stood nearby, silent but ever-present.
The war table was a blur of movement-maps unrolled, troop tokens shifting, quills scratching feverishly.
She signed: *You’ll die without me.*
He swallowed.
Together.
She was already moving, cloak thrown on.
Cyr stared at her.
Siege banners dotted the cliffs-red and gold. The imperial crest.
Near midnight, a servant stumbled in, pale.
She signed: *My voice can do it-if we time it during battle.*
He looked down. Smiled.
And hope.
He kissed her knuckles.
Varek read over her shoulder. “You mean the sleeping alpha cores?”
And his heart.
“Three legions marching from the southern border,” Varek said, stabbing a gloved finger toward the lower pass. “They’ll reach Frostfall by dawn.”
Eileen approached behind him.
He leaned forward, forehead to hers.
Outside, the drums of war thundered across the icebound cliffs.
She wore a dark cloak, a silver pendant resting against her throat-one of Cyr’s gifts. Not for glamour.
But she was no longer his servant. No longer hidden.
Cyr leaned over the table, metal braces hissing with each shift of his stance.
She sat on the edge of his bed, brushing her fingers along the brace clasps on his legs.
She touched his cheek-then his lips.
“They’re coming” he said.
The servant fled.
She thought for a moment.
For protection.
He watched her carefully.
Cyr was up in seconds. “How?”
She was power.
She slid her hand into his.
Cyr frowned. “Too risky.”
–
“We don’t know-only that the tea brewed tonight smelled wrong. Eileen noticed it
first.”
She raised a brow.
She cut him off with a kiss.
Later, tangled beneath furs, breath slowing, he held her tightly.
“And we’ll meet them,” she signed.
“I always wondered how it would end,” he murmured. “Frozen stone. A broken crown. No legacy”
And tomorrow, they would fight not for a crown…
