Chapter 4 The Tower and the Oath

"A heart in chains still remembers how to beat."

ELIRA

The Tower of Dawn had no windows only slits in the stone where the cold came through like a whisper.

It had once been a watchtower. A place where war signals were sent from the cliffs. Now it was a cage. Her cage.

Three days. That's how long she'd been locked inside with nothing but a mattress, a rusted mirror, and a guard who refused to speak.

She hadn't cried.

She hadn't begged.

She hadn't broken.

But she had changed.

She now knew what it meant to be powerless-and the kind of power it would take to never feel this way again.

She still remembered the blood on Kael's mouth. The way he didn't scream when they branded him. The look in his eyes as they dragged him away.

She wrote his name every night. Into her pillow. Into the wall. Into her skin.

Kael.

Her rebellion hadn't died.

It had only just begun.

KAEL

The mountains were brutal this time of year-wind like blades, snow like ash, cliffs that whispered to jump.

Kael didn't fall. He didn't freeze. He didn't speak.

He climbed.

He ran.

He kept going, because pain was easy now. Breathing was harder.

The exile mark on his arm throbbed like a second heartbeat. The symbol of the crown was burned into his skin. He wanted to tear it off. Instead, he let it scar.

He wore it like a vow.

He'd heard whispers of an old camp beyond the Northern Edge mercenaries, misfits, forgotten sons of war. A place where names didn't matter. Where men became monsters and monsters became myths.

He went there.

And when the captain asked him what he wanted, he said:

"To become dangerous."

THE TOWER

Elira wasn't alone for long.

On the fifth night, a familiar voice crawled through the keyhole.

"Princess?"

"Grita," she whispered, throwing herself at the door. "Is it you?"

A pause.

Then a key turned.

And the old maid slipped inside, carrying food, a bundle of cloth, and... something wrapped in silk.

"What are you doing here? If they catch you-"

"I was your father's spy before I was your nurse," Grita hissed. "Let me do what I'm good at."

She handed over the cloth.

Elira unwrapped it.

Inside: a pressed flower, the color of blood and twilight.

And a torn page from a foreign mercenary map-circled in red, one single word written beneath it:

North.

KAEL

The mercenary camp wasn't a place. It was a test.

Kael wasn't given a bed. He was given a blade and told to earn one.

The first week, he almost died.

The second, he killed a man who tried to slit his throat while he slept.

By the third, they stopped calling him "pretty boy" and started calling him "Ironhand."

He trained with warriors who'd once been assassins, deserters, monster hunters.

He learned how to fight dirty. How to disappear. How to listen and not be heard.

But every time he sparred, every time he bled, every time he thought of stopping

He saw her face.

And kept going.

THE TOWER

Elira studied politics by candlelight. Smuggled scrolls from her late father's library. War logs. Tax records. Marriage alliances. The hidden structure of her mother's rule.

She began writing letters again carefully worded, unsigned, traced in code and delivered through laundry baskets and food crates.

Her network grew.

A guard with a grudge.

A maid with a sister in the rebel court.

A kitchen boy who used to run errands for her father's secret council.

She was building something.

Not an escape.

A resistance.

THEIR WORLDS APART

Kael trained by firelight.

Elira read by candlelight.

He forged weapons in the dirt.

She forged words in silence.

They hadn't seen each other in months.

But their souls moved toward one another like the moon pulls the tide.

In the dead of night, Kael was summoned by the mercenary captain.

"We've had a request," the man said. "Private. Royal. Dangerous."

Kael narrowed his eyes. "From who?"

The captain tossed him a sealed letter.

Black ribbon. Waxed with a thorn emblem.

No name.

But Kael already knew.

He opened it with shaking hands.

My crown is cracked. But I'm ready to let it break.

The war is coming. I need a soldier I trust. I need you.

-El.

Kael looked up at the stars and smiled for the first time in weeks.

Because the game was changing.

And the girl he loved just declared war on her own kingdom.