Chapter 8 The Betrothed's Blade

"Sometimes the deadliest betrayal wears the softest face."

ELIRA

They crossed the river at dawn.

The water was bone-cold, swift as silver, but Elira led them in without hesitation. Soldiers followed her into the current like it was a fire she'd promised to walk through.

On the other side? The Queen's lands.

Fields stripped bare by taxes.

Villages silent from fear.

And somewhere between the shadows of her past and the throne-

Prince Dareth.

Her betrothed. Her ghost. Her lesson in duty.

The last time she saw him, he had kissed her knuckles with ice-cold lips and whispered, "We make sense on paper, Elira."

Now, she wondered if he came to kill her with that same mouth.

DARETH

He stood at the mouth of the Vale Pass, dressed in obsidian armor, the Queen's sigil etched into his chestplate.

He did not feel hatred.

Not yet.

Only a cold curiosity.

"Tell me," he asked Lady Vasha, "does she still wear moonstone when she lies?"

Vasha smiled behind her veil. "She doesn't lie anymore. She declares."

He gripped the hilt of his blade-her father's blade, once gifted in treaty. Now repurposed as executioner's steel.

"You trained her," Vasha added. "Swordplay. Strategy. Court manipulation."

"I did," Dareth murmured.

"Then perhaps you'll be the one to unmake her."

He said nothing.

But in his eyes, something closed.

KAEL

Kael didn't trust the silence of the next town.

No birds. No dogs. No doors swinging in the breeze.

He scouted ahead with two rebels.

The trap came fast.

Smoke bombs. Firewalls. A net laced with sleeping powder.

Kael fought through it like a wounded animal-fast, furious, burning for the girl waiting back at camp.

By the time he returned, three were dead.

And Elira was gone.

ELIRA

She woke in chains.

Not heavy ones-delicate, gold-plated cuffs designed more for insult than function.

She sat in a velvet-lined carriage across from Dareth.

He hadn't aged much.

Still beautiful. Still unreadable.

Still the boy who kissed her wrist and promised to love her for the sake of duty.

"Hello, Elira," he said. "Or should I say-Your Rebelliousness?"

She smiled, slow and venomous.

"I'd forgotten your voice was that boring."

He didn't rise to the bait.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"You were mine," he said. "And you gave yourself to a blacksmith. You took the crown I was promised and made it a dagger."

She stared at him. "You don't want me. You want control."

"I wanted peace."

"You wanted submission."

He leaned forward.

"I still remember the sound you made the first time I kissed you."

She stared at him, eyes like frost.

"I still remember how hard I tried not to bite your tongue."

KAEL

He didn't wait for orders.

He took his team and followed the trail-burned brush, broken branches, abandoned boots left behind by captured rebels.

He didn't sleep.

He didn't speak.

He just moved toward the flame of her.

And when they found the Queen's outpost-tall, stone-crowned, guarded by twenty-

Kael said only this:

"Kill the lights. Burn the gate. I'm going in."

ELIRA

Dareth underestimated her.

He thought she was still the girl who flinched at court politics and whispered her rage into silk pillows.

He didn't know she'd memorized the weak points in the palace's new guard formations.

He didn't know she'd trained with Kael for weeks to disarm a man with one twist of her wrists.

He didn't know she kept a blade in her corset, just in case the world tried to trap her in it again.

So when he leaned too close...

She cut him.

Right across the mouth.

Blood dripped onto his white collar. "You-"

"Are not yours," she finished.

Then the wall exploded.

KAEL

He didn't stop to admire the chaos.

He cut through guards like he was made for it-silent, fast, brutal.

He found her in the central tower room, backed against the wall, cuffed, blood on her cheek.

And Dareth-wounded, furious, armed.

"Step aside, Kael," Dareth growled.

"She said no."

"You don't deserve her."

"And you do?" Kael snarled. "She's not something to deserve. She's not a prize. She's the storm."

Dareth lunged.

Steel met steel.

And this time, Kael didn't fight like a blacksmith.

He fought like a man who had already lost everything once, and refused to lose again.

THE AFTERMATH

Dareth lay unconscious in the rubble.

Kael's knuckles were bleeding.

Elira's wrists were free.

They didn't speak at first.

Then she touched his face. "You came."

He held her like the answer was written in his ribs.

"I'll always come," he said.

Far away, the Queen read the report.

Dareth defeated. Elira escaped. Kael still breathing.

She sipped her wine and turned to Lady Vasha.

"It's time," she said.

"For what?" Vasha asked.

The Queen smiled, red as the roses on her ring.

"To let her win."

Vasha blinked. "Why?"

"Because a rebel queen with a taste of power... is easier to break."