Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Thirty-Nine

Estrid

Varanos, Kalduran

1st of Satimus

Estrid stood on a platform of rock jutting from the sheer face around her and watched as the stalemate thickened. Endarion's army was sandwiched between hers and Dobran's, separated from her front ranks by only a paltry stretch of land. Her soldiers stood in their battle formations, the heaviest of her cavalry at the front, prepared to fend off whatever attacks occurred, the light and infantry supporting them.

Here it was, then. Everything she'd said at the meeting in Varanos, every promise she held Endarion accountable to, every claim he'd defend her when she cornered herself, would be proven or found false today. If he turned against her, as Dobran had no doubt ordered him to, all ten thousand of her men would be at risk.

She'd positioned her forces in front of a narrow crevasse in the rock-face behind them—mapped out for her well in advance of the battle. Her camp concealed the escape from Imperial eyes, but it was a tight fit, and unlikely she'd be able to shepherd her entire force through before Dobran or Endarion reached her.

If Endarion didn't stand with her today, she'd be known as a naïve and trusting idiot, and at least some of her Dasjurans would pay the ultimate price for that.

She cast her gaze across the Denjini lines. If she squinted, she imagined she could see familiar faces and wondered, if it came to violence, how many would die today.

Borso moved up behind her and cleared his throat. "Messenger for you, Kandras. She insisted on seeing you in person."

She turned, saw a young woman at her second-in-command's side. Before she could react, the woman threw herself forward and pulled Estrid into a fierce embrace.

"Daria?" she said numbly. "What are you doing here?"

Endarion's daughter pulled away and stepped back, a relieved expression rendering her younger than she was. "Father sent me," Daria said, teeth gleaming in a childish smile. "It's so good to see you again."

Estrid hadn't spoken to Daria since Shaeviren, and then only briefly, in the days after her father had been rescued. When the young woman had accompanied Endarion to the negotiations at Dujaro, Estrid had tried not to register her presence because she didn't want to count the young woman among enemies.

Estrid held her at arm's length now, taking a moment to assess her, to see her as more than the enemy's child, or even the scared young woman she'd been four years ago. Beneath the Boratorren severity of her features and the burden of campaign already bowing Daria's shoulders, Estrid saw the girl who'd almost been her daughter. She'd lost more than Endarion upon fleeing her homeland, she realised as she surveyed Daria now. To smother the emotions that thickened in her throat, she squeezed Daria's shoulders and then dropped her hands, establishing a wedge of distance between them.

"What's happening down there?" Estrid asked.

Daria curled her lip into an angry scowl reminiscent of her father's. "Dobran ordered Father to destroy your army and secure you, alive. To be taken back to Empyria."

"A threat I'm hearing much of lately," she mused.

"There's more, though," Daria said. "Before we left for this campaign, Father asked Valerian's daughter, Sephara, to investigate Novissa's death. There's no time to explain, but the short version is that Sephara found out the Caetoran and some of his allies are responsible for Novissa's assassination." Her scowl became sharper, her next words spat with tangible hatred. "Khian fucking Tyrannus was heavily involved."

Estrid scoffed. "Could've told him that at the start."

"They're working with an Arisen."

She tried to smother her incomprehension. When understanding dawned, she struggled to conceal her surprise.

But there was no time to consider the impact of Daria's words, not with a more mortal, more immediate threat pressing her into a corner. Immortal godkings and their murderous ploys would have to wait, a thought which almost inspired outraged laughter within Estrid.

"He wants me to know this," Estrid said. "Nice of him, I suppose. Good to know who really started this, before I die."

Daria shook her head. "You think he'd really do as Dobran commands? You think I'd let him be so witless? He sent me here with a message. Want to hear it?"

Estrid looked back to the Denjini ranks, watched with an ominous sense of inevitability as they started to pivot to face Dobran's army. "Sure," she said.

"He's finally realised, after all these years, that you were right. He spent too long serving people he hates and is finally giving up. He asks you to join him in what he's about to do, and looks forward to fighting by your side again."

She imagined, as Daria spoke, the words coming from Endarion's mouth, with the same look of solemn apology he seemed to display often now. Like everything he'd said before, it could mean nothing. It could be as inconsequential as his promises of a better life, promises abandoned as soon as she'd been threatened and driven from her homeland.

She had Endarion right where she wanted him, right where she'd planned him to be. How easy it would be to sever her connection to him, to excise the love she still held for him and allow righteous rage to take over. Extinguish his army on the field—or watch Dobran extinguish it, in any case—and maybe her persistent feelings for him would be snuffed as well.

Yet she hesitated.

Below, the Denjini ranks had dedicated themselves to an onslaught, made all the more desperate for the confined quarters of the valley, and all the more violent for their confusion. Though it was obvious even from a glance Endarion outnumbered Dobran—courtesy of her own attack at Allodek—the suddenness of his complete turn, and the harried arrangement of an army he'd pushed hard away from Varanos, put him at a disadvantage. Dobran had likely expected the attack, and even as she scanned the field, she saw the first lines of Denjini infantry overwhelmed.

"Estrid?" Daria said. "We need to intervene. Now."

She raised a silencing hand.

For all her claims on the contrary, it would be easy to watch Endarion destroyed. She didn't truly hate him, she realised, not as she'd claimed at Dujaro. The hate had burned itself out, replaced by a yawning gulf of something else, something she couldn't quite identify. Weariness, maybe? Indifference? No, more like disappointment.

Disappointment in how things had transpired. Disappointment in him for the decisions he'd made, and in herself for how she'd responded. A disappointment she could now act on, if she wished. All she'd have to do was stand here and watch as her oldest friend, her lover several times over the decades, the man she'd not yet been able to cut herself away from, was massacred.

"He gave up his plans to you," Daria said. "You don't understand how difficult that was, to surrender a lifetime of loyalty."

"Loyalty," Estrid mused. "Funny word. I keep hearing it, but I don't think I understand it anymore."

Before her uncaring eyes, Dobran flanked Endarion, his cavalry thundering into the chaos of the Denjini infantry. How many lives was she watching bloodily crushed to nothing?

"You can't let him die," Daria said. She sounded so young. A child desperate for her father. "You didn't on Shaeviren. Why now?"

Could she let him die? After everything Estrid had done to ensure he lived, every kandras she'd alienated in her attempts to steer him to rebellion, every settlement she'd inadvertently let fall to bring him here. Had she been someone else watching the battle unfold, she would've known herself as a petulant youth, manipulating her former lover in a misguided quest for vengeance against him. She would've smacked some sense into herself, at the very least.

She remembered the very first moments of his rescue on Shaeviren. Remembered the state of him in his cell, the painful night spent fearing he'd succumb to his injuries. Remembered the intoxicating thrill of knowing he'd pull through. Remembered sitting at his bedside as he slept, unable to look away lest she lose him again. Remembered how he'd consigned himself to death at Zaljuras, and how much she wanted to avoid such an outcome.

But then, she remembered the crushing weight of desolation when she'd been driven from her homeland and Endarion had hovered on the sidelines, unwilling to commit to protecting her. She remembered the small blaze of hatred she'd nurtured that night in Dujaro, when she'd made the mistake of kissing him and then pulling away. Remembered, most pertinently, how he'd accused her of trying to have him assassinated, how he'd believed his own accusation and crossed swords with her to bolster his certainty.

Let him succumb to his own catastrophic decisions now, and maybe she'd finally be free of that mangled web of love and hate and be able to better focus on her duties as a kandras. Or support him, save him, and risk anchoring herself further.

Ignoring Daria's panic, she turned to Borso, unsure even as she opened her mouth whether she'd order him to leap to Endarion's aid or have him angle their forces into the gap in the mountain face, to leave the Iron Wolf to his fate.

Endarion

Dobran had clearly anticipated a betrayal, because the Denjini army enjoyed only a scant few heartbeats of surprise before the Adhisti army rallied. Endarion never would've chosen such tight, constrictive confines for such a battle, because there was no room for flanking manoeuvres—no room for anything but a messy, head-on charge—but Estrid had trapped him here, and so he worked with what he had. If she supported him as he hoped she would, he wouldn't need manoeuvres or airtight formations.

"You make it impossible to protect you," Palla had muttered coldly at his side as he'd shrugged into his padded combat coat; no time to strap his lorica back on, not with Dobran impatiently awaiting Estrid's destruction.

"I don't give a fuck," he'd muttered back. "We're stuck between two armies here; I can hardly sit this one out."

"You could place yourself in the rear, where the fighting might not reach you."

"If Estrid doesn't aid me, the fighting will reach me regardless," he'd said. "If you're so worried, use your pyromancy."

Palla had baulked then, unable to contest him. He hadn't pressed her again on her magical prowess and the reason for her mission to defend him, but the strained moments before what might prove to be his suicide hardly seemed the time.

"Let me fight with you, even without my aasiurmancy," she'd said.

"I need you alive to report to my brother," had been his instinctive reply. Powerful her hidden magic might be, Palla was the only one capable of 'striding' to the capital to update Valerian. If Endarion died here today—or worse, was captured—his brother needed to know, needed time to prepare. Even more so if Endarion didn't somehow perish.

He'd flashed a glance behind him after Palla reluctantly departed to the rearguard, looking to where the Dasjurans waited in unassuming lines. Their formations implied battle readiness, but they gave off the impression of neutral spectators. At least Daria was sequestered up there somewhere, removed from the fighting. If Estrid ignored his gesture, his daughter would be spared.

He'd tried to maintain order as much as possible, turning his army around by slow increments, a company at a time, knowing Dobran would be watching like the predator he was. His army's placement meant, when he ordered the fateful charge, his cavalry were mired uselessly at the rear and unable to hammer into Dobran's front ranks, a limitation he mitigated by having his doglords seep through the infantry ranks to take up position in the vanguard.

Much to Palla's vocal irritation, he'd joined the doglords, enveloping himself in the snarling mass of his and Avelyn's pack with the woman herself buzzing eagerly at his side.

"What would my reward be for bringing down Dobran himself?" Avelyn had asked just before he'd signalled the attack.

Endarion glanced across at her, marking the feral snarl that mirrored their dogs'. "You bring down Dobran, you can be arch-general."

A raw laugh ripped from her mouth. "Thanks, but no. Far too much stress, by the looks of you."

The chaos of the first clash split the air, suffocating the atmosphere with the deafening chorus of scraping blades, shredding flesh, and war hounds barking with frenzied abandon. Endarion threw himself into the fray, his arming sword slashing outwards with the speed and force of a lightning strike. He caught only fragmented glimpses of his first victims as they, pushed ahead by the ranks behind, quailed in the wake of the doglord charge. An organised, fearless double line of spearmen would've dismantled the charge, but Dobran's men had never faced a thousand rampaging stonehounds in battle, a fact Endarion counted on.

He swept in past the coward spearmen, most of whom had failed to level their weapons, Basirius bear-like and devastating at his side. Blood and viscera flicked in through the gap in his helmet, and once more the copper taste of fresh blood ignited with Iron Wolf deep within, dragging it from its cage. For a macabre moment, he allowed the beast to dominate him, to blind him to his enemies and see them only as extensions of Dobran and Khian and Janus. These weren't like the citizens of Dykumas, battling in vain against an advantaged oppressor, but trained soldiers who needed to be cut down and trampled into the mud for all their masters had subjected him to.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

As he bared his teeth and locked into a bind with a harried infantryman, he imagined the soldier had been there the day he'd been whipped. Imagined a vicious smile on the bastard's face as Khian punched Daria to unconsciousness. Imagined a cruel flame the Iron Wolf handily snuffed out when the soldier's guard failed, allowing Endarion to stab his blade through the man's visor and clean through his face.

But, as he progressed deeper into his cousin's army and butchered with relish, snatched glimpses of terrified expressions beneath enemy helmets penetrated the thick haze of the Iron Wolf's influence, reminding him that he fought not the Tyrannuses themselves, but simple rankers, as loyal to the royal bastards as his own soldiers were to him.

As the fighting intensified and the two armies interlocked further in chaotic disorder, a Tyrannus soldier in Endarion's sightline lost her helmet to a brutal blow from a Denjini in passing. As she spun about in panic, disoriented, her features melted into those of Endarion's mother, eyes as wide and uncomprehending as they'd been that wretched night twenty-four years ago. He lurched towards her, the Iron Wolf's fell hunger evaporating, his grip on his blade growing lax.

Before lucidity could reassert itself, Basirius, keeping close to Endarion's heels to protect him where Palla couldn't, perceived a threat and flung his leonine body at the woman. For a sickening heartbeat, Phaedra Boratorren's head disappeared into the maw of her son's prized animal, and Endarion felt like he'd killed her all over again.

He stumbled to a winded halt as Basirius crushed the ranker's skull, the meaty pop of shattered bone inspiring a surge of vomit up into his throat. Not wanting to fill his own helmet, he swallowed, his stomach roiling.

Someone knocked into him, sending him down to his knees. His crippled joint, braced for the fight, ignited in agony, forcing him to topple forwards and catch himself on his gloved hands. Mud saturated with ichor squelched beneath the leather. The stench of bowels loosed in death assaulted him. His throat filled with vomit once more, and this time it was all he could do to wrestle his helmet free before retching an acidic mouthful up onto the mud, further saturating it.

A hand grabbed at the slightly looser material at the back of his neck and dragged him roughly up to his knees. His superior height meant they couldn't do more than that, and he slashed his sword up to block his own neck, fearing someone meant to slit his throat.

"Get the fuck up," Avelyn hissed as she wrestled with him.

The Tyrannus ranker she'd pushed him out of the way of recovered to sail back towards them. In her struggle to tug Endarion to his feet, Avelyn couldn't defend herself. Endarion kicked out with one foot even as he swept his blade outwards; his boot bent the bastard's knee backwards and his sword screamed down the length of his attacker's to latch into the hand. Before the man could react to either injury, Basirius flashed in as if from nowhere and tackled the ranker, goring them with his helmet's horns.

"Losing your touch, old man," Avelyn said as she finally righted him. "That cunt was poised to impale you from behind."

He shook his head and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, succeeding only in smearing mud and viscera into his beard alongside his vomit. He cast about for his helmet, but Avelyn already had it in hand; she thrust it at him, slamming it against his chest.

"Why the fuck hasn't Estrid come to our aid?" she demanded as, around them, the battle churned.

"Maybe because you tortured her scout," Endarion sniped.

He snatched his helmet, jarring Avelyn's arms. "You're the one who fucked her over, En," she shot back, flashing blood-smeared teeth. "Don't blame me for a lifetime of poor decisions."

He spun away, unwilling to trade further insults with his old friend. She lashed out at him because the battle had turned against them, he knew, and because he'd almost allowed his blindness—or was it his madness—to get him butchered.

But he couldn't ignore the source of her question: why hadn't Estrid supported him? He'd expected hesitation, and certainly deserved it, but hadn't for a moment thought Estrid capable of sitting by and watching him die.

Like I sat by and watched her chased out of the Imperium.

Not that he hadn't had good reason; he'd been as powerless as her twelve years ago, forced to stay his hand lest the Caetoran punish him where it hurt most. Estrid might believe the threats against his family empty, a hollow manipulation tactic employed by a Caetoran who had no other options to resort to. But Janus had specifically targeted Estrid, where before he'd usually settled on Endarion's illegitimate children, on Daria and Valerian, sometimes even on his ex-lovers.

Even now, twelve years later, Endarion still remembered that threat, a handwritten missive penned by Janus and delivered by Dobran. Endarion, Dobran, and Estrid had been camped in Aukruna at the time, the campaign to conquer Tharghest simmering towards its feeble end.

My brother will attack her, chase her out. If she manages to escape past the Imperium's borders, we'll leave her be, let her flee with her pitiful life. If you try to defend her, we'll make sure she dies. Either Dobran will kill her in the field, or we'll secure her as a prisoner and make you watch everything we do to her. She'll perish in Traian's like your wife did."

"If she's such a threat to you, why let her escape?" Endarion had asked Dobran after tearing the letter up.

Dobran, his sallow brother's voice in all things, had shrugged, as if Estrid's life really meant nothing to him. "She's a threat to us only as long as she's an Imperial arch-general. Beyond our borders, she's nothing."

Endarion had meant what he'd said to Estrid that night in Dujaro: he knew she'd make herself stronger. Dobran couldn't have been more wrong in labelling her nothing: in driving her out, in letting her live, Janus had facilitated Estrid's rise in Kalduran. He'd made her into an authentic threat where he might've otherwise left her alone. He'd underestimated her, perhaps his most fatal mistake.

Something shifted on the wind, plucking Endarion from his thoughts. The pressure in the valley seemed to lessen, as if the mountains had pulled back to widen the cramped, impromptu battlefield. Purple-coated soldiers began peeling away and skittering back the way they'd come, slogging through the rippling ocean of blood-drenched mud, abandoning their dead and injured.

"Looks like you won't get Dobran after all," Endarion noted grimly as he turned around, Avelyn still close by. "Shame. I wanted to palm this Abyss-cursed title off onto someone else."

Estrid had finally made her decision.

Avenging angels, the red-trimmed black uniform of the Dasjuran army descended down into the killing field with the inevitable might of a divine prophecy, their cavalry hammering in the vanguard. Lines of sprinting rankers streamed down on either side of the valley behind the Dasjuran horses, moving to encompass Endarion and Dobran as their armies drew painfully apart. His and his cousin's armies had already bloodily merged perhaps a third of their infantry in the melee; much more and they might not have been able to separate at all, enfolded by Estrid as they soon were.

Basirius snarled, setting off a chain reaction as those hounds nearest to him and Avelyn turned to the advancing Kaldurani and saw only more enemies. Endarion pursed his blood-caked lips and emitted the long, low whistle to signal the stand to attention. As obedient as veteran soldiers, the war dogs clamped their jaws at once, the other doglords mimicking the whistle to trickle the command across their ranks. Endarion followed it with the signal for ally: a loud, wordless shout with an abrupt stop.

"Was that entire battle just Estrid's version of a dramatic pause, then?" Avelyn asked.

Lacking an answer and not wanting to confront the meaning behind the hesitation, Endarion turned back to Dobran's retreating ranks, to where the battle still continued in lagged bursts as the Tyrannuses tried to make of their rout a violent retreat.

The conflict thrashed in its death throes but, like any struggling beast, refused to die quietly. From his position harrying the Adhisti army, he tracked the brutal efficiency with which Estrid's men struck Dobran's distracted flanks and left mass confusion in its wake.

Even as the Dasjurans barrelled into Dobran's men, Endarion saw more of his soldiers fall to Imperial blades. He slashed out where he could, directing his pack into an intimidating stampede into desperate throngs, chasing away Dobran's stragglers before they could cut any further into his tired ranks. The blow to his knee had worsened his limp, but he welcomed the pain, needing it to ground him. His dogs of war leapt about him, harrying soldiers who leered too close, tearing into those who turned to flee. Basirius, veteran war-hound that he was, skipped about around Endarion's legs, his muzzle smeared with the brain matter of the woman Endarion had briefly glimpsed as his mother.

Had he not been mentally battered by the day's events, he might've strived to regain the excitement of fighting within his pack, to again resurrect the Iron Wolf of his lost prime.

It was over, though. He saw Dobran's battered force separate itself, outnumbered even before Estrid's input, and move in a limping stream towards the valley mouth. Dasjuran and Denjini forces intermingled in the rampant destruction, and he noted there was far less Denjini blue on the killing field than before. Losses were expected, as always, but how many of his men had died because Estrid had hesitated?

"What have I done?"

He stared after his cousin's army, painfully aware of his single-minded, selfish, reckless, lovesick actions.

He'd rebelled. Openly. Violently. He'd killed his cousin's men, his own countrymen, in defence of an Imperial traitor, a mere two hours after orchestrating their defeat beneath Varanos's walls.

Death was palpable around him, an intoxicating smog of spilled blood and fear. It clung to the back of his throat like the ash-heavy air of a burnt city. He kept his eyes from wandering over the mass grave surrounding him, knowing he wouldn't be able to distinguish individual soldiers in the mess, knowing he would blame himself all the more if he did.

The blame was his. But crushing himself with it right now was pointless.

He lingered with his dogs awhile even after Dobran's rear had disappeared within the foothills, back towards the open grassland. His dogs scavenged the battlefield, snuffling at corpses, pointed with bent forepaws and lowered snouts at blue-coated Denjini who still clung to life amidst the carnage to direct colleagues to their rescue.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Avelyn said when she joined him, the dogs flocking around her with wagging tails, pressing gore-smeared noses into her hands. "This fight was fun and all, but there's no going back now."

Endarion glanced down at her, noting the red spattering her uniform and painting her face. A short distance behind her, he noticed the hunched outline of their son, Remus, picking through the carcasses with his own canine companion. He wondered whether Avelyn had permitted the young man to partake in the battle itself, but knew it best not to ask.

"A dog is most vicious when cornered," he said.

"But most dangerous when supported by its pack," Avelyn added, nodding back towards Estrid's camp.

By the time he reached his pavilion, untouched by virtue of its removed location, he was impressed to note several of his officers had already left reports on the chest acting as his field desk. He knew some of them would contain casualty estimates, so he slid the thick stack away and lowered himself into his chair, before dousing his grimy face with water to scrub at the mess. A cold numbness chilled him, and his mind was empty when now, of all times, it should've been burning with worries and arguments and despair.

Daria entered wordlessly sometime later. Minutes or hours, he didn't know.

He'd had no further reports, but he knew the army remained in disarray, and would be for some time. Palla, comfortable now in her role as first-general, no doubt oversaw the carnage, and he imagined Avelyn scavenged the battlefield with their dogs still, dispatching of any lingering enemy casualties. Claiming their weapons to replenish their own emptying armoury.

Endarion glanced up at his daughter and found her immaculate. Not a drop of blood on her uniform, nor a hair out of place. It must've hurt to have been kept out of the fight, an assumption supported by the curl to her lip as she regarded him in his stained coat.

"For a long time, it seemed she'd do nothing but watch you die," his daughter said, breaking a sustained silence. "I begged her to help you, but she stood there and said nothing."

"Why did it take so long?"

Daria frowned. "She claimed it was to mislead Dobran, so that he'd commit more of is army to overwhelming you."

"You don't believe her?"

Daria shrugged. "She was watching you the whole time. As if Dobran didn't exist. She was conflicted. I could see it in her face. I think she was trying to decide whether to save you, and almost persuaded herself to let you die."

"She won't forgive me," he said. The admittance didn't hurt as much as he'd expected.

"You did this for her as well," Daria said. "Not just because of what Sephara found."

"Sephara's discoveries helped, but I would have acted the same without them," he replied. "But no one else can know that."

Seemingly satisfied, his daughter spun on her heels and departed, leaving him dreadfully alone with the frothing abyss of his thoughts.

―

Evening fell and found the two armies camped a mere hundred feet apart, tensed like two wild animals unsure of the other's intentions. Until their generals met, until he found the courage to confront Estrid, they would stay where they were.

The outcome of the battle beneath Varanos's walls had already been relayed to them both, courtesy of a messenger from Kavan's forces. Following Estrid's ploy, Korzha and Byrria had buckled and enacted a messy, disastrous retreat, both haemorrhaging soldiers as they fled. They'd escaped somewhat intact because the Kaldurani hadn't risked pursuing them. Ricardus had pulled away as soon as Dobran had started hounding Estrid, taking minimal losses and establishing a hasty camp alongside the city's wall. Kalduran's armies guarded him, defender and warden both. Until Endarion's own position post-rebellion was decided upon, Ricardus would remain a protected prisoner.

Dobran had rejoined with Korzha and Byrria as soon as he'd emerged from the foothills. All three had marched south together, Kaldurani scouts sent in their wake to report on their progress.

Endarion doubted his cousin would return so soon to the Imperium. It was too simple.

By candlelight he scanned the pages of names, his eyes straining. It was an obligation to read every name, to try to match them with as many faces as possible. Somehow, even though he was now an Imperial public enemy, he'd need to get word to the fallen soldiers' families.

He knew the tally. Almost three and a half thousand lives lost so far, plus several hundred too injured to survive the coming days. It could've been far worse had more of his infantry ranks met with Dobran's. But, had he stood with Dobran today, those soldiers would've lived. He grimaced at the thought; he'd just valued Estrid's life as equal to three and a half battalions of his own men.

And that was only the start of it.

He scrutinised a plain sheet pinned under his elbow. When he found the words, he'd compose a letter to his brother. He'd already sent Palla back to Empyria to relay news of the battle, but he knew his brother would want an explanation in Endarion's own words. Valerian needed time to prepare, to fabricate a story separating him from Endarion, to spare himself the association. Endarion was about to begin scribbling drafts when he heard the muffled sound of footsteps outside his pavilion. The fabric shielding the entrance parted and he shot to his feet, his brace keening.

Estrid strode in, her entry unbarred on his orders. She halted when she saw him, standing rigid.

She wore a ragged military jacket, bloodstained and dirty. If she'd kept out of the fight, she'd no doubt aided efforts to retrieve her own injured in the aftermath. Her cold blue eyes regarded him, her crooked jaw held slightly askew as the beginnings of a subtle smile appeared.

This was the woman he defied an empire for. This magnificent soul. This brilliant warrior.

Yes, he knew now that he'd made the right decision. The right decision, as Daria had said, when it mattered most.

He moved around the chest, searching for the right words, thinking to question her about her hesitation and the death toll it had caused, but abandoned the effort when Estrid stepped forward and met him in the middle. She snatched at the collar of his jacket, her knuckles whitening; he wondered if she meant to shove him away or hold him in place to punch him. Instead, she blew out a huge breath and threw her arms around him, and for a few shocked seconds his arms hung loosely at his sides. Then realisation jolted him, and he encircled her shoulders, letting her bury herself in his coat. He lowered his head, setting his mouth to the top of her head and breathing in the blood and death and grief in her hair.

Her closeness was electrifying, his entire body aware of her warmth, alert to the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed against him. He cupped a tentative hand to the side of her face, knowing he overstepped a boundary but needing the contact.

They stayed like that for some time, or perhaps only a few seconds, before she pulled away, her face clouded, her eyes meeting his.

"We've started something with no clear end," she said, hushed and soft.

"That was your plan."

Her beautifully lopsided smile bloomed. "I wasn't entirely sure you'd cooperate."

"What happens now?" he asked.

Estrid looked suddenly stricken. "I goaded you as a way of ending your war with my empire," she said. "I've already had word from the city, and your countrymen continue their retreat. For now, the Imperium's invasion has halted."

"So, you'll leave me to the wolves?" he said. He knew now this was how she'd felt twelve years ago, when she'd been forced to defect, and he'd watched her flee without intervening.

"I'm not you," she snapped. Then, seeming to swallow her anger, she added, "The Baltanos may be of the mind to help you win the Invictum Throne if he thinks it will prevent further campaigns against us. My mission was always to neutralise the Imperium as a threat." She canted her head. "A Boratorren Caetoran would be a better alternative to an empire destroyed, don't you think?"

He scoffed, disbelieving. "After all the ways I've wronged you, you'd still help my family with its plans of treason?"

She shook her head, then reached out and clasped his hand in hers. How perfectly their calluses aligned, as if they'd always been meant for each other. "Not your family," she said. "You. And Daria."

He threaded his fingers through hers, grounded by her touch. "Even so."

"You just turned on the Imperium, Wolf. For me. You have a history of picking the wrong side of the fight, but you have your reasons, and hopefully today sets a new pattern for the future."

He squeezed her, just once. "It will. I promise." And then, because reality need to affirm itself, he asked, "What happens if the Baltanos doesn't agree with you?"

Estrid lifted her free hand to her jaw and rubbed it. "Then I'll stand with you. Without the Baltanos if need be." Her perfect smile widened, more crooked for it. "I look forward to fighting by your side, Wolf."

―― End of Book One ――