POV: Mara
The first crack of lightning splits the sky like a mouth opening to scream.
“South bridge!” Jax roars from the stair. “Positions!”
Hearthworks becomes a storm of hands. Pots slam. Knives clatter. Someone drops a ladle and swears like it betrayed them. Silvie slaps lids onto soup pots so hard steam spits out the sides. Pia ties her apron tighter like it’s armor buckled straight into her spine.
I grab the bread knives, the emergency lamp oil, a stack of folded cloth, and the little tin of salt we only use when bleeding won’t stop. My heartbeat feels too big for my ribs.
“Refugees to the inner hall,” Silvie orders. “Mara, take the first line. If they’re bleeding, salt and cloth. If they’re shaking, tea and breath.”
“Tea and breath,” I repeat, already moving.
The south span is a terrible song—drums on the far bank, boots slamming stone, rope creaking under sudden weight. Rain sheets sideways, needling the skin, soaking aprons in minutes. Our tied-down chimes still find ways to whine in the wind, small silver throats crying through their gags.
Drift rush the lower rails with hooks and bad courage. They move in messy lines, shouting, slipping, laughing with cracked teeth. Behind them: Moonfell troops in neat, perfect formation, shields unmarred, faces like doors waiting to be knocked on by violence.
On the ramparts, Cael is all command and stormglass eyes. Rhun shows in the way he stands—shoulders a little forward, breath too deep, jaw set like he’s ready to bite through stone. Jax is everywhere at once, swearing, laughing, catching orders midair and throwing them to squads like a juggler with knives.
A woman stumbles into me with two children stuck to her legs, their fingers tangled in her skirt like roots desperate for soil. “Please—”
“Inside,” I say, crouching to meet the smallest pair of eyes. “You like sweet tea?”
A nod, too fast, too scared.
“I’ll make you two,” I promise, and he believes me. Sometimes that’s enough to make it true.
Lightning tears white across the river. For a blink the world is bones—bridge, faces, blades, the ugly grin of water beneath. Drifts cheer like fools tasting courage for the first time. Moonfell doesn’t cheer; they shift a line with disciplined malice.
“Oil!” Lorre shouts from the lower rail. “Now!”
I hand off the first pot. Heat licks my wrist. “Careful,” I warn. “Hot is a friend and a liar.”
“Everything’s a liar tonight,” she mutters back.
Pia shoves cups at me, her hands shaking in small, furious tremors. “Pour,” she says. “Or I’ll cry.”
“You always cry,” I say, and do as I’m told, filling cup after cup until my wrists ache.
Across the span, Seris stands behind a screen of guards, dry as a secret. Her cloak doesn’t dare touch mud. She watches like she’s choosing spices for a stew instead of watching people bleed. Kade is not dry. He is soaked and smiling, teeth bright like a predator’s laugh, hair plastered to his skull. He lifts a hand to Cael like they’re arranging a dinner instead of a war. Cael does not lift his hand back.
A boy with a cut scalp sits on the step, shaking hard enough his teeth chatter like broken shells. I kneel, press the cup into his hands, wrap his fingers around it with mine. He flinches at first—pain, fear, everything too loud.
“Look at me,” I say. “Just me.”
His eyes dart up.
“Breathe like this,” I coach, slow. “In. Out. Like the tide. Tide doesn’t hurry. Tide doesn’t ask permission. It comes back no matter what.”
He tries. He nearly manages. He gets to the edge of calm and then falls off it, shoulders jerking. I hold his hands again. Hold us both steady.
On the ramparts, Cael’s voice cuts through rain, through fear, through everything. “Hold. Don’t chase. Make them pay for every plank.”
I glance up. He’s a statue that learned to move, and for a heartbeat his head turns. He finds me without looking. My spine straightens, stupid and automatic, because he did.
The first real push slams the lower rail. Hooks bite. Shields grunt. Someone screams a warning. A Drift finds a footing where there shouldn’t be one, pops up like a weed in cracked stone. Jax yanks him down by the collar and sends him back into the river with a curse so inventive Silvie would wash his mouth out if she had soap to spare.
“Soup!” Silvie calls. “Hot! Hands!”
We pour. We feed. We wrap. We pretend our knees don’t shake. Lightning keeps opening the sky and closing it again, each flash exposing a new fear.
Then the air changes.
You can feel it in your teeth first, like a hum under the enamel. The river stills. Even the rain pauses in its fury, falling slower, heavier.
The hair on my arms lifts.
Aster goes very still in my ribs. “Now,” she whispers, a warning made of breath.
“Mara.” Pia’s voice shakes. “Do you—”
“I feel it,” I whisper.
A thunderbolt picks the south arch like a god choosing a tooth to pull. Light slams stone. The span groans—an awful, ancient sound like a mountain changing its mind. The front arch shatters in a scream of rock and rope. For one horrifying second the world is only white.
Then gray.
Then dust, so much dust I can’t find my own hands.
“Cael?!” I choke, coughing grit so hard it feels like my chest will split.
The dust swallows my word. The rampart where he stood is gone—no, not gone, just invisible behind a rolling wall of stone-smoke. Jax swears, loud and low, a sound that means not good. Lorre yells names into the haze. Someone’s bell starts and then stops like it remembered the rules too late.
“Cael!” I scream again, because there is no dignity left in my throat.
No answer.
Only debris.
Only dust.
Only the terrifying silence where a voice I need should be.