POV: Mara
War tastes like metal, blood, and smoke.
For three days the city becomes one long scream. Glass bridges explode in showers of shards. Drums pound the heartbeat of panic. The sky goes black with ash before noon, so thick it feels like you’re breathing old ghosts.
I’m everywhere and nowhere—bandaging wounds, dragging stretchers across broken stone, chanting tide hymns until my throat scrapes raw. Hearthworks collapses into a triage camp. Steam from boiling bandages mixes with smoke from burning barricades. I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“He’s losing too much—pressure, pressure!” Silvie yells.
“I’m trying!” Pia cries back, soaked in blood that isn’t hers.
The healers move like ghosts. Their hands never stop. Their eyes never sleep. I work beside them until my bones tremble under my skin. Every time I touch a wound, the bond flickers—Cael feels the strain like lightning under his ribs.
And every time his blade hits bone, my pulse stutters with the aftershock.
“Left flank collapsing!” someone screams.
“Hold them!” another replies, voice cracking.
I sprint to the makeshift triage under the north arch. Wind whips smoke into our faces. The river roars below like it’s trying to drown the world.
A boy with a shredded arm grabs my sleeve. “Lady—please—please—don’t let me—”
“I won’t,” I say, kneeling hard enough to bruise. His eyes roll, breath fluttering like a dying moth. I press my palm to his chest, letting the bond leak steady warmth—small, controlled, careful. A flicker of white-gold steadies his pulse. Aster guides my hand: slower, softer, deep but not too deep.
His breath evens. He sobs once. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I whisper, tying the tourniquet tighter.
Behind my eyes, Rhun’s voice rumbles through Cael’s side of the bond, deep and guttural: She’s safe. She’s fighting. Keep standing.
I don’t know if it’s meant for Cael or for me. Both, maybe.
Night bleeds into day into night. Torches burn out. Lanterns crack. Water runs low. The wounded spill into hallways and stairwells. People scream prayers that sound more like bargains.
A little girl tugs my apron. “My brother… he won’t wake up.”
I scoop her up because my hands won’t let me walk away. “Show me.”
Her brother lies pale as parchment. I kneel, press my fingers to his throat. “He’s here,” I say, and her sob is the kind that splits hearts.
I work until my knees go numb. Until my arms shake. Until even Aster whispers, rest, rest, rest.
But rest is a story for people not living inside a battlefield.
On the third dawn, Cael’s exhaustion hits me through the bond like a fist to the ribs—sharp pain, a split shoulder, armor cracked wide. His breath comes in ragged bursts through the connection.
“Cael—Cael—” I gasp aloud, bracing myself against the stone.
Still here, he sends back, his voice a rasp threaded with iron. Still standing. Still yours.
My throat burns. I run to the battlements, feet slipping on ash-slick stone. Smoke claws at my eyes. The air tastes like burned rope.
Then I see him.
Cael stands in the center of chaos—blood-soaked, unbowed, blade flashing in brutal arcs. Drifts scatter around him like reeds torn up by a river. His wolf is so close to the surface I can almost see its shadow behind him. Command radiates off him like heat. He moves like a star refusing to die.
Pride swells in my chest so violently I choke on it.
“Hold the line!” he roars, and the city obeys.
I grip the stone rail, whispering his name under my breath like prayer or profanity—I’m not sure which.
Then—
A horn blasts. Deep. Wrong.
Screams rise from the lower courtyard.
“Kade!” someone shrieks. “Kade breached the inner wall!”
My stomach drops so fast I almost collapse.
Not the outer defenses.
Not the south flank.
The inner wall.
Inside. Inside us.
Smoke rises from the courtyard in a furious column. Shadows move—too many, too fast.
“No, no, no—” I whisper, already running.
The bond flares white-hot as Cael feels my panic spike. He shouts something through the link—not words, just fear—Mara—
I leap over a fallen beam. Soldiers sprint past me. The ground shakes.
Kade is here, inside the walls.
Close enough to touch the kitchen corridors. Close enough to rip through Hearthworks. Close enough to find me.
The bond surges again—Cael’s rage, Rhun’s roar, Aster’s warning, all slamming into my chest at once.
My breath shatters. And for the first time since the war began—I am afraid.