The winds of the North bit less now, but the air remained thin, cold in the bones for those not used to it — the kind of cold that didn't simply pass, but settled, quiet and unrelenting. Seth, a young man from House Medea, rode at the front of a column of men, black-cloaked and silent, each bearing no banner but marked by the deep silver stitching on their leather — a coiling mark like a tethered flame. Not noblemen, not quite soldiers. Mercenaries, disciplined and sharp-eyed, trained in the broken fields of the Northern borders, where law bent to the strong and the clever.
The city of Athax rose ahead in the distance, its walls layered like ancient skin—stone grown over stone. The high towers pierced the sky like the old thrones of the gods.
Seth barely looked up.
He had walked this road in dreams. Or perhaps they were nightmares. Visions, his mother once called them — memories left behind in the blood.
A few years back.
He was young again, standing at the door while his mother sat by the hearth, combing out her long black hair. Lady Sora, his mother, is of House Medea. Stolen from her husband's arms under the guise of service to the throne. Taken to Vetasta, given new silks and new chains.
She never truly returned.
Her voice was soft that night, but firm.
"You will go to her, someday," she said, not looking back at him.
"To whom?" he'd asked.
"Lady Aya. Daughter of House Svedana."
"Why?"
"Because you are a part of her journey," Sora had said. "Because my son must know where his fury ends… and where his purpose begins."
He had burned with confusion. He still did.
Why would I serve the daughter of the man who took you from us?
But Lady Sora had never spoken ill of Aya. Not once. She had always spoken gently about them — the children of that mad King. She had told her own son that she pitied the children born under the ruling house, how they suffered, how she tried her best to help them.
He couldn't truly understand. Those children, those princes and princesses — they lived better than most. What was there to think about?
His own Father died at the hands of the King. He only wanted his wife back, but he met his end at the gates of their Keep.
He felt then that they deserved no servitude.
As he looked at his mother, he remembered the last time she smiled — truly smiled — and that was the day Seth found her, returned, with a hooded girl holding her hand. He remembered the girl's words clearly as she bowed towards his direction:
"Lady Sora of House Medea returns."
The day she died, her body weakened by illness and grief, she had taken Seth's hand and whispered her last breath:
"Find her, my son. Find Aya. Serve her… it is your destiny."
Now, years later, Seth rode with men loyal not to crowns, but to him. Every one of them owed something to House Medea. Or had something taken by House Svedana's allies in the long shadow of King Ive's reign.
The gates of Athax loomed, open now for the last of the merchant trains arriving from across the valleys. Horses, carts, and oxen carried spices, cloth, and steel — late arrivals for the wedding feast had already passed. The guards checked each caravan with diligence, but no hostility.
Seth's company passed as protection for a northern trader. Their papers were forged, their names common.
No one stopped them. Not yet.
Seth kept his hood up, but his eyes — sharp and black as cooled obsidian — scanned every stone of the castle that came into view. There was no awe in them. Only calculation.
He did not know what this Lady Aya looked like as he had avoided going to Vetasta in every which way in his years. He believed that going there would rouse his anger for what happened to his family, to his mother, to their lives.
Lady Aya had not caused that. But she carried the legacy of those who had.
Still, his mother had asked him to serve. Not avenge.
So be it. He would serve.
But he would watch. And he would wait.
Because blood owed was not always blood spilled.
The sun cast long shadows over the stone courtyard, gilding the banners overhead in copper and crimson. Laughter echoed near the western terraces — a group of nobility gathered, still reveling in some sort of festivity from the day before. Servants moved quickly between stone archways, clearing remnants of wine and garlands, and the air carried the scent of woodsmoke and lavender.
Seth stood beneath the overhang of an old colonnade near the stables, half-hidden, watching.
He hadn't meant to see her.
He was only surveying the inner castle, noting the guard rotations, the escape routes, the rhythm of the court. Mercenary habits died hard. But then the crowd parted, and she appeared.
Lady Aya. No, their Queen.
No guards flanking her. No grand entourage. Just her — walking slowly beside a woman with pale brown hair and warm eyes, a handmaiden perhaps, or a friend. Her dress was simple today, a dusky blue that fell in loose folds over her frame. She moved like someone used to moving alone.
Not fragile. Not untouchable.
She looked nothing like what he imagined, and yet everything about her struck him as familiar.
It was in the way she tilted her head to listen, the way she smiled gently at something the woman said — a smile full of exhaustion, but not defeat.
And it hit him, hard and unwanted — this realization that she wasn't a creature of court politics or a legacy encased in stone.
She was young. Mortal. Still surviving.
And then he felt it.
A sliver of the power in her — not yet — but he could feel the presence of it, curled just beneath the skin. A flickering power held tightly within. His mother used to describe it as a breath the world waited to take. Lady Aya had that.
A ripple in still water. A silence that hummed.
The other woman turned, urging her Queen back toward the doors of the castle. She hesitated, one hand brushing the banister as she looked out over the courtyard. For the briefest moment, her eyes swept the space — calm, unreadable.
They did not land on him.
And then she was gone, vanishing back into the halls of the highborn.
Seth didn't exhale until a full breath had passed.
"Strange," muttered one of his men beside him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Seth said nothing.
But for the first time since he'd crossed the Northern pass, he felt something other than bitterness stirring in his gut.
Not peace. Not yet.
But interest.
And the sense that the road his mother had set him on had finally, finally brought him to its beginning.