Page 91 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

Orilan moved like ice through fire. All around him, the battlefield roared, screams and steel, smoke and flame, but he walked calmly, cutting down Avelan soldiers like dry wheat. No wasted movement, no hesitation, just cold, precise annihilation.

He didn’t ride his dragon today. Virekhal circled above, watching and guarding, his presence loomed like a glacier on the horizon.

Immense, patient and absolute, but this fight belonged to Orilan alone.

He fought not like a king, but like a weapon forged before memory.

Avelan troops surged around him, they tried to flank him, overwhelm him and they died for the effort.

Orilan lifted his hand and the air shimmered.

Ice bloomed in a perfect circle from his palm, spearing upward like a crown of jagged teeth, impaling seven soldiers mid-charge.

He stepped through the centre of it, expression indecipherable, frost clinging to his cloak.

A younger soldier, a boy, charged, screaming with blade raised. Orilan parried without looking, steel rang, he turned and drove his fist, just his fist, into the soldier’s chest. The boy flew backwards ten feet and didn’t rise.

“My brother does not even use magic sometimes,” Virekhal murmured from above, voice calm over the link. “ He simply is.”

Flames rose to the east. A spell detonated behind him, Orilan didn’t flinch, he just turned to Taelin, who fought not far from the front line, his blade dancing in a constant blur.

“The north line’s folding,” Orilan called, voice amplified, tone even. “Send the Armathen mages. Crush it inward.”

Taelin nodded once, deflecting a strike with a snarl. “Done.”

The king turned again and walked straight into the mouth of the breach, six Avelan captains came at him at once. They never had a chance, he drew his second blade, this one ancient, veined with frostlight, and crossed both hilts in front of him. Runes flared as the air cracked.

He struck once, and the world shuddered as frostfire rippled from his blades in a wave, erasing armour, extinguishing flame and freezing the blood in his enemies’ veins mid-scream.

The captains collapsed as one, bodies half-turned to crystal, shattering on impact.

For a moment, the field stilled around him, and then it screamed forwards again.

Orilan exhaled, low and measured. “ Virekhal,” he said through the paired link.

“Yes, brother?”

“ Mark the northwestern rise. We move there next.”

“Shall I burn it?”

“Not yet,” Orilan said, already walking. “ First we must break their teeth.”

?????

Taelin knew the line was buckling. He’d seen it too many times before, in tomes, in drills and in real blood and soil.

The Avelan reinforcements had hit back much harder than expected, crashing through the outer barricade like a flood of sinew and fire.

The Armathen shield wall was holding but barely.

Edhenvale casters were flagging, the veils had dropped, the tidebeasts had turned, and yet he stood at the centre of the field.

Blade drawn and voice ragged from shouting commands, his armour cracked at the shoulder.

“FORM THE LINE!” he roared, pointing towards the fractured wedge near the ridge. “DROP THE FLANK, NOW!”

Warriors scrambled to obey, then the wind shifted, his instincts screamed, he had turned too late.

A flash of movement, a figure charging from the smoke already descending.

An elite, fast and silent, meant for Orilan, and Taelin didn’t hesitate.

He moved into its path, to protect his king, the father who had raised him bereft and alone.

The enemy’s blade sank into his side with a sickening crunch, he twisted, grunting.

He grabbed the attacker’s collar and drove his own sword upward, straight through ribs and throat.

The body dropped at his feet, then so did Taelin.

One knee hit the earth, then the other. He tried to stand, but the light was flickering now.

His hand pressed to his wound and came away slick and dark.

From the haze, Orilan appeared, eyes wide.

“Taelin,” he said quietly, voice like winter cracking stone. “Son!”

The commander looked up, blood trickled down his mouth. “Tell the line to hold. Tell them… tell them I’m not… done.”

He tried to rise and failed again. Orilan caught him before he could fall forwards, cradled him with quiet softness. Taelin’s fingers curled around the front of the king’s cloak. “Don’t… let the… bastards win, Pa.” He breathed, chest rattling.

Then his eyes went still, and the moment Taelin’s body slumped, the battlefield seemed to shudder, but there was no time to grieve.

From above, a scream broke through the chaos, not from a fae, but from something older, Draeven, the Shadowcoil paired to Taelin.

He dove from the clouds like a dagger unsheathed, black and copper wings snapping open as he reached the ground in a single, bone-rattling second.

The dead and dying scattered as he swept his tail wide, carving space around Orilan and his fallen son.

Without a word, without a roar, Draeven dipped his head and scooped Taelin’s body into the curve of one claw, cradling him as a brother, not a beast. Then he rose again, straight into the sky, out of reach and the war did not pause.

Eiran saw it from midair, saw the fall, saw the lift, and something broke inside him as the thunder roared through the link.

Eiran could not think, he could not feel.

Taelin had been hard, sharp, loyal to a fault, but he’d stood beside Eiran through every order, every rebellion, every lost hour of doubt, and now he was gone.

Xelaini responded to his rage like a whirring tempest. Her flame ignited around them in a torrent, and Eiran didn’t think.

He pointed towards the inner command ridge, where scouts believed the last of the Avelan stronghold stood, and they dove.

“ There!” he shouted over the mind-thread. “ Break the ridge!”

They hit the ground as a fireball, Eiran slammed into the command circle and released everything.

A wave of flame magic, magnified by his rage and desolation, exploded outward, burning through command wagons, disrupting rune anchors and throwing captains back like ragdolls.

One tried to speak, Eiran just stabbed him through the mouth.

Behind him, Xelaini span in a wall of fire and smoke, and then there was clarity.

“ MAGICERS!” Maeve shouted over the thread. “ Back hill. Last line of defence, circle of six!”

“ On it!” Fenric snapped.

He and Laren landed fast, far too fast but that was the point, surely.

The Avelan magicers had formed a last ward, chanting in an ancient, sickly rhythm, runes glowing with death light, magic pulsed thick in the air.

They were trying to reset the battlefield, bend time, to collapse the strike from within.

Too fucking late .

Fenric’s blade was already out, glowing with disruption counter-runes. Laren’s bow strained with tension as she leapt to a rise, one knee down, eyes locked.

“Left two are mine,” she said.

Fenric nodded. “Middle’s mine.”

“And the rest?” She asked, mouth quirking.

“Let’s just improvise, Moon.” He said with a wink.

The first arrow flew before the magicers even noticed them. Straight through the eye. The second twisted midair, shifting trajectory with intention magic, and buried itself in another’s heart.

Fenric dove straight into the circle and unleashed hell, his blade sang through two warding lines, shattering the enchantments.

He stabbed the third magicer in the stomach and flung disruption powder in the air, shorting every casting hand within ten feet.

The last two tried to scream, but Laren didn’t let them.

One final arrow, through the neck, pinning one to the ritual stone behind and Fenric sliced the other’s head off their shoulders.

The light sputtered, the magic died, and with it, the Avelan army’s last hope of control.

?????

The silence, when it came, didn’t fall. It crawled, slithering in between the dying embers of magic, over the broken spears and the smoking ruin of tents.

It coiled beneath the charred wreckage of command tents and around the bodies strewn across the clearing, friend and foe alike.

It rose like mist from scorched ground and threaded through the throats of the living until no one dared speak, lest the sky hear them and restart the frenzy.

Maeve stood in the hollow left by the last detonated rune, blood on her face, soot between her teeth, and her chest still heaving with each inhale.

The Chain’s armour pulsed around her, she asked the armour to retreat, and it did.

The shift was immediate but unhurried, like a sigh let out after holding breath too long.

The armour lifted from her skin in waves, pieces slipping away in delicate, fluid motions, as if they were reluctant to leave her but would obey.

She watched, transfixed, as the plates shimmered, turning soft at the edges, folding inward and drawing back towards her wrist. Her skin prickled where it left her, nerves still tuned to the memory of battle, of its protection and of its power.

She felt bare, not just physically, but inwardly, as though something sacred was being tucked away, something that had wrapped itself not just around her body, but through her soul.

It didn’t clatter or vanish with a spell.

It returned, like it was always meant to.

Threads of gold and strength wove themselves into the single, familiar Chain at her wrist, resting there once more like a waiting secret.

Maeve touched the metal lightly with her fingers. It was warm from her skin, or maybe it had always been warm, she couldn’t remember at that point. The weight of it was slight but steady, like a promise, or perhaps a warning.

She swallowed past the taste of ash. "Thank you, friend." she whispered.

Above her, Jeipier circled once more, then descended with a screech that sounded more like grief than victory. His wings beat a rhythm into the ground as he landed, but Maeve didn’t mount, not yet.

Around her, the thunder gathered. Wounded, weary, but victorious.

“They say the commander is dead.” Jeipier keened into her mind, low and uncertain, like a dragon trying not to cry.

Maeve froze. The blood on her blade hadn’t yet dried. The world was still burning around her, but everything inside her went quiet. Not silent just still, like the hush before something breaks.

Taelin was gone.

Her breath caught, too sharp, too fast, her chest tightened. She recognised the signs, the old rhythm. Panic always started like this, sudden, cruel, inescapable, but it didn’t come. No spiral, just the ache of something torn and the raw, stunned air around it.

“Why can’t I feel it? Why am I not falling apart?” Maeve asked desperately.

“You are stronger now,” Jeipier said gently. “You’re not alone in it anymore.”

Maeve’s throat locked. “Eiran. I need to be with him. Where is he?”

“With Mother. He’s coming. I can feel them.”

“Is he…?”

“He’s fine, just burning everything in his path to get back to you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. The battlefield kept moving around her, the scent of blood and magic thick in the air . “I don’t know what to do without Taelin guiding us,” she whispered .

“We fight,” Jeipier said simply . “The way he taught us. Hold fast until Eiran reaches you, he will need you.”

Maeve let out a shaking breath and nodded once, spotting the others arriving.

Aeilanna’s eyes were still lit with threads of magic as she guided Solirra down.

Nolenne followed, dried blood on her jaw, a long gash across one bicep.

Branfil strode through the haze like a tower of stone, rallying Soren to his side.

Fenric and Laren emerged from the far ridge, breathing hard, hands still stained with the remains of the final magicers.

Eiran walked towards her, smoke drifting from his shoulders like a warning.

His armour and leathers were scorched, his mouth was tight, but his eyes were alive.

“You alright?” he asked quietly, voice scraping like gravel.

“No,” Maeve said. “You?”

He gave a bitter smile. “Has anyone heard news of Father?”

They shook their heads, then Fenric swallowed and said, voice hoarse, “Draeven’s blocked the Thunder.”

Eiran turned sharply at that.

“No one can reach him,” Fenric went on. “Not through mind-talk. Not even Virekhal. He’s shut everything down, no one knows where the fuck they are.”

Soren’s voice broke through the tension, slow and ruined. “Brontis thinks he’s taken him to...”

Maeve’s breath caught and Laren looked away, jaw trembling. Aeilanna let out a loud sob, without seeming to realise she had.

“He’s burning him,” Soren said. “So the Pale Court can’t take what’s left.”

“No,” Fenric whispered. “No, not without, without...”

“He would,” Eiran said, hollow. “If he thought it was right.”

Branfil staggered back a step, then another. “He took me in,” he choked. “He made me his son. I was an orphan, and he called me son. He was my father.”

The words split him, and he dropped to his knees, hands covering his face, and sobbed without shame.

Nolenne’s voice cracked. “Hayvalaine. Calen. They’ll be waiting. They don’t know. ”

“I’ll tell them,” Aeilanna said quietly, through tears.

Soren sat down beside Branfil, not to speak, just to be there. Fenric crumpled forwards, hands on thighs, shoulders shaking as he wretched from shock. Laren moved his hair and held onto his elbow like it was the only thing left keeping him upright.

Maeve leaned into Eiran. He pulled her close and held her, arms tight and trembling. None of them were ready for the truth that had arrived. The Commander, their father was gone.

From the skies above, Virekhal let out a low, resonant call, a war cry no longer, but a toll.

The kind sounded not for battle, but for the dead, and for the living who must carry them.

Across the battlefield, horns echoed it in response.

The thunder peeled away from combat positions.

Screiven riders dismounted, and war beasts lowered their heads. The signal was clear, stand down.

Melrathian and Eldrisilian’s sky scouts rose again, smaller screivens and veiled drakes darting between smouldering watchtowers and ash-laced trees.

Eiran gathered himself and began barking commands to the magicers.

Caster teams moved in methodically, laying fresh runes of silence, concealment, and removal.

Blood was cleaned from stone, corpses were stacked in veiled trenches.

Evidence was scoured, bodies removed, and enchantments scrubbed.

The battlefield would vanish. There would be no trace of this ambush, only an echo in the wind, a ghost story in Avelan camps. One more legion gone.

No survivors and no sign of how.