Page 40

My focus shifts, snared by movement at the corner of the table. Because crouched at Kadamach’s feet, so still and silent she barely seems to breathe, is Sorcha.

She’s fastening a greave to his leg, slim fingers deft on the buckles. Adjusting the fit with single-minded focus, a chore so ingrained it’s become automatic. Thoughtless.

Bile claws up my throat, and I swallow hard. Once. Twice.

This Sorcha . . . she’s a ghost—a walking skeleton held together by little more than stubbornness and spite.

The bruises smudged beneath her eyes are so dark they look like holes cut into her skull, a violent slash of purple-black against bone-white skin.

Her hair is lank and dull, snarled around a face gone hollow with starvation.

And her eyes—a murky, washed-out green. As if something vital has been leached out, scraped away by the endless grind of servitude. Of cruelty piled on cruelty.

But despite her fragility, her hands never falter as she works. As she runs through the familiar motions of preparing him for battle. The same dance, day after day.

Kadamach ignores her. Doesn’t even spare her a glance when she shifts to his other leg, just extends the limb like he’s offering it to a piece of furniture.

Expendable. Unremarkable.

He doesn’t see her. Doesn’t register her as a person, a living creature with thoughts and feelings. To him, she’s a tool.

“An attack by sea?” Kadamach asks, each word dripping disdain. “Is that how you’ve chosen to waste my time?”

He straightens to his full height, pinning Sorcha’s master—the Strategist—with a look that could skin a lesser fae alive. The Strategist’s throat bobs as he swallows. As the noose of Kadamach’s temper cinches tight.

“Apologies, my King. I meant no disrespect—”

“And yet you offered it all the same. Tell me, Strategist, why do my soldiers remain on the shores instead of setting sail? What crucial bit of information has slipped through the gaping void between your ears?”

Sorcha reaches for the breastplate resting on the cot. Strains beneath its considerable weight, arms trembling. Her balance wavers. Fatigue and hunger are taking their toll, and the armour clatters to the packed-earth floor.

The sound is like a thunderclap in the charged silence.

Sorcha goes rigid, gasping. I feel her heart kick into a panicked gallop behind her ribs, terror turning her blood to ice.

Kadamach turns to face her. Regards her with dispassionate eyes, a scientist observing a pinned insect. It’s the first time he’s looked at her— really looked.

The Strategist seizes on the distraction.

Lunges forward to seize Sorcha’s arm, mouth twisting in an ugly snarl.

“Stupid girl,” he snarls, punctuating each word with a brutal shake.

“Useless, incompetent . You’ll rot in that cave until your bones crumble to dust. Until even the worms won’t have you, you pathetic—”

“Release her.”

Kadamach’s command cracks through the tent like a whip, stilling the Strategist’s tirade. His fingers remain clamped on Sorcha’s arm, white-knuckled. Hesitating.

The temperature grows colder, frost crackling across the ground in spirals.

“I won’t ask again.”

The words are soft. Conversational. But menace drips from every syllable, a promise of violence thrumming just beneath the surface.

Blanching, the Strategist drops Sorcha’s arm as if burned. Stumbles back a step, hands raised in supplication. “My King, I—”

“Sit.” Kadamach cuts him off. Points to a chair shoved against the far wall. “Not a sound, or I’ll feed you your tongue. Slowly.”

The Strategist scurries to obey, folding into the too-small chair. He clamps his mouth shut, a muscle ticcing in his cheek.

Kadamach turns back to Sorcha as if assessing wounded prey.

She stares at the ground, a study in submission. But tension thrums through her, a barely leashed wildness. As if she’s a hair’s breadth from lunging for his throat, consequences be damned.

“Look at me.” An uncompromising order threaded through with something more perilous.

Curiosity.

Slowly, Sorcha lifts her head. Meets Kadamach’s gaze without flinching, though I see the way her pulse rabbits. The fear curdling in her veins.

And yet.

Her chin juts, stubbornness etched into every plane and angle. Defiance sparks in her eyes, bright and feverish and not entirely sane. As if she’s daring him to punish her.

Kadamach’s head tips, a black eyebrow arching. Something calculating uncurls behind his stare, but he doesn’t rise to her unspoken challenge. Just studies her. Weighing. Measuring.

I know that look. I’ve seen it countless times.

It’s the look of a predator scenting blood.

“You know the answer,” Kadamach says, gaze never leaving Sorcha’s. “Why I keep my soldiers close to shore.” A statement, not a question. “Tell me.”

Sorcha’s throat works around a swallow. I can hear her mind churning, that intelligence turning the problem over and over. Examining it from every angle.

“The Seelie,” she says at last. “They . . . they can speak to the sea. Learn its secrets.” Her fingers twitch at her sides as if itching to trace the coastline on the map. “They’d know an attack was coming.”

Silence. Sorcha shifts, a tremor working through her. When it becomes clear Kadamach expects her to continue, she exhales. A tiny sound, barely audible.

“I have a brother. He’s Seelie,” she admits. Bloody and jagged, an old wound never given a chance to heal.

And then Kadamach does the unthinkable.

He steps back. Sweeps an arm toward the great oak table in blatant invitation. As if she’s an equal. Someone worthy of sharing this space, the inner sanctum of his wartime manoeuvring.

Everything in me clenches, bracing for a blow. For the trap to snap shut, for the concussive force of his power to slam into her. To remind her of her place, ground beneath the heel of his boot.

But it never comes.

“Show me,” Kadamach says instead. Quiet. Almost gentle, if such a thing is possible for a creature with no heart to speak of. “What would you suggest instead?”

Sorcha hesitates. I feel the war inside her, the pull of decades—centuries—of conditioning screaming at her to lower her eyes. To prostrate herself, to beg forgiveness for daring to exist in his presence.

But there’s something else growing alongside it. Something small and fragile, unfurling in her chest like a seedling straining for the sun.

Hope. Treacherous, agonising hope.

“I’m not—” She falters, a frown drawing her brows together. “I’m not a Strategist.”

Kadamach waves a hand again, the picture of unconcern. “Indulge me.”

Sorcha takes a step forward. Extends a hand to trace the parchment, fingertip skimming valleys and rivers. Lingering on a narrow cut wending through the mountains, barely more than a thin line of ink.

“There,” she says. Firm, despite the way her voice wavers. “The pass is close to the sea, yes. But the cliffs . . .” She taps their location, considering. “They’re high. Steep. The perfect place for soldiers to draw on shadows. To hide their numbers until it’s too late.”

Kadamach makes a low noise. “You suggest an ambush.”

“Yes. Draw the Seelie in. Make them think they have the advantage.” Her finger moves to the coast, to the small figures denoting Kadamach’s forces. “Send a few of these to be slaughtered. Let the Seelie grow overconfident.” A vicious little smile, there and gone. “Arrogant.”

One of Kadamach’s dark brows wings up. “You’d sacrifice your own soldiers? Knowing they ride to their deaths?”

The question hangs between them. I watch Sorcha’s face. The minute shifts as she mulls it over. Grapples with the weight of it. Because for all her venom, all the long years spent steeping in her rage, she’s never had to make this choice before. Never held lives in her hands.

And I know, with a sudden blinding certainty, that this is a test. That Kadamach is prodding at her soft places, looking for weakness. For hesitation.

For a reason to discard her just like all the rest.

Sorcha looks at the map. At the markers and lines, the strategies and counterstrikes scattered across its surface. The machinations of war, cold and calculating.

She lifts her gaze to Kadamach’s. Meets the pitiless void of his eyes without flinching.

“Yes,” she says simply. Brutally. “I would.”

The truth of her, laid bare.

A survivor. A killer in the making, forged in blood and pain and the unrelenting pressure of a cruel world.

Just like him.

Silence, thick enough to choke on. I watch the way Kadamach stares at her, inscrutable. The way his focus sharpens, a blade unsheathed. He sees her. Really, truly sees her, perhaps the first fae who ever has.

Not as a tool. Not as a thing to be used.

As a possibility.

Kadamach turns away. Settles into the chair at the head of the table as if he hasn’t just upended the very foundations of Sorcha’s world. As if he isn’t the eye of the hurricane tearing through her, remaking her from the inside out.

“Your neck,” he says. Almost laconic, but for the way his gaze lingers on the tattoos ringing her throat. “You wear a vow.”

Sorcha goes still. “Yes,” she says, barely a whisper. As if the admission is being ripped out of her.

Kadamach hums. “The work of an imbecile,” he decides, something like disdain curling the words. “You’re not a fool. No matter how tightly he leashes you.”

A shuddering breath leaves Sorcha. I feel the way the words lance through her—the confirmation that her tormentor is exactly that. Not a god. Not an insurmountable force, but a small, spiteful fae drunk on the power he wields over her.

It’s a revelation. A tiny, flickering candle flame in the endless dark.

“He tricked my mother.” The words tumble out as if a dam has burst inside her. As if she’s been holding them in for centuries, choking on them. “Bound her. Used her, until—”

A hitching breath, ragged and wet.

Distantly, I register the Strategist making a strangled noise. As if Sorcha has just confessed some great secret, spilled blood in the water for all to see.