Chapter 120

Amelia

The courier stumbled into the council chamber so fast he nearly sprawled across the floor. His breath steamed in the cool air, his palms scraped where he caught himself. “Ridge watch sent this,” he gasped, thrusting a packet toward the table. “Rogues at first light. They hit and vanished, like they were testing us.”

Richard took the reports, his captains clustering in tight around the map. The courier fumbled with a second bundle and held it toward me, his voice lower. “Cross-references from field medics, ma’am. They keep their own ledgers.”

I broke the wax seal. Numbers and names blurred until one cut through everything. Morrow. A requisition note from the vampire wars, copied in two hands: a convoy redirected to Morrow’s unit, a child transfer marked as pending, recipient unnamed.

The ink swam. I had seen the name before, scattered in the Haven archives and in the orphanage ledgers that never balanced. A surname written in margins where no donation arrived. A space where someone should have been. Now it surfaced again, cold and sharp.

My fingers clenched around the page. I felt Richard’s gaze before I looked up.

“You know it,” he murmured, pitched for me alone.

“It connects everything,” I whispered. “The war, the ledgers, the elder who signed my papers. I thought it was nothing. It isn’t.”

He angled his body, shielding me from the captains’ eyes. “Keep following the thread. Quietly.”

“David is watching.”

“Then give him something else to watch.” His mouth twitched, stubborn even as worry darkened his face.

I tucked the bundle under my jacket and left them to argue patrol routes. My legs carried me down the steps into the colder levels of the Haven, where the dust clung thicker and the stones held onto damp. Each echo of my boots reminded me how fragile this calm truly was.

By the time I reached the supply base, the air was thick with tension. David’s soldiers clogged the corridor, our guards faced them three deep. A crate sat between them like bait. Voices snapped sharp as knives.

“That pallet was logged for our infirmary,” one of our porters insisted.

“Your logs are lies,” a soldier in David’s colors shot back. “We count mouths, not paper.” His hand lingered at the knife in his boot.

Shoulders collided. A lid slipped. Beans spilled across stone in a clattering rush. More voices rose, boots scuffing as men stepped too close.

“Stop!” I shouted, climbing onto the crate. The noise cut off. Dozens of eyes turned up to me. “We are all hungry. We are all waiting. If you draw steel here, the children will carry that sound forever. We can share the damn beans.”

The silence stretched. Then our porter crouched, scooping beans into his palms. After a beat, the soldier followed. The spell broke. Others bent down muttering, hands busy. I stayed standing until the floor was clear. My pulse throbbed in my ears, but I did not let them see it.

On the catwalk above, David leaned with his hands behind his back, Adam close at his shoulder. When our eyes met, David lifted two fingers in a false salute, then turned away. His composure chilled me more than shouting ever could.

Richard

Authority could be a blade, but here that would have cut us in half. And as tensions were rising with David's camp, I couldn't take that chance. I kept my hands visible, my voice steady, and measured what humiliation my men could endure without resenting me and what concession David’s could take without blood.

I ordered the armory to inspect our own knives first. My men bristled, but obeyed. When David’s soldiers reached the checkpoint, they followed suit because the pattern had already been set. No one could claim we singled them out. No one could claim we looked away.

Twice fists nearly flew. Twice I pressed a palm to a chest and said, “Look at me.” Anger faltered under a king’s stare long enough to ease back. I kept my voice calm, not soft, letting each man know I saw him clearly.

All the while, I tracked Amelia. At the bay, she had porters counting aloud with her, one sack to them, one to us, a rhythm no one could dispute. In the kitchens, she turned a mistake into a laugh. When a courier blurted bad news too loud, she walked him back and made him start over in a softer voice. My generals would have barked. She breathed, and the rooms followed. She calmed them in ways I never could. Watching her made me wonder how much of my command was muscle, and how much was trust.

By dusk word reached me that David had secured his own copy of the archive packet. The messenger described him reading the name twice, then ordering Adam to lock down the record stairwells. That kind of fear tries to guard doors. It meant he knew what Amelia was circling, even if he wouldn’t name it aloud.

Amelia

Later, I sat in the infirmary annex with the pages spread across my lap. The name Morrow tied to a convoy, then a field hospital, then disappeared. The orphanage elder’s surname surfaced in a memo about missing donations. A priest wrote of a child moved without a name for safety. Each scrap was a bone. Together they formed a shape I almost recognized.

The shape pressed back. Pressure built behind my eyes. If there was a wolf in me, it did not howl like Richard’s. It hissed, low and cutting, sliding through my head until the room narrowed to a pin. I gripped the cot frame and breathed until it widened again. I told no one.

A kitchen girl tugged my sleeve. “There is shouting, Miss. By the east stairs.”

Two squads circled an oil lamp that had fallen and cracked. The smell of oil leaked sharp into the air. Men’s hands flexed, eager for any excuse. I bent, lifted it. “This is not something to fight over,” I said. “It's just a light. I’ll put it where the children sleep. If you want to fight, you’ll do it in the dark.” The circle broke without a word. I carried the lamp away, heart pounding, knowing I had only postponed the next clash.

Richard

By full dark, the garden lamps cast gold over the rosemary beds. I found Amelia at the balcony rail, her knuckles white. The day had left her flushed, her eyes bright. Mine had left a hum in my bones, the kind that comes after holding back too much.

“You held them off,” I said, though it was not enough.

“We held them off,” she answered. She turned her wrist so I could take it. I did. Her pulse quickened under my thumb. The faint mark from my tie lingered like a secret.

“I keep wondering what authority looks like when it isn’t shouting.”

“It looks like not humiliating a man just because you can,” she said. “And letting a woman speak when you’d rather order her around.”

Her mouth softened. The word that had pressed at me for weeks climbed into my throat. The moment had every right edge. Above the noise, under the sky. I could see the shape of a future if I stepped toward it. I pictured the ring hidden in its cedar box. I pictured her yes.

I leaned closer, almost dizzy with it. “Amelia,” I began.

The alarm bell split the night. Once from the lower gate, again from the east stair, then the yard. Shouts, boots, smoke. Nathan came pounding up the path, face pale, breath ragged. “It’s shifted, Richard,” he called. “David’s men have turned violent. The lines are breaking into open fights.”

I clenched my jaw and answered for all to hear. “We don't give them blood, not yet. Authority sometimes means knowing when to hold back. We evacuate and return to the Pack House. Before this rot spreads further.”

Amelia was already moving. “The infirmary, we need the kits.”

“Evacuation protocol,” I said, the drill returning like muscle memory. “Elders first. Captains rotate. We leave in ten.”

I squeezed her hand hard enough to say what the bell had stolen. She squeezed back as if she heard it anyway.

We ran. The Haven cracked beneath us. David wanted chaos. The rogues wanted power. We would not give them both. If we fled, we fled back to the Pack House, to make the symbol stand where the walls could not. Even as the lamps behind us guttered, I knew we couldn't break the way they wanted us to.