Pleasant as the interactions were, the undercurrent of Reavers spoiled the atmosphere. Joining the mages by the edge of the lower town, he looked out on the several hundred fiends that beat their chests like drums.
Something wasn’t right.
“Is it just me,” he began, “or are they—”
“Getting faster,” Aphira confirmed. Though not the smallest among the Keepers, she was easily a whole head shorter than Kassian. He looked down at her and was reminded by the tone of her skin that she heralded from The Arid Lands. Namdhor must feel like hell to her.
“When did this start?” he asked, feeling for the edges of the pipe in his pocket.
“A few hours ago,” Aphira reported.
Kassian held the pipe in his hands and between his lips. “Why would they get faster?” he pondered aloud.
Aphira gestured down the line of Keepers. “Ayden thinks it’s some kind of countdown,” she remarked sceptically.
“It is,” Ayden chirped up, defending his theory. “Why else would they do it?”
Kassian paused with the tip of his wand resting on the rim of the pipe. Instead of igniting it, he removed it from his mouth altogether and stared at the Reavers. It was a countdown. The faster they beat the closer Alijah and Malliath approached.
“I need to warn Vighon,” he concluded, searching for the nearest horse.
“Wait!” came a call from farther down the line. “A rider from the east!”
Kassian walked out onto the vale and squinted his eyes against the glare of the white snow. Indeed there was a rider, a single man on horseback, his saddle laden with goods. The Keeper turned to his right to watch the Reavers, concerned that they might attack the rider, but they appeared content to beat their chests and stare at the city.
“Intercept him,” Kassian ordered.
Two Keepers, Sadvik and Jorn, broke away and jogged out to meet the rider. He wasn’t the first to arrive at the city since it had been liberated, but he was the first to arrive on his own, from the east where The Black Wood resided.
Once they were close enough for Kassian to take in the details of the rider, weary by the look of him, Sadvik called out in his thick Grey Stone accent, “He hails from The Black Wood!”
From atop his mount, the traveller looked out on the Reavers with no lack of trepidation. “I don’t… I don’t understand,” he confessed.
“The city’s ours now,” Kassian told him boldly.
The rider’s eyebrows slowly rose into his head. “Truly?”
“You come with news for The Rebellion?” Kassian probed, drawing his eyes down to the Keeper.
“I come with more than that,” the rider divulged, revealing a black orb within his cloak. “Queen Drelda instructed me to give it to Vighon Draqaro himself.”
Mentioning Doran’s mother robbed Kassian of any suspicion he might have been harbouring for the rider. “Come with me,” he instructed.
Out on her balcony, a cold dawn greeted the pale skin of Reyna Galfrey. The elf pulled on the blanket around her shoulders, determined to withstand the chilling wind and watch the sunrise. She had done just that for nearly two years, hoping each day that it would be the day she unearthed her son and freed him from the clutches of Malliath.
It was crushing to know that it would not be this day nor any other. That which she dreamt her every waking moment would never come to pass.
There was to be but one outcome.
A blast of icy wind swept her golden hair across her shoulders and dragged a solitary tear from her left eye. She wiped it away before Nathaniel’s warm arms wrapped around her and his chest pressed against her back. He buried his face into her neck and she welcomed the heat of his breath. That, and so much more, she had missed in his absence.
“I don’t have to see your face to know you suffer,” he whispered.
“I failed,” she uttered, her words almost snatched away by the breeze. “I could not save him.”
Nathaniel squeezed her a little tighter. “It was never up to you to save him,” he told her. “Nor me. We’re his parents. We were only to love him.”
“It wasn’t enough,” Reyna replied, her vision lost to the expanse of the north.
“Do you regret your choice?” Nathaniel asked softly.
Reyna didn’t answer straight away, though she had already given that very question much thought while the moon still held sway. “No,” she said firmly. “I made my choice. I stand beside Vighon. I will see this through to whatever end.”
“We will see it through together,” Nathaniel articulated. “From now on, nothing comes between us.”
Reyna finally turned around to see her husband’s face. He looked just as he did when she had met him, nearly fifty years ago. She knew every line in his skin, the feel of his lips, and every speck of colour in his eyes. He was the most extraordinary man she knew. Their roots went deep.
“Together, my love,” she promised.
Nathaniel flashed her one of his confident smiles and she couldn’t help but feel uplifted by it, as if everything was going to be alright. She responded by crushing him in her embrace and he kissed her on the head, where he paused to inhale her perfume.
“What’s that?” he asked from over her shoulder.
Reyna pulled away and followed his gaze into the keep’s courtyard below. It was packed with people from the lower town and their numerous supplies, but her elven eyes caught two servants guiding a pair of horses away while Kassian Kantaris escorted a stranger through the main doors.
“A messenger?” Reyna pondered.
Nathaniel frowned. “Surely it is too soon. The raven we sent to The Black Wood should still be in flight.”
“It could be news from Qamnaran, from my mother!” Reyna concluded with her first dose of enthusiasm. “Get dressed!”
The Galfreys hurried about their chamber in a bid to collect their clothes, though Nathaniel’s haste only seemed to slow him down. Reyna rolled her eyes, always amused by the clumsiness of
