**Royal Chambers — Early Morning**
Grey light crept through the curtains. The room smelled of wine and warm sheets.
The young prince lay on his back staring at the ceiling, one arm behind his head, the particular stillness of someone who had been awake for a while pretending otherwise.
Elizabeth sat at the edge of the bed, already dressed, combing her hair with practiced calm. She didn't look at him when she spoke.
"You should send word to the council today."
"Mm." The prince shifted. "About what."
"About the war." She set the comb down. "Your father spent three years letting Greenwood exist at Thornhold's border like a splinter nobody wanted to dig out. Uncomfortable. Occasionally painful. Never quite serious enough to address."
"Boldr addressed it."
"Boldr plays with it," Elizabeth said. Not unkindly. Just precise. "He goes out, breaks their formations, comes home, eats, drinks, and lets them rebuild. He doesn't take Forkbeard seriously. He never has." She finally looked at the prince. "Do you know what that costs? Not in gold. In lives. In villages that burn every season because the war never ends."
The prince was quiet.
"Your father understood this," she continued. "He just didn't have the will to act on it. He was weak." A pause, thin as a blade. "You are not weak."
The prince sat up slightly.
"What are you suggesting."
"I'm suggesting that a the king sends a message." She rose, smoothing her gown. "Not a letter. Not a negotiation. A message that Thornhold under your rule is not the same Thornhold Forkbeard has been poking at for three years." She moved toward the door. "End it. Decisively. Before he decides your father's death is an opportunity."
The prince's jaw tightened. Something moved behind his eyes — the particular expression of someone being handed a decision they wanted to make anyway and needed someone else to name first.
"And Boldr?" he asked.
Elizabeth paused at the door. Didn't turn.
"Your uncle is a weapon," she said quietly. "Weapons don't rule. They serve." A beat. "It's time he remembered that."
She left.
The prince stared at the empty doorway for a long moment.
Then he reached for the bell to summon his advisor.
---
**Thornhold — Training Grounds — Morning**
The chain came low and fast.
Dot dropped under it, rolled right, came up already moving — and the second chain was waiting, catching him across the shoulder and spinning him hard into the dirt.
He lay there a moment, breathing.
"You're faster," Sylric said. Not a compliment exactly. An observation.
Dot pushed himself up. His arms moved differently than they used to — the sleeves of his training tunic pulled tight across shoulders that hadn't been that wide a month ago. The regeneration had done something when it rebuilt him after the arena. Like a bone that heals slightly thicker at the break. Every wound closed stronger than before.
He felt it most in his hands. The weight of things had changed.
"Again," Dot said.
Sylric tilted his head. "You've been going for two hours."
"Again."
The chains moved. Dot read the first one correctly — ducked, redirected, got inside the arc. For half a second he was close enough to land something real. He drove his elbow toward Sylric's ribs.
Sylric stepped back once, let the strike come, and caught Dot's forearm with both chains simultaneously — one at the wrist, one at the elbow — and applied leverage. Dot went to one knee.
"Good," Sylric said. "Better. You felt the opening and took it without thinking." He released the chains. "That's different from last week."
Dot stood, rotating his shoulder.
They rested in the shade of the training wall. Dot poured water over his head, shook it out.
"Where's Dren?" he asked. Casual. Too casual.
Sylric coiled a chain around his forearm slowly. "Fighting with Boldr. You know that."
"I know he's in the city. Is he coming back?"
Sylric said nothing for a moment.
"He's busy."
Dot looked at him.
Sylric met his eyes with complete calm and said nothing further.
Dot looked away first. He understood. Dren knew exactly where Dot was. Dren wasn't coming. Not yet. Whatever Dren was carrying right now — Ysmay's death, the collapsed deal, three years of choices accumulating — he wasn't ready to put it down and walk through a door.
Dot didn't push. He poured more water and let the silence sit.
"Tomorrow," Sylric said finally, standing. "We work on the left side. You favour your right when you're tired."
"I know."
"Then stop doing it."
He walked off toward the castle entrance.
Dot stayed sitting against the wall, forearms on his knees, looking at nothing in particular.
"You train like someone trying to punish themselves."
He turned.
A girl stood at the edge of the training ground — dark hair, Boldr's eyes in a sharper face, wearing a dress that had no business being near a training yard. She was looking at him with the particular attention of someone who had been watching for a while before deciding to speak.
"Who are you," Dot said. Not rudely. Just directly.
"Astrid." She walked toward him without invitation, studying the training ground, the chains marks in the dirt, the displaced gravel from his falls. "Boldr's daughter."
Dot said nothing.
She stopped in front of him. "There's a ball tomorrow evening. I want you to come with me."
"No."
"Why not."
"I don't dance."
"Everyone can dance."
"I can't."
"I don't believe you." She tilted her head. "Have you tried?"
"No. And I don't intend to."
Astrid looked at him for a moment — not put off, not embarrassed. Just recalculating. Then she reached out and took his hand.
He looked down at her hand around his. Then up at her face.
"Come on," she said, and started walking.
He didn't move. She pulled harder. He still didn't move.
She turned, put both hands around his wrist, and leaned her full weight backward.
Dot looked at the ground, then at the castle, then at absolutely nothing, the expression of a man losing a battle he doesn't understand how he's losing.
He stood up.
"I'm not dancing," he said.
"Mm." She was already walking, his hand still in hers.
"I'm serious."
"I know," she said brightly. "Come on."
Dot went. Mostly because stopping would have required making a scene and somehow that seemed worse.
---
**Greenwood — Throne Room — Afternoon**
Sweyn stood at the head of the table, gauntlets already on, cloak fastened. His horse was saddled. His men were ready.
"Sire." His chief advisor stepped forward carefully. "The road to Ashenmoor is a days' ride through uncertain territory. The Monarch's forces have been seen moving along the northern routes. If you ride personally and are intercepted—"
"I am not intercepted," Sweyn said flatly.
"No, sire. But Thornhold is already in flux, your daughter is still in that city, and Skógrimr is unaccounted for. If something were to happen to you—"
Sweyn held up a hand.
The advisor pressed carefully. "Let me send riders, sire. Fast ones. They confirm the situation and report back within a week. If the news is what we fear — you ride with the full army, not a column."
Silence.
Sweyn looked at the table. At the letter from Ashenmoor. At the seal broken by his own hands.
He pulled off one gauntlet.
"Send riders," he said. "Twelve. Fast horses. Full report within tommorow." He dropped the gauntlet on the table. "And if I don't hear back in Tomorrow I ride myself regardless of what anyone says."
"Yes, sire."
He walked to the window and looked out at the courtyard where his horse stood ready.
"I have a bad feeling," he said quietly. To no one in particular.
Nobody answered him.
---
**The Road to Ashenmoor Days later
They smelled the city before they saw it.
Not smoke exactly. Something older than smoke. The particular smell of things that had burned and gone cold days ago.
The lead rider raised his fist. The column slowed.
Ahead, through the tree line, the city walls were visible — gates open, no flags, no guards on the ramparts. The kind of stillness that isn't peaceful.
"Spread out," the lead rider said quietly. "Eyes open."
They moved into the valley in two lines.
The commander stepped from behind a burned gatehouse. Scaled mail. Unhurried. He looked at the twelve riders the way a man looks at a problem that is smaller than he expected.
"Finally," he said.
The pink-haired girl dropped from the wall behind the rear riders, landing silently, already smiling.
It was very quick.
She ended the riders instantly
one tried to escape but was shot with an arrow by the commander
---
2 days later a bird arrived in Greenwood bearing Sweyn Forkbeard's seal.
The message inside was brief.
*City secured. No hostile presence confirmed. Situation stable. Will report further upon return.*
The advisor read it twice. Showed it to the king.
Sweyn read it once.
Folded it.
Set it on the table.
He stood at the window for a long time without speaking, looking at the horizon in the direction of Ashenmoor.
"Send another rider," he said finally. "Alone. Tell no one."
Something in his voice had changed.
Not fear exactly.
The specific feeling of a man who has just realised the game he thought he was playing has different rules than he understood.
End of Chapter 28