Ezra staggered.

  His tiny legs finally gave up. He pitched forward with a soft, breathless sound, vision swimming, AMP burning out in a haze of static and pain.

  Aerwyna didn’t think.

  She was simply there.

  One moment Ezra was falling, the next he was scooped out of the air and into a wall of steel and warmth that smelled of frost and soap and the faint, familiar tang of her mana.

  His head thumped against the cold curve of her gorget.

  He made a small noise, more exhale than word—then went limp in her arms, consciousness slipping away under the crushing demand of his infant body.

  Aerwyna’s world shrank to the weight of him.

  Her hands moved on their own, trained by a year of sleepless nights and a lifetime of battlefield triage. One arm cradled his back, palm spanning almost his entire spine. The other cupped his head, fingers sifting gently through his hair, checking for blood, swelling, anything wrong.

  He was breathing. Fast, but steady.

  Ribs intact. Limbs intact. No obvious breaks.

  His mana felt… strained. Exhausted. But there.

  He was alive.

  Something tight in her chest snapped loose, flooding her veins with a cold, shaking relief so intense it was almost pain.

  “Ezra,” she whispered, the name catching in her throat.

  He didn’t answer. His lashes fluttered once against her collar, then stilled.

  He’d fought until he’d burned himself out, then trusted her to do the rest.

  The rooftop exploded into noise around them.

  “Milady!”

  “Form ranks!”

  “Block the street—no, both streets! Move!”

  Boots hit slate. Blackfyre Knights vaulted from adjacent roofs, armor clattering. Below, in the streets choking with stalled carts and gawking citizens, platoons of guards were slamming into formation, shields locking, spears lowering, funnels of steel closing off every alley.

  Aerwyna barely heard them.

  Her whole being wanted to stay right where she was, curl around the tiny, sleeping weight in her arms, and refuse to move until the world stopped trying to take him away.

  Instead, she tore her gaze away from Ezra long enough to snarl at the Knight she trusted most.

  “Evan.”

  Sir Evan landed beside her a heartbeat later, panting. His sword was already in his hand, knuckles white around the hilt.

  “Milady!”

  She turned toward him, still cradling Ezra.

  “Take him.”

  She didn’t ask.

  She pushed her son into his arms.

  Evan froze for the space of a breath, as if she’d just handed him a live dragon egg. Then he gathered Ezra in, holding him tight against his breastplate with a care that looked almost reverent.

  The baby sagged against him, dead weight, cheek pressed to cold steel.

  Evan’s jaw clenched.

  “Madame,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “We are enough to deal with the wench. You need not—”

  “Ezra is the priority,” Aerwyna cut him off, eyes like razors. “Escort him back to the castle. You will personally guard that room. No one approaches him without my explicit order. Not the stewards, not the healers. Only Lord Blackfyre is allowed in if he returns early, no guards. No one. If anyone argues, you run them through.”

  Evan swallowed.

  “Yes, Milady,” he said.

  He hesitated one last time.

  “Are you certain—”

  “I will tear this whore apart with my own hands,” Aerwyna hissed. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

  There was nothing left to say.

  Evan bowed his head once, sharply.

  “As you command.”

  He turned, cradling Ezra one-armed, and sprinted toward the nearest lower roof. Two knights shifted automatically to flank him, moving on instinct—she didn’t have to order that.

  Aerwyna watched them go for two heartbeats.

  Then she wrenched her eyes away.

  She locked the raw, howling terror of almost losing Ezra in a cold iron box inside her chest and slammed the lid.

  When she faced Catalyna, she was no longer a weeping mother.

  She was the Lady of Fulmen.

  Catalyna stood twenty paces away on the same slope of roof, balanced on the ridge as if it were flat ground.

  The black outer garment she’d worn during the abduction was gone, discarded somewhere in the chase. What lay beneath was no servant’s dress. Fitted leather hugged her frame, overlaid with fine chain links that glimmered faintly where the light caught them. It was the kind of armor built for war mages—protection without sacrificing movement.

  Her mask still covered her lower face, but her eyes were bare.

  They watched everything.

  Aerwyna met that gaze with loathing so pure it almost surprised her.

  Three years, she thought, bile rising in the back of her throat. Three years in my halls. Three years in my clothes, my kitchens, my nursery.

  Catalyna’s file flashed through her mind with brutal clarity.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  She’d been nothing special on paper. A commoner woman from a village two days’ ride away. Husband a farmer. One son dead in early infancy, when her milk had been at its richest. No political ties. No history of travel outside the domain. A clean recommendation from a minor steward who had known her in his youth.

  Low risk. Quiet. Unremarkable.

  Perfect.

  Aerwyna had double-checked all of it. Sent word through three separate networks—her own house’s spies, Reitz’s informants.

  Everything had come back the same.

  Normal. Boring.

  She’d chosen Catalyna precisely because she was the least likely person to be a knife.

  Was any of that even real? Aerwyna wondered, eyes narrowing. Did a child die? Does a farmer husband sit at a table right now, or is that another mask?

  Whatever the truth of it, the woman standing before her now was no cook, no laundress, no simple mother who’d fallen on hard times.

  Her aura had swelled.

  Not wildly, the way barons did when they overcompensated. Not in the bloated, crushing way of Primarchs swollen with bound oaths.

  Catalyna’s mana was tight. Dense. Condensed close to her skin, the weight of it pressing faintly against Aerwyna’s senses even through whatever under-layer she wore.

  A High Noble, at least.

  Hiding in her nursery.

  Aerwyna’s lip curled.

  “Why did you abduct my son?” she asked.

  Her voice was very quiet.

  Very flat.

  The frost at her feet crept outward, hairline cracks appearing in the slate as water in the tiny gaps froze and expanded.

  Catalyna tilted her head slightly.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Answer me, knave,” Aerwyna snapped, eyes blazing. “How did you hide your aura for so long? Who are you working for?”

  Her spear hand twitched.

  Every fiber of her being screamed to thrust, to lunge, to put a hole through this woman’s chest and watch the light leave her eyes.

  She held.

  Ezra was out of reach now, carried away in Evan’s arms. That was the only reason she could afford even this much restraint.

  “That’s a lot of questions for someone who just lost a baby,” Catalyna replied.

  Her voice was calm. Almost bored.

  “I don’t see why I should answer any of them.”

  Her gaze flicked once in the direction Evan had gone, as if tracking the faint echo of Ezra’s presence.

  “You should hand him back,” she went on, tone light. “Do that, and nobody else needs to get hurt today.”

  Aerwyna stared at her.

  “You dare threaten me?” she said, derision dripping from every syllable. “Lowborn scum. On what grounds do you base your threats? Because you scurried through my rafters and tricked a few gate guards?”

  Her aura flared, a surge of frozen pressure that made the nearest Knights shiver despite themselves.

  “In this world, martial might is supreme,” she continued, stepping forward. The ice spread with her. “On that scale, you are nothing. You would not last three seconds fighting me.”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits.

  “The only reason your heart is still beating is because you were holding my son.”

  Catalyna’s shoulders lifted in a tiny, almost careless shrug.

  “Three seconds is a generous estimate,” she said. “For you.”

  She wasn’t listening to the speech. Not really.

  Her eyes flicked across the surrounding rooftops, down to the streets, back up again. Measuring distances. Counting armor.

  There were close to a hundred Blackfyre soldiers below, by her quick reckoning—shields and spears forming rough boxes to cut off any ground-level escape. More were spilling in from adjacent streets, funneled by the lockdown into a tightening ring of steel.

  On the roofs, she spotted at least ten Knights. Their auras burned brighter than the common infantry, their armor layered thicker, runes glimmering faintly at the edges of sight. Some had bows half-raised. Others stood with hands hovering over talismans and wands, waiting for a signal.

  And there—coming from the same direction Aerwyna had appeared—five more figures in distinctive armor loped onto a neighboring roof and took up positions two steps behind their mistress.

  Their helms were stylized like open fish jaws, the visors gaping, the plate beneath worked to resemble overlapping scales. The metal itself had a faint blue sheen, catching the light in ripples.

  Their auras moved differently. Fluid. Heavy.

  Riverrunners.

  Aerwyna’s personal retinue from her maiden house. They did not answer to Reitz. Only to her.

  To the citizens of Bren, they were a story. To Catalyna, they should have been a problem.

  “Is this all the force you could muster?” she asked aloud, letting a note of mockery slide into her tone. “It’s pretty quaint, considering the size of your domain.”

  A murmur went through the Knights. A few faces darkened.

  Aerwyna ignored the bait.

  “Form in,” she said instead, without looking away from Catalyna.

  The nearest lines tightened their semicircle around the roof.

  In the wars of this world, common soldiers rarely decided the outcome when monsters like Aerwyna stepped onto the field. But they served a purpose: they harried, they distracted, they soaked stray spells, they punished openings.

  Nobles killed nobles.

  Armies simply made sure the killing stuck.

  Aerwyna rolled her shoulders once, feeling her mana coil and gather.

  She saw Catalyna’s aura shift again—thicker, more focused, as if the woman were slowly tightening a band around it.

  It… perplexed her.

  Most mages bled power from their pores when they got angry. This one condensed. The resonance grew, but instead of spilling wildly outward, it pulsed, as if building pressure under invisible clamps.

  Her fingers tightened around her spear.

  She refused to be impressed.

  Whatever Catalyna’s true rank was, she was still standing on a rooftop in Bren with no hostages left and a hundred spears pointed vaguely in her direction.

  Aerwyna was Duke-rank. Close to the line beyond. There were only a handful of combatants on the continent who could seriously threaten her in a direct fight.

  None of them should be lurking in provincial wet nurse positions.

  It would be like using a siege cannon to crack walnuts.

  “Answer my questions,” she said, voice dropping. “And you will die a swift death. If you do not…”

  She bared her teeth in something that wasn’t a smile.

  “…I will freeze you piece by piece until you beg for the end.”

  Catalyna’s eyes half-lidded in a bored gaze.

  “Are you done?” she asked. “Or are we going to start this? Your babbling sounds like a drunk whore in a tavern.”

  Several of the guards bristled at the insult.

  Aerwyna’s cheek twitched.

  Her mana was already rising, cold and sure.

  Fine.

  Words had failed.

  They could move on to the part she actually enjoyed.

  She lifted her spear slightly, point angling toward the sky.

  The air around her thickened as she drew in breath.

  “[The waters covereth the sea and in the oceans…]”

  The first line of the spell slipped from her tongue, low and even.

  The reaction in the environment was immediate.

  The humidity in the air screamed toward her.

  Mist formed out of nothing around her boots, racing upward. A glaze of dew appeared on every nearby surface—the tiles, the edges of chimneys, the exposed blades of knights’ weapons—then peeled away in streaming threads.

  “[The azure life-giver robes the bodies in abundance…]”

  Water crawled up her legs like living cloth.

  It coated the leather and steel in a seamless layer, an inch thick and crystal-clear, hugging the contours of her armor and flowing over every curve and joint with perfect adhesion.

  Her braid floated for a heartbeat, freed from gravity by the rising tide, before the water pinned it down, slicking silver strands against the back of her helm.

  “[Alloweth the waves that crash upon the land envelop this fleshly vessel…]”

  She stepped forward into the last line, the words vibrating in her chest.

  Her chantless mastery snapped into place.

  The water froze.

  It didn’t cloud. It turned a deep, luminous blue, threaded with pale veins of light like frozen lightning. It thickened at key points—over heart, throat, joints—forming plates within plates, locking together with unnerving smoothness.

  The temperature plummeted.

  Frost exploded outward from her boots in jagged, branching patterns. Tiles creaked as hairline cracks spidered through them, stone protesting the sudden strain of heat stolen from its core.

  “[Glacial Armor.]”

  The name of the spell rang across the roof like a proclamation.

  Her new helm sealed around her head, leaving her eyes visible through a narrow, faceted slit. The blue glow behind them intensified, refracted through the crystalline casing until looking directly at her felt like staring into the heart of a glacier.

  Even hardened Knights shifted uneasily.

  “Wench,” her voice boomed from within the armor, distorted and amplified as though echoing from the bottom of a frozen chasm. “You shall die here today.”

  Catalyna watched the display with a small, humorless smile.

  Very noble.

  Very theatrical.

  Very convinced of its own invincibility.

  The ice might as well have been a gauntlet thrown at her feet.

  She flexed her fingers once, feeling the strange double-resistance of her under-armor and the air itself as mana coiled beneath her skin.

  Heat began to bleed into the air around her, subtle at first, then stronger.

  The nearest guards grimaced as a prickle of dry, too-intense warmth brushed against their faces, fighting with the sudden cold surge from Aerwyna’s spell.

  The air itself seemed to ripple.

  Aerwyna felt it.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Mana was mana. She’d stood across from fire mages plenty of times, felt the sting of their heat and the crackle of their poorly-contained power.

  This was… sharper.

  More contained.

  The temperature rose, but the power didn’t flare outward in wild waves. It compressed, tightening around Catalyna like a shell, like she was packing an impossible amount of energy into far too small a space.

  A muscle in Aerwyna’s jaw ticked.

  Catalyna didn’t answer but her eyes darted around, she mouthed something under her breath. Her mana coalesced and some knights noticed it even through the veiled perception.

  Aerwyna’s breath caught.

  Catalyna’s eyes met hers across the shimmering air.

  “[The brightness of ten thousand dying stars…]”

  Every instinct in Aerwyna’s body screamed at her to move, to counter, to drown this thing in ice and tide.

  “[SUPERNOVA!]”