Dakor was already moving, dark linen snapping as he bolted from the cell into the torchlit corridor. Instinct took over, though her inherited reflexes demanded a soundless glide along the ceiling rafters. But her duchess’s blood-boiling fury, ignited by the memory of Dakor’s shattered composure, demanded speed over stealth. She didn’t climb the walls; she sprinted down the narrow, torch-lit passages, her heavy guard boots thudding a rhythm that would have earned her a hundred lashes in the silent ranks of the Gholokian Shadow Guard. Servants flattened themselves against the stone before Dakor’s sprint, their mouths gaping as Nirveli pounded along directly behind him like a runaway cart. They plunged down the spiral steps, where ozone and damp mold thickened in the air alongside the ring of clashing steel. They burst out into the Sunken Armory. Tiered racks lined the damp walls, glowing with hundreds of palm-sized rain-globes that hummed with captured storm charge, while racks of hydro-lances stood primed beside them. Lord Chardak stood in the chamber's center with twelve heavily armored mercenaries, gripping a pulsating rain-globe in one hand. Four sentries loyal to Dakor lay sprawled across the flagstones, while the sellswords loaded munitions into brass-bound crates. “Dakor! My dear Duke,” Chardak purred, his voice dripping with false sympathy as he spotted their arrival. “You’re late. And looking rather… disheveled. One would think you’d lost something more than a mere duchess.” He swept a hand theatrically towards the broken racks. “Your grief, I fear, has rendered you unfit to command these vital assets. The Winter Solstice approaches, and with it, the looming threat of the Eastern Hordes. Such a pity your… *fragile heart* cannot bear the burden of true leadership.” Nirveli froze, hidden partially behind a stack of hydro-lances. The words clawed at her, not just the insult to Dakor, but the sheer, vile hypocrisy. *“A mere duchess.”* *“Fragile heart.”* This worm, this traitor who had drowned her, now dared to mock Dakor’s silent devotion, to disparage the love that had been her only comfort in her final moments. Chardak paced beside the crates, his smirk widening. “Indeed, our poor Duke is so consumed by his unrequited affection for the late Nirveli that he abandons the Empire’s monsoon stores. What a pity. All that devotion poured over a woman as barren as dry rock. Perhaps she earned her watery grave—a proper chill for someone without a scrap of warmth.” The insult hit like a branding iron. Unrequited? Devoid of warmth? The man who had drowned her now stood on her ex-husband's armory floor, grandstanding about her corpse. Red heat flooded her skull. To hell with stealth. Her fingers clamped onto a cast-off training gauntlet lying on a weapon bench—solid, spiked iron. Snarling, she kicked clear of the hydro-lance rack and hit the center floor with an ungraceful, deafening thud. She whipped her arm forward. The iron gauntlet flew true, slamming directly into Chardak’s mouth with a crunch of breaking teeth. He flipped backward into an open crate, spraying blood, while the rain-globe slipped from his fingers and shattered into harmless vapor. The hall froze for half a heartbeat. Then Chardak’s mercenaries drew their broadswords with a collective scrape, while Dakor's surviving retainers hauled themselves off the flags to tackle them. Dakor stared at his subordinate, his carved-granite expression cracking with utter bewilderment and a sudden flush across his cheekbones. The woman had hurled scrap metal at a high lord's skull to defend his honor. “Are you insane?” he snapped, yanking her behind his shoulder as a mercenary hacked downward. Dakor knocked the strike aside with a clean upward parry, keeping his torso planted between her and the swordsmen while she tried to kick past his hip. Chardak dragged himself up by a broken spar, spitting red and cradling his swollen jaw. “That wretch!” he shrieked, pointing at Nirveli. “An orderly struck a high noble! Dakor, execute her on this spot, or the Council will take your head alongside hers!” Dakor shifted his grip on his hilt, stepping squarely into Chardak's line of sight. He glanced down at the wild, familiar stubbornness blazing in his protector's stance, then leveled his tip straight at the usurper's throat.

Blood on the Lily-Pads