“He isn't your replacement, Stellan, you monumental idiot!” Zosia snapped, her temper flaring before reason could catch up. Marek took three hasty steps backward, his hands held high, palms out. “Lord Varos. A purely academic discourse, I assure you—” A deafening explosion ripped through the western rampart. Stone dust rained down from the vaulted ceiling. The floor buckled beneath Zosia’s boots, tossing an antique pedestal across the parquetry. Outside, iron alarm bells began to toll across the crags—a frantic, cracked rhythm. “Wards are down!” Korbin shrieked from atop a chandelier, his sleek black coat fluffed into a sphere of pure panic. “The perimeter runes collapsed! Iron-crested shields at the breach! It’s Duke Brankovic’s hounds!” Stellan ignored the collapsed wall. His gaze stayed pinned to Zosia, gray irises swirling with cold fury, then snapped toward the northern portico where crossbolts started cracking through stained glass. “Someone sold the ward-anchor coordinates,” Stellan murmured. The quiet certainty in his tone was far more chilling than a scream. His gaze flicked sharply to Marek, who had gone pale as skimmed milk. “I told no one!” Marek squawked, retreating toward the shadowed corridor. “Zosia, this place is doomed. The Baronies want him gutted. Run!” Marek never paused for her, bolting into the lower tunnels like a frightened hare. “Coward,” Zosia hissed. She spun toward Stellan, but the warlord was already moving. He was a blur of dark wool and bare, lethal power. Two raiders clad in boiled leather leaped through the blown-out casement, notched crossbows aimed at the center of the hall. Stellan drew no blade. He thrust his palm forward. A blast of kinetic force hurled both men back through the splintered frame into the freezing abyss outside. But more boots clattered against flagstones. Dozens of them. Heavy, spiked soles churning up gravel in the forecourt. “Armory vault,” Stellan commanded, his voice cutting through the din of steel. “Go. Now.” “I am not leaving you to be butchered!” “You are a civilian liability!” he bellowed, parrying a thrown iron javelin with an arc of condensed pressure. “Move!” Zosia turned to sprint toward the central stair, but three figures detached from the shadows of the gallery above, dropping soundlessly onto the carpet before her. They wore gray surcoats bearing the jagged boar-head crest of Brankovic. One held a barbed net; the other two drew curved skinning daggers. “The mind-witch,” the tallest sneered, his breath reeking of dried onions. “Brankovic wants her alive. The Beast starves without his leash.” Zosia reached for her mental reserves, striking out with a concussive burst of Severing intent. The psychic thrust caught the lead man in the chest, hurling him backward into a marble pillar with a sickening crunch. But the effort left her ears ringing, black spots dancing in her peripheral vision. The second assassin lunged. He slashed low. Steel bit into her forearm, opening a hot line of red. Zosia cried out, stumbling backward onto the slick tiles. The third man closed in, heavy boot pinning her skirts, dagger descending toward her throat with clinical efficiency. Then the world went dark. A roar tore through the hall—not human, not beast, but the sheer, agonizing sound of a soul ripping itself apart. Stellan crossed fifteen paces in a heartbeat. He didn't use a spell. He gathered no kinetic force. With his bare, ungloved hands, Stellan seized the assassin by the collar and the throat. Flesh met flesh. A sound like frying grease hissed between them. Black veins instantly webbed outward from Stellan’s fingers, racing up his wrists and under his rolled-up sleeves. The ancient curse ignited across his skin in virulent, violet sparks. Stellan screamed through clenched teeth, his face contorting in pure, unadulterated torment, but his grip remained absolute. He lifted the two-hundred-pound mercenary clean off the floor and slammed him headfirst into the stone hearth. The man went limp instantly, skull cracking against the basalt mantle. Stellan collapsed to his knees beside Zosia, clutching his hands to his ribs. Tremors racked his spine, and he gasped for air as though submerged in boiling oil. His skin was mottled gray and purple where he had made contact, the curse thrashing through his nervous system like barbed wire dragged through marrow. “Stellan!” Zosia reached out on instinct, wanting to pull him away, to soothe the tearing agony radiating off his aura. “Don’t!” he snarled, throwing himself sideways onto the floor to avoid her fingers, his chest heaving raggedly. Sweat plastered dark hair to his temples. Vomit rose in his throat, choked down with a guttural groan. “Do not... touch me.” “You saved me,” she breathed, staring at his blistered palms. “I defended my property,” he choked out, though his knuckles dug into the floorboards until the wood groaned under the pressure. More boots thundered outside the double doors. The heavy oak began to splinter under the blows of an iron battering ram. “They’re bringing siege picks!” Korbin screeched, diving low past Stellan’s ear. “Main gate is breached! Move, boy, move your heavy backside!” Stellan forced himself up on shaking limbs, leaning heavily against the chimney. He reached into the carved molding of the mantle, his blistered fingers catching a hidden iron release. A section of the wall pivoted inward with a hiss of cold mountain air, revealing a narrow, descending spiral stair cut straight through the bedrock. “The southern drainage run,” Stellan rasped, not looking at her. He couldn't. Spasms gripped his shoulders, his breath rattling like dry leaves. “It exits behind the lower glacier. Marek is already down there. Take the horse tethered at the lower weir.” “And you?” Zosia demanded, climbing to her feet, clutching her bleeding arm. “I hold the foyer.” “There are fifty men out there, Stellan! You can barely stand!” “I am Lord of the North!” he bellowed, turning on her with raw, feral desperation. The curse marks on his neck pulsed angry, bruised indigo. “I do not flee my own hearth! Go! Take your miserable life and your freedom! The paper between us burns if I die—you owe me nothing!” The oak doors shattered inward with a tremendous crack. Splinters whistled through the air like shrapnel. Armed men spilled through the dust, iron pikes lowered, crossbows leveled. Stellan thrust her hard into the opening using the heavy wool of his cloak, never letting his skin graze hers. He threw his weight against the hidden lever. “Run, Zosia!” he roared. The stone panel began to grind shut. Through the narrowing gap, Zosia saw him turn toward the encroaching horde. Alone. Hands raw, body shuddering from the lingering shock of the contact, facing half a hundred blades with nothing but a broken spell and stubborn, solitary wrath. The stone slab clicked into place, leaving her in the dark with a horse waiting below and her chains about to break forever.

The Siege and the Sacrifice