Her eyes narrow.
“Enough.” Sevik cuts through the tension. “What do you propose, witch? If burning won’t work and the King wants you specifically—what exactly do you suggest we do?”
I take a breath. The words I’m about to speak feel like stepping off a cliff.
“I have to go back.”
Drokhar’s hand tightens on mine. Warning.
“The King’s realm,” I continue. “The Battlefield Beyond the Veil. That’s where its power comes from—the accumulated grief of every soldier it’s absorbed. If I can reach those soldiers directly, speak to them individually instead of letting the King speak for them?—”
“You’ll be giving yourself up.” Drokhar’s rumble is rough. “Walking straight into its domain.”
“I’ll be doing what I was born to do.” I turn to face him, reaching up to cup his scarred cheek in my free hand. The gesture is intimate—deliberately so. Let the Council see that the Ashwalker belongs to a mourning witch now. Let them understand that burning me means burning him.
“I’ll be letting the dead speak their final truths.” My voice softens, but I don’t look away from those gray eyes. “Not the King’s truth—theirs. And when they’ve spoken, when they’ve been heard, they won’t need the King anymore. They’ll be able to rest.”
“And if the King stops you?”
I don’t have an answer for that. But I can feel the dead pressing against my consciousness even through the suppression wards—not the King’s puppets, but the real soldiers, the real people, the accumulated grief of centuries begging for release. They don’t want to destroy. They want to be remembered.
I can give them that. I have to try.
“Then I’m coming with you.”
Drokhar’s declaration rings through the chamber. He draws his blade—the curved enchanted iron that has destroyed a thousand revenants—and the metal gleams in the firelight from the viewing window.
“The King wants my blood. Fine. Let it try to take it.” His free hand finds my waist, pulling me against his side. Claiming me publicly, deliberately, in front of everyone who would see me burn. “But I’m not letting you face this alone.”
“Death warden.” High Arbiter Sevik’s words cut like ice. “You would abandon your post? Your duty?”
“My duty is to keep the dead from destroying the living.” Drokhar doesn’t flinch. “The witch is the only weapon we have against the King. Protecting her is protecting the city.”
THIRTY-SIX
ARADYA
Arbiter Kess speaks for the first time. She’s younger than the others, her face less lined with the weight of compromises. “The death warden has a point.” Her gaze finds mine, and I see calculation there rather than sympathy. “If the mourning witch can truly reach the soldiers individually, if she can give them the closure the King denies—that’s a weapon worth protecting.”
“Or a convenient excuse to let both of them escape justice.” Meren’s smile is poison.
“Justice?” I turn on her, years of hiding, of watching my sisters burn, crystallizing into cold fury. “You want to talk about justice? How many witches have you handed over to the pyres, Meren? How many women who did nothing but give the grieving what they needed?”
“I survived.” Her smile doesn’t waver. “Can you say the same for the witches who refused to cooperate?”
Drokhar’s blade moves. Not toward Meren—toward the table between us, sinking into the wood with a thunk that silences every voice in the chamber.
“The witch and I are walking out of here.” His words carry the rumble of barely contained violence. “You can send deathwardens with us, or you can send them against us. But either way, we’re going.”
“And if we refuse?”
“Then the city burns anyway, and you die knowing you could have stopped it.”
Silence stretches. The distant screaming outside seems to grow louder, as if the dead themselves are listening to this conversation.
Finally, Arbiter Thorne speaks.
“Give them an escort to the Undercroft entrance.” His words come out flat, pragmatic. “If they fail, we’ve lost a rogue death warden and a condemned witch. If they succeed, the Council claims credit for the strategy.”