The stone was cold beneath Phuwin's bare feet. Each step of the tower stairs sent a jolt up his spine, the spiral narrowing as he climbed, his breath coming in ragged gasps that burned his throat. His silk robe—Pond's robe, the one he'd grabbed in the dark of their bedchamber when the first crash had woken him—clung wet to his shoulders, still damp from the bath he'd been taking when the guards had breached the outer hall.
One hand pressed to the small curve of his belly. The swell was barely there, a soft rounding he could still hide beneath loose robes, but he felt it now with every desperate step. Move. Move faster.
Behind him, the boots thundered on the steps. Closer. The guard was not running. He was climbing at a steady, unhurried pace—the pace of a man who knew the tower had only one exit and that his prey had nowhere left to go.
Phuwin's hand found the rough wood of the tower door at the top of the stairs. He shoved it open and stumbled into the circular room, his bare feet slapping against the dusty floor. The air here was different—thick with the smell of old dust and the metallic tang of lamp oil, as if no one had entered this room in years. Gray light filtered through a single narrow window, catching the motes that swirled where he'd disturbed the silence.
And there, in the center of the room, encased in glass that had not been cleaned in what looked like a decade, stood the ceremonial sword.
Phuwin's eyes found it before his mind understood what he was seeing. The blade was long and narrow, designed for ceremony rather than battle, its edge still catching the light with a dull gleam. It stood upright in its glass case, mounted on a wooden stand that had been bolted to the floor—a relic of some forgotten tradition, a symbol of office that no one had bothered to move when the tower had fallen out of use.
The boots on the stairs grew louder.
Phuwin's gaze swept the room. Nothing else. No other weapon. No other exit. The window was too narrow for his body, and the drop would kill him anyway. The door was the only way out, and the guard would be through it in seconds.
His hand pressed harder against his belly. No. No, I will not let them take me. Not again. Never again.
He crossed the room in three strides, his bare feet finding the cold stone, and his hands closed around a loose stone that had fallen from the wall—a chunk of sandstone, rough and heavy, its edges sharp where it had broken free. He lifted it, the weight dragging at his arms, and brought it down against the glass case.
The sound was sharp and terrible, a crack that split the silence of the tower room. The glass spiderwebbed, and Phuwin struck again, harder, his breath coming in sobs now, his arms shaking. The third blow shattered the case, and glass fragments rained down across his hands, his forearms, the floor at his feet.
The pain came a moment later—a hot, sharp sting as the shards bit into his palm, his fingers, the delicate skin of his wrist. He looked down and saw blood welling from a dozen small cuts, red against his pale skin, dripping onto the ruined glass at his feet. His right hand was the worst—a deep gash across his palm, the wound dark and wet, already staining the sleeve of Pond's robe as he reached through the broken case.
His fingers closed around the sword's hilt.
The weight was unfamiliar—heavier than he had expected, the balance wrong, meant for a hand that knew how to wield it. He pulled it from its mount, the blade scraping against the broken glass, and turned just as the guard appeared in the doorway.
The man was tall, broad-shouldered, his uniform bearing the insignia of the palace guard—but the sigil on his chest was wrong. Phuwin's eyes caught it even through the haze of fear and adrenaline: a northern clan mark, a wolf's head with its jaws open, embroidered in silver thread over the man's heart. Lord Tarven's sigil.
The guard stopped in the doorway, his hand resting on the hilt of his own sword, and his eyes traveled from Phuwin's face to the blade trembling in his grip to the blood dripping from his fingers onto the stone floor. The man's lips curved into a grin—slow, amused, the grin of a hunter who had found his quarry exactly where he expected.
"Well, now," the guard said, his voice low and rough, carrying the accent of the northern territories. "The little empress has found himself a toy."
Phuwin said nothing. His fingers tightened around the hilt, and he felt the blood from his cut palm slicking the leather wrap, making his grip uncertain. The blade wavered in front of him, the point describing a small, trembling circle in the gray light.
The guard took a step into the room. Then another. His hand left his own sword, spreading in a gesture of mock surrender. "What are you going to do with that, your Grace? You've never held a blade in your life. I can tell by the way you're shaking."
Phuwin's jaw tightened. He adjusted his grip, shifting his right hand higher on the hilt, trying to find the balance. The blade dipped, then rose again, steadier now. The blood from his palm was making the handle slippery, but he held on. He held on because if he let go, he had nothing.
"Stay back," he said, and his voice came out stronger than he had expected. It did not tremble. It did not break. It carried the weight of the empress he had been forced to become, and he heard it in his own ears and felt a small, fierce spark of something that might have been pride.
The guard's grin widened. "Or what? You'll cut me? With a ceremonial blade that hasn't been sharpened in a decade?" He took another step, close enough now that Phuwin could see the stubble on his jaw, the yellow of his teeth, the cold amusement in his eyes. "You don't have it in you, your Grace. You're a pretty thing, dressed in silk and flowers, with your soft hands and your soft belly. You've never killed anything."
Phuwin's hand pressed against his belly—a reflex, a gesture of protection that he could not suppress. The child inside him, small and fragile and barely begun, kicked once, a flutter he might have imagined. Or might not have.
"I have killed," Phuwin said, and his voice was quiet, and it was true in ways he did not have time to examine. He had killed a part of himself, over and over, in birthing chambers and bleeding beds. He had survived when he should have died. He had lost children and carried children and watched his husband's hope drain away like water through fingers. He had survived Lord Tarven's plans once, through luck and Clove's steady hands. He would survive again.
The guard's hand shot out, his fingers closing around Phuwin's wrist.
The grip was iron, cutting off the blood flow, and Phuwin gasped as the man's thumb dug into the soft flesh beneath his palm. The sword dipped, the point lowering as the guard twisted his wrist, trying to force him to drop it.
"Let go," the guard said, his face close now, his breath hot against Phuwin's cheek. "Let go, and I'll make it quick. Lord Tarven wants you alive, but he didn't say anything about unharmed."
Phuwin's mind raced. The sword was still in his hand, but the guard had leverage, had strength, had the weight of his body behind him. Phuwin had bare feet and a silk robe and a belly that was beginning to swell with a child who would never know this moment, who would never know how close its mother had come to dying in a tower room that smelled of lamp oil and blood.
The guard's other hand came up, reaching for his throat.
Phuwin moved.
It was not a thought. It was not a choice. It was the body acting before the mind could catch up—a twist of his shoulder, a drop of his center of gravity, a surge of strength that came from somewhere deep and animal and desperate. He yanked his wrist against the guard's grip, and the blood-slick handle slid in his palm, and the blade came up in an arc that was not graceful, not practiced, not anything a trained swordsman would have recognized.
But it was enough.
The point caught the guard under the chin, where the jaw met the throat, where the skin was soft and the flesh gave way like butter. The man's eyes went wide, the grin freezing on his face, and for one long, suspended moment, neither of them moved.
Then the guard made a sound—a wet, gurgling noise that seemed to surprise him more than it surprised Phuwin—and his grip on Phuwin's wrist went slack.
Phuwin pulled the sword back. It came free with a sound he would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life, and the guard crumpled, his knees hitting the stone floor first, then his chest, then his face. The blood spread beneath him, dark and slow, pooling in the grooves between the stones, mixing with the shattered glass and the dust and the lamp oil smell that had been in this room before any of them arrived.
The sword clattered from Phuwin's hand.
He stood there, breathing hard, his chest heaving, his hand bleeding, his robe splattered with blood that was not his own. He looked down at the body at his feet, and his stomach turned, and he thought he might be sick, but there was no time. There was never any time.
From somewhere below, more boots. More voices. Shouting, calling to each other in the accent of the northern clans.
Phuwin bent down, his knees trembling, and picked up the sword again. His cut palm screamed at the pressure, the blood making the grip almost impossible to hold, but he wrapped his fingers around it and did not let go. He stepped over the body, his bare feet slipping in the blood, and moved to the doorway, listening.
The voices were coming up the tower stairs.
They had heard the crash. They had heard the guard fall. They knew he was here.
Phuwin looked down at the sword in his bloody hand, at the robe that was no longer Pond's but something else now—a shroud, a banner, a declaration. He looked down at the small curve of his belly, and he pressed his free hand against it, and he felt the child kick again, stronger this time, as if it, too, knew that the world had narrowed to this one moment.
He stepped through the doorway and began to descend the stairs, the sword dragging against the stone wall, leaving a thin red trail behind him, and the boots kept climbing, and the voices kept calling, and somewhere in the palace, his daughters were hiding, and somewhere on the eastern front, Pond was riding toward a battle he did not yet know had already begun.