The Vellmarch delegation left at dawn three days later, trade terms sealed, formal agreement promised within the month, Rin lingering just long enough at the gate to press one last piece of advice on Helios before she left, quiet enough that the rest of the delegation didn’t seem to notice.
“Watch the ridge,” she’d said, low enough that only he and Kaelen caught it.
“Not because I know something. Because I’d watch it too, in your position.”
Helios had spent the days since turning that over more than he probably should have, given everything else the kingdom actually needed from him, the phrase sitting in the back of his mind through every trade negotiation and grain dispute since.
So when one of the wall watch came sprinting into the Council chamber mid-afternoon, breathless and pale, he already knew before she spoke exactly which direction the trouble was coming from.
“Riders, Your Majesty. North ridge. Six of them, maybe seven. They’re not moving toward the gate. They’re just… watching.”
The walk to the northern wall felt longer than it should have, adrenaline making every second stretch thin.
Kaelen fell into step beside him without needing to be asked, already scanning the tree line before they’d even reached the battlement stairs, one hand resting on the hilt at his hip out of habit rather than any immediate need.
From the wall, the riders were barely visible, dark shapes against the ridge’s tree line, motionless in a way that felt deliberate rather than idle.
No banners.
No obvious markings Helios could make out at this distance, nothing that gave away allegiance the way Vellmarch’s delegation had announced itself openly days earlier.
Just presence, patient and unbothered, exactly the kind of watching that told you someone wanted to be seen without wanting to be approached.
“Ashen Dominion,” Kaelen said quietly.
Not a question.
“You’re sure.”
“I’m not sure of much these days,” Kaelen said, something tight in his voice.
“But that formation. Six riders, one held slightly back and higher than the rest. That’s not a random patrol. That’s a report being written in real time.” Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Seraphina joined them a moment later, moving fast enough that Helios suspected she’d run the last stretch despite her usual composure.
She studied the ridge for a long moment in silence.
“They’ve been there for roughly twenty minutes, according to the watch,” she said finally.
“Not advancing. Not retreating. Simply present.”
“What does that mean?” Helios asked.
“It means,” Seraphina said, “that whoever sent them wants us to know we’ve been seen, without committing to anything else yet. A message, more than a threat. For now.”
Helios kept his eyes on the distant shapes, feeling the weight of being watched settle uncomfortably across his shoulders even from this far away.
“Do we respond? Send our own riders out to meet them?”
“Absolutely not,” Kaelen said, sharp enough that a few nearby soldiers glanced over.
“You do not send a king’s forces out to greet an empire’s scouts on an open field with no walls behind them. That’s not diplomacy. That’s an invitation.”
“He’s right,” Seraphina said.
“The correct response to being watched is to be seen clearly in return. Nothing more.”
She turned and gave a quiet order down the wall, and within a few minutes torches were being lit along the full stretch of the northern battlement despite the daylight still holding, banners raised at even intervals, the wall guard falling into a visible, deliberate formation rather than a defensive scramble.
Not a show of aggression.
A show of order.
Of a kingdom that wasn’t scrambling because riders had appeared on a ridge, even if, underneath the calm, that was exactly what half the wall guard was feeling.
“They’re not scared of us,” he said quietly.
“No,” Seraphina agreed.
“I doubt scaring them was ever a realistic goal, Your Majesty. Rexnest is still very young. What we can control is how well we’re remembered, when whoever’s watching writes their report tonight.”
They held the wall a while longer, torches burning steady in the afternoon light, until finally, without any visible signal Helios could catch, the riders on the ridge turned as one and vanished back into the tree line, unhurried, exactly as Vessa had been when she’d walked away from the border marker days ago, as if patience itself were a language every non-elf visitor so far had been fluent in.
“They’re gone,” a soldier called down the wall.
Nobody cheered.
Nobody relaxed either, not fully, the tension simply settling into something quieter instead of dissolving outright, the way it had after the Broodmother too, a held breath rather than an exhale.
Kaelen exhaled slowly, some of the tightness easing out of his shoulders, though not all of it.
“That’s the opening move. Not the whole game.”
“How do you know that,” Helios asked, and this time he didn’t bother softening the question, “if you’ve genuinely never dealt with them before?”
Kaelen was quiet long enough that Helios thought, for a moment, he’d simply deflect again the way he had every other time this had come up.
“I told you later,” Kaelen said instead, quietly, eyes still fixed on the empty ridge line.
“I meant it.
But Helios—” the use of his actual name instead of a title landed harder than Kaelen probably intended it to, “—when I finally do tell you, I need you to remember I said later, and not held it back out of anything worse than needing the right moment.”
Helios studied him for a long beat, something cold and careful settling behind his own ribs now too.
“Okay,” he said finally.
“Later, then. I’m holding you to it.” He meant it as reassurance, but it came out sounding closer to a warning, and from the way Kaelen’s jaw tightened again, they both heard it land that way.