Leon spent several minutes recounting everything he'd seen inside the vision — the windswept plateau, the towering black stallion, the crimson eyes, the serrated teeth, the charge that had fractured stone under its hooves like the earth itself was being punished for standing in the way.
By the time he finished, the stable had gone quiet. Arthur's brows had been drawing together the whole time, and a thoughtful crease sat between them now.
"By the sound of it," he said, arms folding, "this thing will be exceptionally hard to tame. It doesn't behave like a horse." A pause. "It behaves like an apex predator."
"I thought the same."
Arthur's eyes went to the enclosure where Elara still sat with the silver foal. "We already learned something important there. Creatures born naturally through a parent don't bond the way Skyrend did — an egg is a different thing entirely."
Cedric nodded. "The blood pact made his birth unusual."
"If this Dreadmane has the temperament you're describing," Arthur went on, "very few people in this city could even get close to it."
"Other than Marshal Gareth—" Leon thought it over— "I honestly can't think of anyone."
Silence. Arthur's mouth moved, almost imperceptibly, toward something that wasn't quite a smile, though he kept it to himself. Beside him, Raymond turned his face away, shoulders shaking slightly. Cedric developed a sudden, intense interest in the bridge of his own spectacles.
Arthur waited it out, patient, the way a man does when he's learned some moments just need to run their course.
When it passed, his face settled back into seriousness. "We'll hold off on the Dreadmane." He looked at Leon directly. "We're still on delicate footing. Keep transforming Silverwind Steeds — they already fit our plans, and I won't add unnecessary variables while we're preparing for Stonehaven."
"Understood."
Arthur studied him a moment. "How are you feeling?"
Leon rolled his shoulders. "Head still hurts. Less than before, though." He flexed his fingers, thinking it over. "A few more of these and I don't think I'll need the full day of rest anymore. It's like the power's... settling."
Arthur nodded, quietly satisfied. "Then we continue as planned."
The days that followed found their rhythm. One transformation. One full day of rest. Then back to the breeding stable, where Leon would stand beside the next mare in line, set his palm against her forehead, and step into whatever the vision chose to show him. Then rest again.
By the end of the second day he was on his third foal, the headaches arriving a little later each time — small progress, easy to miss unless you were watching closely.
The city's future was starting to take shape.
Elara, meanwhile, spent every spare hour she could find at the secluded enclosure. She came in the mornings, sometimes with brushes, sometimes with feed, sometimes with nothing at all — just herself, settled onto a hay bale a respectful distance off, never pushing. The Silverwind foal watched her the way young creatures watch anything unfamiliar, one eye a little more open than the other, ready to bolt but too curious to actually do it.
She never rushed it. By the end of the first day it had stopped flinching at her voice. By the second, it stopped tracking her every move and just accepted her as part of the landscape. On the third morning it walked over while she sat quietly and pressed its nose briefly to her knee, then walked off again, as if it had only needed to confirm something. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Elara looked down at her knee for a long moment, then went very still, careful not to break whatever had just started.
The stable hands found themselves gradually crowded out — not on purpose, she never said a word about it — but she was simply always there first, always a step ahead of whatever the foal needed. The finest grain. The freshest hay. The cleanest water. If this animal was going to be her partner, she meant to build that from day one, with her own hands.
The foal rewarded the effort by being extraordinary. Its appetite astonished everyone — like Skyrend before it, permanently hungry, drinking eagerly from its mother while already nibbling solid feed before its first day was even over. Its growth was visible if you looked twice in the same afternoon. But its speed was the real surprise.
The instant its hooves left the ground at anything faster than a walk, it stopped looking like a foal and started looking like something else. Invisible currents wrapped around it and carried it forward, frictionless, impossibly smooth. It didn't run — it moved the way wind moves, finding the path of least resistance and simply taking it.
Unfortunately, it also found other uses for that talent.
Whenever Skyrend climbed into one of his long, easy glides, the foal would look up, consider, and then — with the focused look of someone who'd just thought of something excellent — nudge the air currents around him with surgical precision. A small gust. A sudden crosswind. Nothing dangerous. Just enough.
Skyrend would lurch sideways, recover, and glare down at the foal with an expression of profound, long-suffering dignity. The foal would be grazing peacefully by then. Innocent as anything.
What surprised everyone was that Skyrend never retaliated. He just looked at the foal the way an older sibling looks at a younger one who's done something annoying but not worth responding to — because responding would only prove it had worked. He bore it. He endured. He radiated patience like a man silently counting to ten.
The courtyard was full of laughter about it most days, laughter neither animal seemed to appreciate in the slightest.
Raymond's mornings ran on a different rhythm.
Each day, Skyrend launched himself from Raymond's shoulder—or his forearm, or his upper arm, or whichever part of him the eagle had decided qualified as a perch that morning. Skyrend had grown noticeably in just a few days, and the notion of a comfortable perch had become increasingly theoretical.
He flew for Stonehaven.
Each evening he returned with another report, and every one painted the same picture a little more grimly: reconstruction accelerating, collapsed walls climbing steadily back into place, watchtowers rising, barricades spreading outward from the gates in neat, disciplined rows. The orcs worked with relentless, methodical efficiency, shifting stone and timber at a pace no human work crew could hope to match.
Arthur read every report in silence, the crease between his brows settling into something that looked permanent. Stonehaven was becoming a fortress far faster than anyone had hoped it wouldn't.
Watching him, Raymond let a slow grin spread across his face.
"I could make life a little more difficult for them."
Arthur glanced up from the report. "Could you?"
Raymond nodded, his lips curling into a faint grin as he glanced at the eagle perched on his shoulder. "Skyrend's already flying over Stonehaven every day. If a few orcs happen to disappear whenever the repairs start making good progress..." He gave a casual shrug. "The walls go up a little slower. Makes our job easier when it's time to take the place back. Keeps them from getting too comfortable."
Arthur's gaze drifted to the eagle. Skyrend had grown considerably since hatching, while Raymond, beneath him, had unconsciously adopted the slightly lopsided posture of a man who had accepted that complaining wasn't going to make the bird any lighter.
"...Why," Arthur asked after a moment, "are you still carrying him?"
"I've tried not to."
"And?"
"He refuses."
As though he had been waiting for his cue, Skyrend straightened proudly, spread his wings just enough to make Raymond lean sideways under the shifting weight, and released a sharp, triumphant screech that carried all the unquestionable authority of an emperor announcing a perfectly reasonable decree.
Arthur couldn't help laughing.
It was brief, but genuine.
"You look ridiculous."
"I know," Raymond admitted with heartfelt resignation. "I've made my peace with it."
Arthur shook his head, still smiling before the amusement faded back into thought.
"I do like the idea, though. Just don't get carried away. If too many orcs start turning up dead, they'll divert reinforcements from the march to Highcrest. I'd rather they keep looking outward instead of wondering what's happening behind their own walls."
Raymond nodded.
"So... just enough to slow the repairs."
"Exactly."
Arthur looked back at Skyrend.
"And tell him to be careful."
Raymond turned toward the eagle.
The eagle regarded him with serene, ancient confidence—the unmistakable expression of a creature that had never once been careful in its entire life and saw absolutely no reason to begin now.
"I'll tell him," Raymond said.
He paused, watching Skyrend blink at him with complete indifference.
"Whether he listens is a different question entirely."
Arthur looked from Raymond to the eagle, then back again.
After a long moment, he sighed.
"I honestly can't decide which of you is harder to command."