The Radiant Citadel’s gates loomed massive behind them by midmorning, the holy procession stretching in a long column of Inquisitorial guards, supply carts, and priests chosen to accompany the barrier restoration.
Ren rode near the front beside Lucan, the new armor still unfamiliar against her ribs, the obsidian collar a constant, steady warmth at her throat.
“How far to the border?” she asked.
“Three days at this pace.” Lucan’s eyes scanned the horizon ahead, already shifting from the neat farmland surrounding the Citadel toward something grayer, more desolate in the distance.
“Longer, if the roads have degraded as badly as the reports suggest.”
“And the barrier itself?”
“Was meant to hold back everything the Wastes have accumulated over centuries. Corrupted beasts, rogue heretics who fled there rather than face execution, remnants of magic too dangerous for the Empire to study directly.” His jaw tightened.
“If it’s failed as thoroughly as Malachi claims, we’re not simply restoring a ward. We’re walking into whatever’s already broken through.”
Around them, the assembled Holy Knights and Inquisitorial guard rode in tense, watchful silence, few of them bothering to hide their unease at the destination ahead.
Ren caught more than one nervous glance thrown her way — whether from awe at her supposed holy power, or suspicion following the chaos at the cathedral, she couldn’t tell.
“They’re afraid,” she observed quietly.
“They should be. Most of them have never set foot beyond the barrier.” Lucan’s gaze softened slightly as it settled back on her.
“You’re not afraid.”
“I’ve been afraid of worse than a wasteland.”
“I imagine you have.” Something dark crossed his expression, guilt still lingering beneath the surface whenever her old life surfaced between them.
“I intend to make certain nothing out there gets close enough to remind you of it.”
The landscape shifted gradually as the day wore on — green farmland giving way to scrubby, browning fields, then to cracked earth that hadn’t seen healthy rain in years.
By evening, when the column made camp along the road’s edge, the air itself had changed, carrying a faint, bitter tang that reminded Ren uncomfortably of ash and old blood.
“That smell,” she said, settling beside the campfire Lucan had claimed slightly apart from the main encampment. Get faster updates on g.com.
“Is that the corruption?”
“Bleed-off from the failing barrier, most likely. It thickens the closer we get.” He passed her a portion of the simple travel rations, watching her with the particular attentiveness that had become constant since they’d left the Citadel.
“You should eat. We’ll reach the outer watch stations by tomorrow evening.”
They ate mostly in silence, the camp settling into its own uneasy rhythm around them — sentries posted at wide intervals, priests murmuring low prayers, the general hush of soldiers trying not to think too hard about what waited ahead.
Ren found herself watching Lucan in the firelight instead, the sharp planes of his face softened somewhat by exhaustion and the flickering orange glow.
“You’re staring,” he said, without looking up from his own meal.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“About how strange it is, sitting across a campfire from the Grand Inquisitor of Aethelgard like this is simply ordinary.” She turned the collar’s stone between her fingers absently.
“A few weeks ago you had a knife at my throat, demanding answers I wasn’t ready to give.”
“A few weeks ago I hadn’t fully understood what I was looking at.” He finally met her eyes, firelight catching violet and gold.
“Do you regret any of it? If I’d never come to your chamber that first morning. If none of this had happened.”
Ren considered the question seriously, weighing survival against everything that had followed — the fear, the danger, the reckless devotion of a man who’d once signed her death warrant and now would apparently burn an empire to protect her instead.
“No,” she said finally.
“Strange as it sounds, I don’t think I do.”
Something eased in his shoulders at that, tension she hadn’t fully realized he was carrying releasing slightly.
“I was afraid you might. Given everything I’ve cost you, both then and now.”
“You’ve also given me something I never expected to find in either life.” She reached across the small distance between them, resting her hand over his.
“Someone who actually sees what I am and chooses to stay anyway.”
He turned his hand beneath hers, lacing their fingers together, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all, simply sitting together in the firelight while the camp settled into uneasy sleep around them.
The moment shattered when a distant howl split the night air — inhuman, guttural, carrying from somewhere beyond the treeline that marked the road’s edge. New chapters come out on novelping . com first.
Every head in the camp turned toward the sound.
Lucan was on his feet instantly, hand dropping to his sword hilt, dark eyes scanning the darkness beyond the firelight with lethal focus.
“That’s close,” he said quietly.
“Closer than it should be, this far from the actual barrier.”
“What was it?”
“Nothing good.” He pulled her up beside him, positioning himself slightly ahead in a protective stance she recognized now as instinct rather than performance.
“The corruption’s spreading faster than the reports indicated, if fiends are already ranging this far from the breach.”
The howl came again, joined this time by a second, further off but no less unsettling, and around them the camp erupted into low, urgent activity — sentries calling warnings, priests gathering closer to the central fires, soldiers checking weapons with the particular tension of men who suspected the night ahead might not stay quiet.
“Stay close to me,” Lucan said, voice dropping into the flat, dangerous register she recognized from the dungeon, from the cathedral, from every moment his Inquisitor training overrode everything else.
“Whatever comes out of that treeline, I want you within arm’s reach at all times.”
“I’m not helpless, Lucan.”
“I know that better than anyone in this camp.” His eyes didn’t leave the darkness beyond the firelight even as he spoke to her.
“But we’re still three days from the barrier, and I’d rather not discover exactly how badly the corruption’s spread before we’re properly prepared for it.”
Ren felt the black collar sound faintly warm against her throat — some quiet reassurance passing between them through the bond, steady despite the danger gathering in the dark beyond their camp.
She drew her mana close beneath her skin, ready, and watched the treeline with the same sharp, patient focus she’d once used to track a guard’s lantern through a Lower Market alley.
Whatever waited beyond the firelight, she intended to meet it standing beside him, not sheltered behind him — a distinction she suspected would become a point of contention before this journey through the Shadowed Wastes finally reached its end.
The third howl came closer still, and somewhere in the dark, something large began moving steadily toward the camp.