Edge of Trust

The southern road to Feron's border was a scar cut through blighted fields, the earth cracked and studded with the skeletons of dead crops. Valencia rode beside Xyrus in a merchant's cart, her face half-hidden beneath a woolen hood, the stench of rancid butter clinging to her cloak. Xyrus had smeared soot across his jawline, disguising the sharp lines of his nobility, but nothing could dull the ice in his gaze.

"You're staring," he muttered, adjusting the reins.

"Admiring your talent for peasantry," she said, plucking a rotten apple from the cart's floor. "How authentic you look."

He didn't rise to the bait. "The rebels won't welcome a Feron prince. Even one in rags."

"Good thing you're my pack mule, then." She tossed the apple into a ditch, where a child scrambled to retrieve it, ribs visible through threadbare cloth. Valencia's chest tightened. Pherr's children, she thought, though the borderlands had bled allegiance long ago.

The rebel camp was nestled in the shadow of the Iron Cleft, a jagged fissure in the cliffs where Feron's tax collectors dared not tread. Tents patched with Pherr's moon crest flapped in the wind, but the eyes that met Valencia's were hollow, hostile.

A woman emerged, her hair braided with crow feathers, a bow slung across her back. "You're either brave or stupid to come here, Silverblood," she spat at Xyrus, then turned to Valencia. "And you—traitor or fool?"

Valencia dismounted, her boots crunching on ash. "The lords sold you those arrows," she said, holding up one of Eldrin's serpent-branded shafts. "Stamped them with my crest to hide their own treason."

The woman barked a laugh. "We know who feeds us lies. But Feron's steel? That's real." She jerked her chin toward Xyrus. "Hang him, and I'll consider listening."

Xyrus stepped forward, his voice low. "The arrows came from my lords. The ones who want this war. Who profit from your starvation."

"And you?" The rebel leader's gaze sharpened. "What do you profit, Prince?"

"A living kingdom," he said, the words raw, unguarded. "Not a graveyard."

Valencia stiffened. She hadn't expected honesty.

The truth unfolded in bitter pieces. The rebels had traded their last seed stores for Feron's "gifts"—weapons, promises, whispers that Pherr's princess had abandoned them. Valencia's hands trembled as she examined a ledger produced from a rusted lockbox. Eldrin's seal. Payments dated back months, long before the Harvest Accord negotiations.

"They wanted us desperate," the rebel leader said. "Desperate enough to bleed for your war."

Xyrus's silence was worse than rage.

They left at dusk, the cart heavy with proof and the weight of unspoken words. Valencia watched Xyrus's profile, his jaw clenched against the jostling road. "You didn't know," she said.

"I didn't look."

The admission hung between them, fragile as the truce it implied.

Then the ambush struck.

Arrows hissed from the rocks—serpent-branded, relentless. Xyrus yanked Valencia into the mud as their cart splintered, a shaft grazing his shoulder. She rolled, drawing a dagger from her boot, and slashed at a shadow lunging toward them. Blood bloomed hot on her cheek.

"Run!" Xyrus hauled her up, shoving her toward the ravine's edge.

"Not without you, idiot!" She grabbed his arm, pulling him into the churning river below.

The water was liquid ice, the current dragging them under. Valencia surfaced, gasping, and found Xyrus's hand in the dark. They crawled onto a sandbank, breath ragged, the shouts of their attackers fading upstream.

Valencia collapsed against a boulder, her ribs screaming. "Still think… I'm the villain?"

Xyrus pressed a torn sleeve to his bleeding shoulder. "Still think… I'm the tyrant?"

Their laughter was sharp, startled, cut short by the flicker of torchlight on the cliffs above.

Back at the palace, secrets waited like poisoned fruit. A sealed letter lay on Valencia's pillow, its wax unbroken.

To Her Majesty, Queen Vela of Lysandra…

Her draft. The one she'd burned.

But this copy was fresh—and stained with Eldrin's serpent seal.