The wind howls like a living thing, carrying the taste of iron and smoke. The banners of Norvale whip and twist in the cold air, streaked with ash. My armor is heavy with blood some mine, most not. The snow beneath my boots has turned to red mud, and every step sinks deeper
We have been fighting since dawn. I can barely remember when the sun rose; all I see now is the gray churn of clouds and the ghosts of men still shouting my name. Princess Emily! Hold the line! Their voices rise and fall like the tide, distant, desperate.
I tighten my grip on my sword. The blade trembles with my pulse. Every muscle in my body screams, but there is no room for weakness not here, not now. The enemy's banners advance through the smoke, their black insignias spreading like ink on parchment.
"Move the archers to the ridge!" I shout, my throat raw. "Flank from the east, push them into the valley!"
My captain, old Garin, salutes and vanishes into the storm. He has followed me since I was sixteen when I first put on armor too big for my shoulders and swore to defend Norvale until my last breath. I did not think the vow would feel so literal now.
Another explosion shakes the ground. The air fills with dirt and snow and something hotter. My ears ring; I taste metal. I force myself upright. Around me, the field is chaos bodies, broken standards, fire crawling through the wreckage of catapults.
I should feel fear, but I don't. Only a strange stillness, as if everything has slowed. The sound of swords colliding becomes distant thunder. The cries of men blur together into a single note. This is what death sounds like, I think not the end, but the silence that comes before it.
A messenger stumbles toward me, face pale, eyes wide. "Your Highness," he gasps, "the western flank they've breached it. We're surrounded."
"By whom?"
He hesitates. "Our own colors, Majesty."
The words hit harder than the blast. For a heartbeat, I don't understand. Then it clicks betrayal. Someone opened our gates. Someone sold us.
"Fall back to the ridge," I order, though the voice coming out of me sounds wrong, distant. "Regroup. Tell Garin to"
An arrow whistles past, cutting through the messenger's throat. He falls before the command is finished. I drop to one knee beside him, pressing a hand to the wound though it's useless. His blood steams against the snow.
He tries to speak. No words come. Only that look pleading, confused, afraid. I whisper, "I know. I'll find who did this." His eyes fade before I can promise more.
Something inside me burns cold.
I rise, sword dripping red, and face the ridge where our standards once stood. They're burning now set alight from within. A trap.
Who would dare? My mind races through names, faces. The council? A rival lord? No too sudden. Too precise. Whoever planned this knew every command, every route, every secret signal.
Only someone close.
Only someone I trusted.
The air seems to tighten around me as realization claws its way up my throat. I will die today. But I will not die silent.
I press a hand against my chest, feeling the crack in my armor where the last arrow struck. Beneath it, my heart still beats steady, stubborn.
Not yet.
"Form a circle!" I shout to the remaining soldiers. "Protect the wounded! We fight to the last!"
They gather, grim and loyal. Boys and men who once laughed with me at the barracks fire now stand like statues, faces smeared with soot. Some still wear the blue sashes of Norvale, though most are torn. We are few less than a hundred, perhaps less than fifty. It doesn't matter.
Another volley of arrows rains down. Shields lift. Screams follow. I move through them like through water, my body remembering every motion drilled into it since childhood. Swing, parry, pivot. Blood on my cheek. Breath burning.
Time folds in strange ways during battle. I catch flashes of things that shouldn't matter Garin's beard rimed with frost; a soldier dropping his sword to pick up a fallen comrade; the way snowflakes melt on my gauntlet, tiny worlds dying unnoticed.
Then the enemy breaks through.
They wear our insignia blue and silver but their eyes are empty. Mercenaries in stolen colors. My fury spikes. I cut one down, then another, but for every man I fell, three more close in.
Somewhere beyond the smoke, horns sound. The retreat call. Except I didn't order it.
My chest tightens. Someone else has taken command.
"Your Highness!" Garin appears at my side, blood streaming from a gash above his eye. "We're lost. You must run!"
"I won't leave them."
"Emily" He stops himself, knowing the name is a boundary he should not cross in battle. He grips my shoulder. "They'll die for you. Don't waste it."
A blade flashes behind him. I don't think I move. The sword meant for him bites into my arm instead. Pain flares white, clean, almost beautiful. I drive my dagger backward and feel it sink home into the attacker's throat.
Garin's mouth forms my name, but I can't hear him anymore. The world has become the rush of wind and the taste of blood.
He's shouting something, pointing toward the ridge. Shapes move there riders in black cloaks, unmarked. One raises a banner I don't recognize.
And for a moment, through the smoke, I see the edge of a crest I do recognize. A silver falcon.
The royal house. My house.
Someone from within.
My stomach turns to ice.
Then the ground shakes again, a roar rolling through the valley like thunder. Catapults, maybe. Or betrayal made flesh.
I steady myself against Garin, trying to breathe through the pain. "Get the survivors to the woods. I'll cover"
He shakes his head violently. "No. You can't"
"I can. Go."
He hesitates, eyes full of everything he can't say. Then he turns and runs, rallying the remnants with a voice that doesn't sound old anymore.
When he's gone, I look back at the ridge. The falcon crest has vanished. The smoke swallows it whole.
I know, deep down, that I will not live to see another dawn. But I don't yet
know the name of the hand that has murdered me.
And that ignorance hurts more than any wound.
The Battlefield of Betrayer (Part 2)
The world shrinks to sound and breath. My armor feels too heavy, every movement slower than it should be, as if time itself wants me buried. The cold has teeth now. It bites through the breaks in my plate, through the fabric at my wrists, through the place just under my ribs where the air won't quite reach.
Smoke wraps around the field, turning everything gray. The sun is just a smear behind the clouds. My soldiers are gone either fled, fallen, or swallowed by the fog of war.
I can still hear Garin's voice somewhere far off, shouting orders, dragging the living toward safety. The sound steadies me. He's still fighting. Maybe some of them will make it. Maybe Norvale will not die with me.
I take a step forward, then another. The mud clings to my boots like hands trying to hold me back.
Something whistles past my ear, and instinct throws me sideways. The arrow misses, barely. It lodges in the ground where my heart had been a breath ago. I spin toward the ridge, sword raised.
No one there.
Just the shifting smoke.
Another sound behind me light, deliberate, not the frantic shuffle of soldiers. Footsteps. Close.
I turn slowly, blade ready. Through the haze, a figure appears. Tall, wrapped in black. No crest, no armor markings, only a mask that gleams faintly in the firelight.
A traitor.
I don't know the face. I never will.
"You," I manage, voice rough, thin. "You opened our gates."
The figure says nothing. Just raises a weapon my own kingdom's steel. A Norvale blade.
For a second, all I can do is stare. The betrayal feels colder than the wind.
"Why?" I ask. "Who sent you?"
Still no answer. Only motion. The blade flashes. I parry, barely. Pain lances through my wounded arm, but I move on reflex, every lesson drilled into me since childhood burning through the haze. Strike, pivot, guard.
The masked figure is fast, faster than me, fresh where I am dying. I land a blow, shallow, across the shoulder. Blood spills dark against the snow. A sound escapes the mask half gasp, half snarl.
"Take off the mask," I whisper. "Face me."
They don't.
A sudden kick sends me backward. My balance breaks. My sword slips from numb fingers.
I fall to my knees.
The world sways.
The figure steps close. The blade rises, shining red in the firelight.
And for a heartbeat, I think of everything that brought me here—my father's hand on my shoulder the day he named me commander, the laughter of the soldiers under the winter stars, the weight of the crown I never wanted but carried all the same.
Then steel meets flesh.
The sound is small, almost polite.
My breath leaves me in a single sharp exhale. The world narrows to the heat under my ribs and the taste of iron in my mouth.
The masked figure steps back, watching. Waiting for me to fall.
I press a hand to the wound, feel the blood pulse between my fingers. Warm at first, then cooling fast.
My knees hit the ground. The snow is soft, strangely soft, and I realize I am tired. So tired.
Around me, the battle has faded to murmurs. Distant shouts. The crackle of dying fires.
The figure lowers their sword. Turns away.
Coward, I want to say, but the word doesn't come. My voice is gone.
I lift my eyes to the ridge one last time. Smoke rolls over it like a tide. Somewhere beneath that smoke, the banner of Norvale burns. Blue and silver devoured by flame.
I should cry. I can't.
My hand falls away from the wound.
The sky looks low enough to touch now, a pale gray lid pressing down.
For a moment, I think I see movement beyond the clouds just the drift of ash, probably—but my mind clings to it anyway, because it feels like hope.
Then everything inside me loosens.
The pain dulls. The noise fades. The cold becomes nothing at all.
There's no flash of light. No voice calling my name. Only darkness creeping in, soft and slow, like the sea swallowing sand.
My last thought is not of the kingdom or the crown.
It's of the face I never saw. The one who struck the blow.
And the quiet promise I make to the dark—
I will remember you.
Even in death.