The morning after the storm was a bruise on the world: the sky a sullen pewter, the earth sodden and smelling of ash. Duskveil looked smaller than it had before the battle, as if the night itself had leaned in and taken a bite out of its shoulders. Flags hung limp; the banners that once rippled with arrogance now sagged like the faces of men who had seen too much.
Aelric moved through the keep like a man half-remembering himself. He kept his sword slung low, fingers brushing the leather more often than necessary—an itch he tolerated because it made him feel less hollow. The demon's kiss was a scar beneath his skin: not visible, but present in his blood, in the way his jaw clenched without his permission, in the terrible, bright heat that sometimes flared behind his eyes. Serath's shadow followed him like a draft; he could feel it at the edges of his thoughts, a whisper that smelled sweet and tasted like iron.
Kaelen watched him closely—more closely than anyone else. The lord moved with a predator's economy: he said too little and saw too much. Where others saw heroics and victory, Kaelen catalogued cost. Where others wanted to celebrate, he counted losses. He counted, today, and his ledger was heavy.
"You ride none tonight," Kaelen said quietly when he found Aelric by the burnt well, where water now ran brown and slow. The words were small but carried miles. "Sit."
Aelric sat because he wanted to and because he did not want to explain the tremor in his hands. The cold seemed to reach for his bones and find the ember beneath. "They'll come again," he said. It was not a question.
"They will," Kaelen agreed. "And we will be ready. But readiness is not forged only in steel. It is forged in minds that survive the hammer." He watched Aelric for a long moment. "The kiss you speak of—did she leave you wanting more?"
Aelric had not planned to answer. He did as if the act had weight he could set down. "She gave me speed," he said. "Strength. A hunger that… sharpens everything. I felt I could cleave a mountain and not tire."
Kaelen's mouth tightened. "Gifts from demons are not gifts." There was no moralizing young lords might practice; Kaelen's voice was practical. "They are debts. What did she ask in return? Anything you remember?"
"A promise," Aelric said, and the word tasted like a lie. "She asked only for blood and a willingness to finish what I start."
Kaelen's eyelids lowered. "Keep your promises to the living, then. You'll earn fewer enemies that way." He stood. "There are other things to do." He left the boy with a roughness that was not unkind.
The council met at noon because the work of governing rotted no matter how the sky wept. Lords and ladies gathered again, but the mood had shifted from defiance to measured paranoia. The survivors had seen too much to be reckless. The dead had left a silence that made people speak with less fervor and more caution.
"Who is the traitor?" Lady Seralyn asked without preamble. She had the look of someone who had watched a family member die and decided the world owed an explanation. Her hands did not tremble as she placed a scrap of parchment on the table: a charred fragment recovered from the last battle, edged with a sigil not wholly demonic, not wholly vampiric. A message to the enemy, carved in a hand that knew the fortress too well.
Murmurs turned into accusations that simmered rather than roared. The list of suspects lengthened with each passing breath: Varen was dead, his ash scattered by the wind. The lowly guard who'd been caught whispering in the catacombs had confessed under interrogation and been hung; his confession had named names that dissolved under scrutiny. Someone clever had been orchestrating a smear—someone who wanted the lords busy quarreling while the real betrayer moved like a ghost.
Kaelen's face remained a mask. "We will root this out," he said. "Quietly. No mob justice. No bloody displays to feed the enemy's amusement. The traitor thrives on spectacle."
Aelric's throat tightened. He had watched one man turn to ash beneath Varen's blade—and he had seen the Infernal Edge vanish like a lie. The thought that someone had slipped through their walls and bent the battle to their will felt like a blade pressed to the back of his neck.
"Search the servants," one lord suggested. "They see things. They carry messages."
"That will only find the hand that delivers, not the mind that plans," Kaelen countered. He flipped the parchment toward Aelric. "Take three men. Find who speaks in the night and why. Quietly."
Aelric wanted to say he would tear the traitor limb from limb and make banners from the skin, but Kaelen's gaze held him in place. The lord's command carried a different weight: find, then break the mechanism. He curtly assembled three of the best scouts he trusted—Grath, quick and silent; Maelor, who had the sort of face that told no tales; and Bren, a veteran whose hands could be trusted to keep a secret. They did not ask questions. They only took cloaks.
Night came like a patient animal, not sudden but inevitable. The keep hummed like a hive. Shadows had opinions and moved on impulse. Aelric led the small band down stairways that smelled of old blood and iron. They crept through servants' quarters where the bedding smelled of smoke, past the kitchens where pots sat half-washed, then out through a sally-port where the world breathed cold and damp.
They followed a thread of rumor rather than evidence: whispers in corridors, a servant who disappeared for a night and returned carrying a suspicious bundle, a ward that hummed faintly odd on certain nights. The trail led them through Duskveil's lesser halls—places the lords hardly visited—and to a little-used armory where spare weapons were kept for patrol rotation.
The armory door was slightly ajar.
Aelric felt the kind of chill that made the back of his neck prickle. He motioned for silence and pushed the door. Inside, a single candle guttered. A table lay overturned, and a trail of ash dusted the floor like snow. The Infernal Edge signaled nothing there; the blade had vanished, but the air tasted of its passing.
Someone moved in the shadows.
Grath lunged, but a hand clamped around his throat—an old trap, easy to set. A voice purred in the dark: "You'll find nothing but ghosts, Prince." It was soft and familiar in the way knives are familiar to the feel of a palm.
The candle flicked, and Serath stepped from the shadow. She wore no armor, only a red dress that clung like a second skin. Up close she was more dangerous than any demon on a battlefield; the smile she offered was practiced kindness and the glint of a serpent.
"You," Aelric breathed. He had expected mayhem, a warrior, a betrayer made of hands and scalpels. He had not expected a smile.
Serath's eyes glinted. "Hunting in the dark? How romantic. Tell me, little king—do you always chase shadows, or only the ones with teeth?" Her voice dripped honey and menace.
Bren, unconscious at her feet, came to slowly, gurgling. Maelor rubbed his head and spat something harsh; Grath's hand clawed at his throat before he broke free. The scouts recovered, but the armory had been emptied of its spare weapons—an efficient theft, not mindless sabotage.
"You took our blades," Aelric said, anger a low drum in his chest. "Why? What do you want?"
Serath laughed softly. "Why?" She stepped closer, scent intoxicating and sickly sweet. "You already know. Power. Because you bleed like velvet and your wounds sing." Her hand hovered near Aelric's face, not touching, reading him like a book. "I could give you what you crave. We could burn their palaces to ash and dine on their bones."
Aelric's hands tightened until his knuckles blanched. The hunger inside him unfolded like a map. He wanted to seize her throat and squeeze until the song died, and he wanted to follow the path she offered as if it were sunlight. The two impulses warred in him with the cruelty of tides.
"You are the traitor," he said because words are a way to anchor oneself to truth. "You feed them."
Serath's smile curled into something gentler. "No, sweet prince. I never feed them. I offer them a choice. They take it or they do not. The traitor is someone else—someone clever enough to make enemies of both sides. I am an ally who deals in possibilities." She tilted her head. "But I will tell you this—your lord is not immune to suggestion. He keeps secrets like a man keeps his last coin."
That last sentence landed like a tossed stone. Aelric felt it ripple. Kaelen kept secrets. Yes—but of those secrets, which could hurt Duskveil more: the secret of a missing blade, the secret of a bargain, or the secret that a lord who controls fate might also be a man who uses fate as a tool?
"You will not have our blades," Aelric said through clenched teeth. "Return them, or I'll take them back."
Serath's laugh was a wind that shook candlelight. "You think a confrontation will help? Do you know how many blades I could break before you even blink? How many guards I can charm?" She stepped into the candlelight and the air around her seemed to lean away. "I can give you power, Prince. Accept, and I'll teach you how to pull the strings they hold so dearly."
Aelric's answer was a movement. He lunged, fueled by a need that tasted like iron. The world narrowed to a pinprick; he saw only the throat that belonged to the woman who had kissed him, who had stolen his calm and left craving in its place.
Serath didn't dodge as if she feared pain. She moved as if she already had the future in hand. Her hand snaked out, a kiss to his forehead that left cold fire. He felt something leave him—not his strength but a fragment of his certainty. He slashed, and her skin accepted the blade like rain; a drop of blood welled and then vanished, swallowed by the air.
"You are quick," she murmured. "But you are still predictable."
Then she vanished into a seam of shadow as if the wall had swallowed her. A whisper floated: "Find the hand that signs in our name, Prince. You'll save more than blades when you do."
They were left with the armory stripped and a trail that led nowhere. No message, no clear suspect, only the knowledge that Serath could walk through their halls like the wind and leave a room untouched and hearts rearranged.
Back at the council, Kaelen listened to Aelric's report with a face that did not betray surprise. When the reproach was finally voiced—"You let a demon into the keep"—Kaelen's reply was as calm as a cold blade drawn. "We invited her."
Aelric's head snapped up. "You—what?"
"We did not," Kaelen said. "But someone did. Someone who knows what to promise. Someone who traded our steel for a whisper and thought it a bargain."
Aelric wanted to accuse him, to scream that the man had lied and hidden deals. But the lord's eyes were not those of a man who had betrayed them for coin. They were older; they saw war in long arcs. If Kaelen had anything to hide, it was not a traitor's petty theft. It was something that had been placed in his hands—something heavy and terrible.
Kaelen folded his hands. "Find the traitor quietly. Bring me the signature. Once we know the name, we will decide how to strike. Not for vengeance only, but to make sure the strike ends the war rather than continue it."
Aelric left the chamber with a new hunger: not only for blood, but for the truth. Serath had been a knife in his ribs; now he needed to find who had pulled the blade free and who had put it into the hands of their enemies. He would search the halls until the keep surrendered its secrets.
Outside, the ravens tucked their wings under cold feathers. Shadows leaned against stone and listened for the next footfall. The war outside the walls still raged, but the war that would determine who ruled the night was being fought inside Duskveil—quiet, patient, and far deadlier than any blade.