CHAPTER FOUR

  The Banquet of Daggers

  Eryndor had always been half-mad in Roderic’s estimation—brilliant, loyal, but prone to vanish into abstractions no sane man followed. Yet this… this was lunacy.

  “Eryndor, you can’t possibly allow this.” Roderic’s voice, though steady, edged on disbelief. “She is barely seventeen. Frightened, untrained, and hardly prepared for court. After the parade? The riot? You’d throw her into that nest again?”

  He stood at the threshold of the old study—marble cracked, its gold veins dulled by smoke. The air carried the faint, sweet scent of burnt resin. Books leaned tiredly against one another along the walls, their spines warped by heat.

  Eryndor sat near the hearth, his back to the door, a figure of calm amid the ruin. The firelight caught the silver in his hair as he leaned forward, eyes fixed on the flames.

  “Have you ever heard of the prophecy?”

  Roderic sighed, one hand brushing his temple. “Not this again.”

  Eryndor didn’t answer. His voice dropped into something nearer a whisper than speech, as if reciting not to Roderic but to the fire itself:

  From the broken blood shall rise the walled heart,

  bearing the shield of silence and storm.

  She who runs shall scatter crowns to dust;

  she who stays shall bind the realms as one.

  Yet power cannot be taken, only given—

  when love is chosen freely,

  the wall will fall, and the world be remade.

  The room seemed to quiet around it, even the fire hesitating between breaths.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Roderic exhaled slowly. “A fairytale, nothing more. Told by nursemaids when the lamps burned low. You cannot mean to say you believe she—”

  “Not only I.” Eryndor finally turned, eyes reflecting flame. “The court believes it. The commoners whisper it. Even the guilds. They’ve made her a myth already, whether she wills it or not.”

  “She’s a frightened girl,” Roderic said, sharper now. “If you send her to court, they’ll devour her.”

  Eryndor rose then, robes whispering against the marble. “The Crown has already requested her presence at the Banquet and the midnight ritual. Her absence would be taken as an insult to the luminars.” He paused, watching Roderic with a strange, weary gentleness. “And your father does not trust anyone else to escort her. He’s asked for you.”

  The words landed with quiet finality.

  Roderic pinched the bridge of his nose, the gesture more prayer than protest. “Then the matter is settled, not because it is wise—but because my father, the king, wills it.”

  He looked to the window, where the city torches flickered like dying embers through frost-streaked glass. “Do you know what they’ll call her there?”

  Eryndor’s silence was answer enough.

  “Shield. Witch. Thief of prophecy.” Roderic’s mouth tightened. “They will dress her in silk and offer her to mockery. And when she breaks, they’ll call it divine justice.”

  Eryndor studied him for a long moment before speaking. “Perhaps,” he said softly. “Or perhaps she won’t break at all.”

  He turned toward the window, his face shadowed now by the fire’s waning glow. “You know why her family starved, don’t you? Why the famine struck the coast while the rest of the realm feasted?”

  Roderic frowned. “Blight. Poor harvests. Nothing more.”

  “No.” The old man’s tone hollowed, like wind moving through an empty hall. “The blight was only a symptom. The storms began then—the first trembling of the Wall. What Elyon made as mercy has turned restless. Each year, the winds rise sooner, the light falters longer. The very breath that once guarded us now devours our own fields.”

  He reached for a cracked map on the table, tracing a trembling finger across its inked lines. “The Caerthwyn lands were the first to fall to famine. When the Wall darkened, their crops withered beneath the unending dusk. And the king looked away.”

  Roderic stared, feeling the weight of the words. “You’re saying her ruin came from the Wall itself?”

  Eryndor’s eyes lifted, and for an instant they were sharp, lucid. “I’m saying the Wall no longer keeps peace. It festers. It listens. And when it breaks again, it will not be mercy that falls on us, but storm.”

  The fire cracked, throwing sparks like fleeting stars across the dim air. For a moment, Roderic could almost believe it—this faith in a girl whose eyes had met the coliseum beasts without flinching. But faith, in his experience, had a cost.

  He bowed his head slightly, the gesture formal, restrained. “Then I will see her safely there.”

  When he left, the corridor outside felt colder, the air thin as though the walls themselves disapproved. Behind him, Eryndor’s murmur drifted faintly through the closing door—half prayer, half warning.

  “Walls fall differently, my lord. Some to storm, some to silence.”

  And faintly, beneath his breath, another whisper:

  “The storm that began her famine has not yet ended—it only waits for her to answer it.”