The palace no longer echoed with panic.
A month ago, the name of the void had shaken its halls; the whispers of the Engine had rattled Malveris to his bones.
But in the days since, Aelindria had stamped her will upon the household. She would not allow them to cower before shadows.
Her husband was alive. That was enough.
She said it again and again to herself, and to anyone who dared to look at her with pity.
The bond that bound her to Caedrion still pulsed, faint but steady, in her mind.
She felt his presence like a heartbeat at the edge of a dream.
He was gone, yes, stolen to some unfathomable elsewhere, but not dead.
And if he lived, he would return.
Until then, Dawnhaven could not falter.
Aelindria stood before the great forges of the industrial quarter, the crucibles of steel and brass that Caedrion had built with his Architect’s insight.
The air shimmered with heat, the machines pounding like the heart of a giant.
Workers moved through the halls in steady rhythms, Ignarion Magi subjugated by Caedrions might, nullborns and thinbloods alike, their sweat-slicked hands feeding coal and ore into the hungry mouths of the smelters.
Sparks rained like stars upon the stone.
They looked to her now. Not openly, not as they looked to Caedrion, their Lion of the Ashlands, but with furtive glances, hope tempered with fear.
If she faltered, if the machines failed, they would slip back into starvation and tyranny.
She would not let that happen.
Malveris and Sylene flanked her, watching in silence as she raised her bare hand and pressed it against the nearest strut of runed steel.
The machine thrummed under her touch, its glow waning after a month of relentless toil.
She closed her eyes and let her will sink into the device.
Her leylines sang, light coursing through her veins, and the Architect’s spark, their divine inheritance form a bloodline almost extinct. It bled into the machine.
The forges roared back to life. The pounding of pistons steadied.
The nullborn workers gasped, then cheered, the machines lived again.
Aelindria withdrew her hand, swaying only slightly, her breath shallow.
"She does it," Sylene murmured. "By the Architect, she truly does it."
Malveris’s eyes narrowed. "For how long? This is not her calling."
But Aelindria turned, her gaze sharp.
"Why are you so surprised. Am I not a living heir of the architect as well? Does her blood not flow through me the same it does Caedrion? Have you thought me nothing more than a pretty face? Little brother taught we what he could before he disappeared. I know how he thinks, how he builds, how he sustains. I am not him, but I can keep his flame alive."
Later, in the high chamber of the palace, the three of them gathered.
The light of late evening bled through the stained-glass windows, painting the floor in crimson and gold.
Sylene stood at the window, arms folded. "You risk yourself too much. Each time you refuel the machines, you drain yourself. You cannot keep this up indefinitely."
"I don’t need to," Aelindria said simply. "I need only keep it long enough for him to return."
Malveris leaned heavily on his staff. His eyes were shadowed, his voice gravelly.
"We all pray that he does. But faith alone will not quiet the rabble. If word spreads that Caedrion is gone, the Magi Houses will move against us. Even those who cheered our victory will smell weakness. They will tear Dawnhaven apart before he ever steps foot in it again."
"Then they must never know," Aelindria replied.
The words hung like steel in the air.
She looked from Malveris to Sylene, her jaw set. "To the world, Caedrion remains. He leads us still, even if unseen. We will not let them smell blood."
Baelius entered then, the man’s presence filling the chamber like a furnace.
His arms were blackened with soot, his chest bare beneath a cloak of coarse cloth.
The Crucible’s flame still burned in his veins, faint but enduring, a gift he had sworn to wield in loyalty to Caedrion.
"My lady," he said, bowing slightly. His voice was rough, but steady. "The men whisper. They say the Lion does not walk among them. They say he has vanished."
Sylene’s mouth tightened. "Exactly as I feared."
But Aelindria only nodded. "And you, Baelius? What do you say?"
The nullborn lifted his head, his scarred face unreadable.
"I say he is not gone. I say he walks another path for us, a path they do not yet see. And I say the people need a face to remind them of his will."
Aelindria’s lips curved in the faintest smile. "Then you will be that face."
Baelius blinked, startled. Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs novｅlfire.net
"You will speak to the men," she continued. "You will stand in the forges, in the factories, among the workers. You will tell them Caedrion has gone on a diplomatic mission, that he entrusted you with keeping the flame until his return. They will believe you, because you are one of them. And you will keep order."
Baelius’s great hands clenched into fists, then loosened.
Slowly, he bowed his head. "If it is your command, I will bear it."
Malveris shifted uneasily. "And when the nobles press us for answers?"
"Then they will speak to me," Aelindria said. "At night, when the city sleeps, I will refuel the machines myself. No one need know. And when Caedrion returns, all will be as it was."
The chamber fell quiet. The two elders, Malveris, and Sylene exchanged glances heavy with unspoken fears.
But none could find fault in her logic.
It was dangerous. Exhausting. Perhaps even impossible. But it was all they had.
At last, Sylene sighed. "Very well. We will play this charade. We will guard the truth, and trust in him to return."
Malveris tapped his staff against the stone.
"The Architect guide us, for if we falter, all he built may yet crumble."
Baelius straightened, his broad shoulders set.
"He will return. Until then, I will keep the forges burning."
Aelindria turned to the window, gazing out over Dawnhaven as night descended.
Smoke curled from chimneys, lanterns glowed along the streets, the heartbeat of the city steady and strong.
Her hand pressed against her belly, the faintest smile touching her lips.
"He will return," she whispered. "And until he does, we will not falter."
---
Under the Shivering Sea, time blurred. Days and nights meant little when all the world was currents and silence.
A month had passed since Caedrion’s sudden abduction, though he could scarcely measure it except by the steady ache in his chest and the slow unraveling of his resolve.
He was Thalassaria’s possession now.
The Queen of Submareth never left his side.
Her coils were constant, her laughter honeyed and unnerving, her gaze a tide that swallowed him whole.
She called him consort, her chosen, her "little guppy."
To resist outright was dangerous, so Caedrion learned instead to yield just enough, to feign interest, to flatter carefully, to appear pliant while keeping his core untouched.
When she demanded he rest in her embrace, he complied.
When she pressed him for questions, he asked them, turning her obsession into opportunity.
And when she grew impatient and begged him to consummate what she already claimed as inevitable, he found excuses, weaving words of coy delay.
"I wish to know you better," he would say. "To understand all that you are before such a step." She delighted in the play of it, for now.
In the quiet hours, when Thalassaria dozed upon her throne or slumbered in her coils, Caedrion explored what she allowed him: her library.
The chambers were vast, carved into coral and obsidian, their shelves lined with water-sealed tablets etched in the curling script of the abyssal tongue.
At first the markings were indecipherable, like the dance of waves.
But Caedrion, ever the architect’s student, taught himself pattern by pattern until words took shape.
He read of Submareth’s age, ten thousand years of silence beneath the waves.
He learned how the naga had cloaked their presence, weaving illusions into storms so that humans believed only in fables of mermaids and drowned sailors.
More startling still were the records of lands beyond any human map.
Races unknown in the courts of man, demi-humans who bore fur and claw, tribes with feathers for hair, scaled folk who wandered deserts far to the south.
To humans, insular and arrogant, such things were myths.
But here, in the abyss, they were recorded fact.
The knowledge chilled him. Humanity’s "dominion" was not even a tenth the truth of the world.
Each night, after study, he would lie awake beneath the glow of Thalassaria’s leylines, her coils tightening around him like chains disguised as silk.
She whispered endlessly of love, of fate, of how their brood of eggs would secure a dynasty to rival the surface kings.
And Caedrion’s heart twisted.
He swore silently, fiercely, that he would one day find his way home, back to Dawnhaven, back to Aelindria, back to the child soon to be born.
But even as he made that vow, another terror crept into him.
By the time he returned, would he still be free? Or would he bring with him a second bride he could never explain?
For already Thalassaria begged nightly, voice trembling with hunger:
"It has been enough, my darling. A month of knowing one another. Now, let us copulate."
And each night, he found a way to refuse.
For now.
But with such temptation constantly clinging to him. Caedrion’s faith in himself had begun to waver.
And if he did not find a way home soon, a second child would be born of his line, one with a mother who was not his wife.