Chapter 523: Refuge for the Dethroned, Glory for the Named (5)
Without another word, he turned away, the hush of the sanctum folding over his shoulders like another cloak. Each stride into the spiral corridor rang hollow—boot on stone, faint drip of condensation somewhere deep, the soft skitter of dust his passage disturbed. His own heartbeat thumped in his ears, louder than the echoes. It always did after meetings with the sisters—like his pulse couldn’t decide whether to sprint or hide.
(You’re walking faster than normal,) Cynthia murmured in his mind, warm and observant.
Just getting it done, he told her, though he caught himself rubbing the heel of a palm over the stitch flaring beneath his ribs. The corridor tilted upward toward the old service lifts. As he climbed, the smell of charred wood replaced the sanctum’s stale chill, followed by the sharper tang of lamp-oil and wet ink. Fifty steps later he emerged into a narrow passage that led toward the observatory tower.
The war room had been a stargazer’s loft once—pure white marble and brass telescopes open to constellations—but now smelled of ink, scorched leather, and dried blood ground into the wooden floorboards. When Lyan pushed through the iron-banded door, the air was thick with the scratch of quills and the low grumble of tired officers.
Erich lounged at the head of the oval table, his chair tilted onto its back legs so far Lyan wondered if exhaustion had numbed the prince’s sense of balance. Erich’s uniform coat lay discarded behind him; he had stripped down to a sweat-dark undershirt and rolled sleeves, and he scribbled notes with the confident scrawl of a man long past caring about penmanship. A half-empty mug of bitterroot coffee rested perilously close to a stack of casualty rosters.
Arnold occupied an overturned barrel in one corner, one boot hooked on a stray beam, candied ginger between his teeth. He flicked a throwing knife from knuckle to knuckle in a restless dance of silver. Each click of metal against his calluses sounded like a coin dropping. He did it so casually Josephine’s scribes flinched every time.
Josephine herself practically wrestled a requisition ledger, red-ink quill clamped between her teeth as she crossed out line after line in furious strokes. Her chestnut curls frizzed where she’d tugged them, and she muttered inventive curses at quartermasters no longer in the room.
Surena stood at the shattered window alcove, grey braid tight against her spine. She surveyed the city through the jagged glass as if every alley were a potential enemy flank. A map weighted with glass beads rested on a side table nearby, pins marking supply depots in blue and refugee clusters in yellow.
Wilhelmina hunched over that same map, stabbing ink so hard the quill tip squealed on the parchment. Her severe braid had come loose; strands of black hair curtained her eyes each time she leaned forward.
"Finally," Josephine muttered, lifting her gaze. A fleck of ink dotted her cheek like a freckle. "We thought you’d vanished."
"Nearly did," Lyan grunted, dropping a leather-bound roll onto the table. The parchment thumped among the clutter. "South vault maps. Everything before the siege."