His scouts came in hard. Three riders, pushing horses faster than the terrain warranted. Found something or been found. Neither was comfortable.
Lead rider dismounted before her horse stopped. Young. Twenty. Face still honest enough to look unsettled.
“My Lord. Found a Thorn-waste approach. Eastern edge.” Pause. “Found evidence of another scouting party. Twelve hours ahead of us.”
“Whose standard?”
“No standard. But the pattern—” She glanced at the others. “Spacing. Weight. Paired units, not trios. We’ve studied her patterns three years.”
Morgaine.
Eastern edge. Twelve hours ahead.
He turned it over. She was moving faster than he’d assessed. Either more capable or more desperate. Both, probably.
Thorn-waste eastern approach was exactly what he’d have chosen. Their thinking was running parallel.
Useful information. And a cold, focused thing he recognized as respect. He didn’t give it easily.
“How far to the Expanse?”
“Direct — two days. Through eastern Thorn-waste — same, if terrain holds.”
Same timeline. They’d reach the Expanse within hours of each other. With armies built specifically to counter each other and eleven years of bad blood.
Strategically, a disaster.
Practically, an opportunity.
Fenrath’s words: You need to present her with a situation where cooperation is the only option. In a way that doesn’t feel like a trap.
The problem was Caelum didn’t do conciliation. He was the Broken Sun. The warlord who didn’t stop, who hit and kept hitting until the problem solved.
But Fenrath was right. The blight didn’t care about reputation.
“Reth.”
Already there. Always.
“Six riders. No markings, no sigil. Parley flag. We leave before dawn.”
The silence that followed was specific: we didn’t mishear, we just can’t believe you said that.
Reth spoke first, because she always broke silence. “My Lord. She doesn’t do parleys. Her history—”
“Her history is twenty years of watching land die without knowing why. Five years to the Mira going brackish. And a scholar somewhere in her camp telling her the same thing Fenrath told us.”
Understanding moved across Reth’s face — quick, always quick.
“She knows.”
“Close to it. And she’s alone with it.”
Reth lowered her voice, so only he heard. “You feel sorry for her.”
“I feel a five-year clock on our water supply.”
He held her gaze until she accepted the deflection. Not untrue. Just not all true.
He’d built a portrait of Morgaine for eleven years through her army’s decisions, her positioning, how she responded to pressure. Admired her, cold and abstract. Respected her, grudging and complete.
He hadn’t expected this — a portrait of a woman carrying an impossible burden so long she’d stopped imagining otherwise. He knew that feeling. Thirty years he’d carried his.
He filed it in the walled-off section where he put everything not immediately useful.
“Six riders. Parley flag. And make sure Fenrath is guarded but comfortable. I’m not done with him.”
He didn’t sleep.
Not mirror-sleeplessness like hers — chosen. He sat with Fenrath’s map spread, candle at its edge, studying twelve points across four hundred miles of contested ground.
Seven in conflict zones. Two in his territory. Three in hers. Seven in ground that changed hands with seasons.
To break them would require coordinated effort across land neither side could cross without the other’s help.
It would require trust.
He hadn’t trusted anyone like that since he was nineteen, since the man he trusted most made a decision that cost everyone everything. The man who had given him the scar. Broken Sun banner. First time he learned his own side could cut deeper than the enemy, and Caelum decided trust was a structural weakness.
Thirty years he’d governed on that. Armies trusted him because he was competent. Officers because he was honest. People because he delivered results.
None of it required vulnerability.
What the blight demanded did. Approaching Morgaine with a map was showing his hand. Saying: I’m not trying to defeat you right now. Every instinct honed over thirty years said that opening got you killed.
He looked at the map. Fenrath’s note in the corner: Rate of expansion: accelerating. Time to Mira contamination: 5 years, possibly fewer.
He thought about his people — the ones he’d fought for since seventeen, who depended on him absolutely, who would die just as easily whether he won his war or not.
He closed the map.
Tomorrow, he’d ride out under a parley flag.
Tomorrow, he’d face the Eternal Lady not with a sword, but with a map.