Page 131 of Ashes of Honor

I stumbled across a page I hadn’t brought myself to read yet. One of his last entries. Ramblings—random thoughts and bits of history that had struck him as useful once.Austria. Russia. Snow and ice. Higher ground. Cinematic embellishments.

A reddish-brown hand reached over my shoulder and onto the journal, stopping me from turning the other page and my heart stopped. I froze before glancing up at Riley. His expressionwas unreadable, but the moment our eyes met, something clicked. This was it—the answer.

“Napoleon,” I mumbled, my mind already racing through the memories I’d stored.

“What?” Finley frowned. Up front. Per usual.

“Napoleon,” I repeated with confidence, addressing the rest of my audience. “That’s how we do this. I know what to do.”

“Yeah, you and you only.” Finley raised an eyebrow, leaning lazily against the table.

“Another proposal to lean on the past?” Claes asked from the back, his tone dubious.

“If you don’t study history, it repeats itself,” Alexiares said dryly, his warmth brushing my arm in a way only I noticed.

“And in this case,” I continued, snapping the journal shut with a decisivethunk. “Repeating it is exactly what I plan to do. Napoleon was an asshole. Brilliant, but an asshole nonetheless.”

“Good ideas. Terrible execution,” Riley added.

“What is she on about?” Millie asked from their corner of the room. I glanced over, trying to read the intentions of her statement. It wasn’t sarcasm. She appeared genuinely interested in where my mind was going.

Reina gave her a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Shut up. Don’t interrupt the maestro at work.”

I stepped closer to the table and leaned, tilting my head as I glanced over the officers that had no choice but to meet my gaze. “Most of you old shits went to West Point. Half of what you studied came straight out of Napoleon’s playbook. Love him or hate him, the man understood how to win.”

“He was a masochist,” General Harper countered, shaking his head.

Alexiares scoffed. “‘Sadist’is the term you’re looking for. He won wars.”

I glanced at him before I could stop myself. He wasn’t looking at me—his focus stayed on the map, his brow furrowed, lips barely moving as he spoke. The words weren’t spoken with the kind of quiet confidence that always caught me off guard. I hadn’t known him to be an admirer of Napoleon. The way his mind worked, the way he pulled something sharp and useful from a name that everyone else dismissed—it wasn’t the first time he’d surprised me.

And damn, it wouldn’t be the last.

“Lost a lot of souls too,” Harper shot back, the room bristling with tension.

I raised an eyebrow, letting my gaze linger on Harper until the weight of it made him shift uncomfortably. “Are we still talking about Napoleon, General? Or is this about my record once ambushed?”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The room knew exactly what he was implying—hell, they were all thinking it, too.

They remembered, as I did, the cost of my last gamble. The bodies that had piled high, the names I still carried with me. The price of my ideas when it mattered most, during the battle with the largest casualties of the last war.

But they also knew one other thing: when my plans worked, we won. And I wasn’t about to let Harper, or anyone else, forget that.

Harper flinched, but to his credit, he didn’t back down. “You say tomato, General, I say tomato.”

“I hate tomatoes. They’re bitter.” I straightened, my tone frosting over. “Do I need to worry about your ability to do as you’re told?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good boy.” I let the words hang long enough to sting before addressing the room again. “Any other disruptions? No? Fantastic.”

I gestured to the map spread across the table. The Mississippi River cut through the heart of our position like a frozen blade. “Napoleon didn’t just fight battles—he dismantled his enemies piece by piece. At Austerlitz, he baited the Russians and Austrians into a vulnerable position near frozen water and lower ground. When their forces were in full retreat, French artillery shattered the ice beneath them, turning the water into their graves. They didn’t stand a chance.”

The room was deathly silent. I had their attention now. My fingers brushed the edge of the map as I marked key points with sharp jabs. “We’ll do the same. High ground here, here, and here.” I motioned to a ridge overlooking the river’s bend, then another set of ridges further downstream. “Goal is to draw them out onto the ice and box them in. And when they’re exactly where we want them?—”

“Boom,” Reina whistled with excitement, her fingers twirling as she mimicked an explosion. She sat on her hands when all eyes in the room turned toward her.

“We break the ice. They drown. Few, if any, survivors. Easy enough, I consider you all relatively capable.”

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