Page 19 of Spoils of war
“He will be. And so will you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
KERA
Ten years later
It was supposed to be our last night before everything changed. We had graduated that morning, and tradition said you celebrated with the others on the mountain at dusk. From the flat-topped peak, you could see all of Novil stretched out below, the forests fading into the horizon.
It was the place my school mates went with stolen bottles and shaky courage, chasing freedom or something that felt like it. Bonfires, hookups, dares whispered behind hands. The kind of place you weren't supposed to talk about in school, but everyone did anyway. And once a year, it turned into something more— a rite of passage. The night the graduates climbed the mountain and claimed it as theirs. Ours, I suppose.
I’d never been up there after dark. I’d only ever climbed the mountain with my family, or during school hikes. Always in the daylight.
Never in a pretty dress.
Never with dread coiling low in my stomach.
A week earlier, everything had fallen apart. The king of Vestance had been murdered. They said it was one of his own advisors—Lord Devore of Ashthorne. A name I’d barely known before. Just another noble, too far away to matter.
I’d never cared much about politics. It always felt like background noise. Distant arguments in places that didn’t touch us.
But then Devore took the crown.
He took it with the help of the Eredian army—mercenaries with no allegiance, no honor. People called themvultures, said that they feasted on the flesh of the fallen, and that they killed for fun.
I believed that part.
They weren’t just soldiers, they were Devore’steeth. His reminder to the rest of us, sent across the country to “keep the peace,” but really just to make us fear the new regime.
Back in the capital, Devore was rewriting the world. New laws. A new religion. A new god.
The Eye.
I’d seen it stamped on every one of those pamphlets, slipped under doors and posted on fences, impossible to avoid. The symbol was everywhere. On flyers, on banners, painted across shop windows and embossed on the armor of the soldiers who now walked our streets like they owned them.
The capital had always felt so far away. It had always felt too far to matter, too far to reach us. But it wasn’t. What happened in Saniré affected all of us. It swept across Vestance like a tidal wave, dragging everything under, village by village. There was no escaping it.
I hadn’t planned on going to the party that night, but Will had practically begged me. Said he needed me, that he was tired of being the third wheel to Aran and Selma’s never-ending makeout sessions.Aran and Selma,that was a pairing I never saw coming. And after everything Will had done for me over the years, I couldn’t say no. I felt I owed it to him. He’d always been there when I needed him most. And somehow, through all of it, he’d become my closest friend. And I guess part of me still wanted to believe we still had something to celebrate.
Even if the world was burning.
So I went.
Einar walked me there, he was always by my side, whether I liked it or not. He had promised that he would never leave me again when I disappeared, and done his very best to keep that promise.
We reached the clearing at the top, and I stopped for a second, just taking it all in. The bonfire was already roaring, tall flames licking the sky. Logs and old crates had been dragged into a rough circle around the fire, and the air smelled of cider, and smoke. But no one was dancing.
My classmates sat around the fire like soldiers in a camp. Quiet. Still. Even Aran wasn’t running his mouth for once, he crouched beside a crate, poking a stick into the flames. Will saw me first.
“Kera,” he said as he walked over to me. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
I didn’t answer, just stepped into his open arms and let him hold me. We pulled apart too soon.
”And your brother’s here too.” he added, glancing over my shoulder. Einar gave a short nod in greeting, I wasn’t the only one bothered by having a permanent shadow.
“Some party,” I said, forcing a half-smile.
He huffed a dry laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.
