The Weight Between Wars

The Sanctum pulsed like a living wound—its walls hewn from stone older than Solitude itself, damp with memory and the breath of ghosts. Faelynn moved through it as if through a dream made of iron and flame, her boots whispering against the timeworn floor, her shadow flickering like doubt upon the walls.

They had not seen her enter.

Cailen stood taut with coiled fury, his stance the embodiment of a blade yet to be drawn. Every inch of him radiated restraint stretched thin—a storm begging to break. Lycel, in contrast, was a tempest already loosed, pacing before the war table with fire in his veins and grief sharpening every syllable he spat.

“We pull back,” Lycel demanded, his voice trembling not with fear, but conviction. “Let him crumble beneath the weight of his own cruelty. Let the people see what they once chose, and know the truth of their betrayal.”

Cailen’s voice struck like flint. “And while we wait, how many more will vanish into his dungeons? How many children will starve beneath his taxes? You think truth matters to the terrified?”

Faelynn cleared her throat—a sound soft, deliberate, crystalline.

They turned as one.

And then the deluge. Words hurled like arrows. Strategies flung as if they were spears in some forgotten arena. Passion twisted with desperation. The room swelled with the roar of battle not yet fought, with the thunder of men who believed they were right.

She lifted one hand. Then two.

“Enough.”

The word fell like winter. It silenced.

Her gaze, cold and unyielding, passed between them.

“Both paths are just,” she said, her voice a blade wrapped in velvet. “And both perilous.”

Cailen’s brow furrowed. Lycel narrowed his eyes.

“We wait,” Faelynn continued, stepping into the space between ideologies, between hearts. “Let the Warden reveal the rot of his reign. Let the people see their mistake. But when their hope turns to fear, when they search the shadows for salvation—we will rise. With precision. With purpose.”

The silence that followed was brittle.

Lycel exhaled like a man punched in the chest. “And if they do not see?”

“Then we show them,” Cailen snapped. “With fire.”

Again the storm gathered.

“I said enough—” Faelynn began, but her voice was lost to the rising tide.

Lycel moved first—swift and sudden, his hand rising not in violence, but in supplication. Fingers brushed her cheek, reverent, trembling. The intimacy was a cry louder than any shout.

“Faelynn,” he murmured, “You know me. You know my heart. Don’t do this.”

For a heartbeat, the world paused.

And then it fractured.

Cailen’s arm shot out, seizing Lycel’s shoulder with force. He wrenched him backward, dragging him from her like a jealous tide.

“Don’t touch her like that.”

Lycel’s fury ignited. He shoved Cailen hard, sending the former prince into the cold stone wall with a sickening crack.

Cailen retaliated with brutal precision. His fist slammed into Lycel’s throat. The blow was silent and final—a snuffing of breath.

Lycel staggered, gasping, his body trembling, the telltale shimmer of the wolf flickering beneath his skin. Bones strained. Nails blackened. The air thickened with magic and rage.

And Faelynn had had enough.

She stepped between them, hands outstretched, slamming against both chests with a force born not of strength, but exasperation. Her voice split the air.

“You know what?”

They stilled.

“I quit.”

It echoed.

“You two can rip each other apart like beasts in a pit, for all I care. Drown this cause in your egos. But I will not be the referee in your pissing match.”

She turned before they could respond, her cloak snapping behind her like the wing of an omen. Her footsteps rang like war drums down the corridor, carrying her to the rusted iron ladder hidden beneath the Sanctum’s outer ring.

Upward. Outward.

Into the world.

She emerged atop the hillside behind Eden, the wind a living thing—feral, golden, and warm. It tousled her hair like a mother might a child’s, wrapping around her with the gentlest ache.

And there, in the hush between heartbeats, she thought of Demacia.

Not mother by blood, but by bond.

The woman who had cradled her when fever took her. Who had whispered tales of queens and wolves and stars into her dreams. Who had shielded her with arms weary from war, yet never once let them fall.

She closed her eyes, and the memory unfurled—not as recollection, but as resurrection. It came not gently, but like a blade honed by time and sorrow, cleaving her breath in two.

She had been seventeen then—an age too young for grief, yet old enough to carry it. A tender, unbruised thing cocooned within the walls of Eden, untouched not by chance but by decree. Demacia had forbidden it. Not out of piety, nor prudery, but for principle. The arts of the body, she had said, must first be studied like scripture—learned with reverence, restraint, and the sacred detachment of a scholar. Intimacy was to be understood before it was wielded, and until such comprehension was hers, Faelynn was to remain a student, not a vessel.

So she had learned—curled in velvet chairs beside flickering hearths, pouring over scrolls penned in ancient dialects of seduction and control, their edges worn by generations of whispered secrets. She knew where to touch to unmake a man’s composure, how to read breath as if it were poetry, how to wield a sigh like a sword. But never once had she crossed the threshold of practice.

And she had not minded. The men who passed through Eden’s gilded doors wore the stink of desperation like perfume. They were wolves cloaked in coin, seeking to devour without tasting, to conquer without worship. Their presence made her skin crawl, her gaze avert. Rarely did she glance down the great staircase to witness the choreography of lust below.

But that night was different.

The pleasure that normally echoed through Eden like music composed of moans and murmurs was muted, its rhythm fractured. There was something hollow in the air, something offbeat. The evening had been slow—a fact Demacia had noted with a tightened jaw and a discontented purse of her lips, muttering of omens and tides.

Then, at the stroke of midnight, the doors shattered inward like the gates of damnation themselves had come unhinged.

Eladrin soldiers spilled into the heart of Eden like a living flood—gleaming in viridian and gold, faces carved from cruelty, eyes gleaming like copper set aflame. Faelynn had heard the clamor from her chambers and slipped silently into the hall, her bare feet ghosting across cool stone. She pressed herself behind a marble pillar, heart pounding with the rhythm of prophecy.

And then he entered.

The Warden.

A man not of flesh, but of venom—draped in power and disdain, his presence turning the air thick and curdled. His eyes were molten citrine, unblinking, unkind. His gaze roved the room like a predator seeking its favorite kill, and it found her—Demacia—reclined in the center of the room like a lioness disturbed.

She rose slowly, like dusk ascending into night, her every movement a silent defiance. Her silks fell about her like armor, her chin lifted in quiet majesty. The room, once a den of carnality, had become a courtroom. And she, its accused queen.

“I am told,” the Warden drawled, voice like oil over coals, “that one of my men lies dead—his throat swelled shut, his stomach purging itself of filth. He drank here. He died upon his arrival to Solitude. Explain.”

Demacia did not flinch. She did not cower. She merely tilted her head, as if considering whether he was worth her words.

“Then let him rot with whatever ghosts he carried,” she said evenly. “My wine does not kill men unworthy of death.”

Faelynn’s breath caught.

She remembered the man in question.

She remembered how he had struck another guest—how Lycel and Zailoth had intervened, the tension thick enough to shear. She remembered the girl, barely more than a year her senior, staggering into the library that same night—her lip split, her eye swollen, her ribs blooming in violet and blue.

“He hurt her,” Faelynn had whispered.

Demacia’s eyes had darkened, and in a voice low and deliberate, she had summoned a goblet.

“Take him this,” she said to the girl, “and apologize for being inexperienced.”

Faelynn had reeled at the words, confused, indignant.

“Why must she apologize?” she’d asked, her voice trembling with quiet fury.

Demacia had merely placed a hand upon her shoulder. “Because predators only understand submission when it’s laced with poison.”

And now, here in this crucible of judgment, Demacia offered no denial.

Her chin rose higher.

“I gave the order.”

Faelynn felt the world tilt.

The Warden’s lip curled.

“Then you shall bleed for it.”

He did not gesture.

He did not stall.

He stepped forward with serpentine grace and drove his blade through her chest with mechanical ease—as if silencing a disobedient pet.

Demacia did not scream. Her mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Her eyes met Faelynn’s across the foyer—one final flicker of maternal fire—before her knees gave and she began to collapse.

Faelynn surged forward.

Or tried to.

But arms like iron clamped around her, dragging her back into shadow. Lycel. His mouth found her ear, trembling with urgency. “If you go to her now, they’ll kill you too,” he hissed. “And then who will carry the rest?”

She fought him, writhed like a creature cornered. But he pressed a hand over her lips, silencing her sobs. His other hand clutched her against his chest as the Warden’s voice rang through the foyer like the toll of a final bell.

“Let this stand as warning. Any who harm my men shall be punished tenfold.”

Then footsteps.

Silence.

Soon the slow, thunderous slam of Eden’s great doors resounded and with this Lycel released her.

She tore away—running barefoot over stone now slick with blood before collapsed at Demacia’s side. She cradled her like a child, whispering her name like a prayer unraveling.

Demacia’s lips moved once more.

“Protect those we love,” she rasped, her voice a thread unraveling in the loom of fate.

And then—stillness.

A final inhale. Never an exhale.

Her body froze, mid-breath.

The wind whispered through Faelynn’s hair like ghost-fingers, tugging gently, reverently. She opened her eyes.

Tears traced her cheekbones, catching the dying light like threads of silver spun from grief. A quiet sigh unfurled from her lips, long and quaking, as though her chest itself were collapsing inward.

She placed a trembling hand over her sternum, as though trying to hold her heart together—shattered and pounding, but still beating.

It had not ceased hurting.

But neither had it ceased enduring.

And that, perhaps, was enough.

Faelynn wrapped her arms around herself, as if trying to become small again. As if trying to crawl back into the safety of Demacia’s lullabies.

I wish you were here, she thought. I’m so tired.

And then—

A breath of wind. Warmer than before. It encircled her like a prayer. Like a promise.

And in it, the softest echo, not spoken, but known.

“Fret not, my child. Your heart knows the right path to take.”

The wind stilled.

The ache eased.

She opened her eyes.

And for the first time that day, the weight felt bearable—not because it had lessened, but because she no longer carried it alone.

Because even lost, she was still moving forward.

And that, perhaps, was enough.