Lyra's POV
Two weeks.
Fourteen days had slipped by since Lady Morana ushered her foreign mercenaries into the Great Hall, and fourteen days since Warlord Fenrir set his absolute, impenetrable shield over my head. The threat of a northern civil war still hung like a dark storm on the horizon, but Fenrir had called the Ice Queen’s bluff. Morana’s men stayed stationed at the frozen borders, and I remained in the capital.
Yet survival inside Crimson Moon keep carried a new kind of battlefield.
I was no longer Lyra of the Vanguard. I was the Warlord’s personal maid.
My mornings began before dawn. Instead of strapping on steel bracers and sharpening a broadsword, I donned the stark black tunic of the royal servants. Instead of drilling in the freezing mud, my days unfolded as a relentless,
