BLOOD OF THE FORGOTTEN BLADE

Audience with the queen

The next morning broke with pale sunlight stretching across the countryside. Lucian was already awake when the first gold touched the horizon. He had barely slept, but he didn’t feel tired. His mind was too alert, too focused. The journey to the capital would put them in the center of everything he had been avoiding for months. He needed to be sharp.

Aria emerged from her room a little after dawn, her blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a reluctant cloak. Her hair was tangled from sleep and her eyes half closed. She looked younger than usual, almost peaceful, and Lucian felt an unexpected warmth move through him.

“You’re awake early,” she murmured.

“So are you.”

“I smelled food downstairs,” she said as if that explained everything.

It did, in a way. Aria had a way of grounding the world in simple truths. Lucian followed her downstairs where Tamsin was already stuffing his face with bread and muttering curses at a spilled cup of tea. The innkeeper bustled about, cheerful in the way only someone who knew nothing of politics or prophecies could be.

Lucian scanned the room automatically. A habit. Always take note of exits. Faces. Shadows. Threats. Nothing stood out, but the tension in his body never fully loosened.

After breakfast, they saddled their horses and began the ride toward the capital. The road was long but direct, cutting through rolling fields and patches of forest where the morning light glimmered through the leaves. Aria rode beside him, her posture straight but her eyes wandering over everything they passed.

“It’s pretty,” she said after a while. “When you hear stories about kingdoms on the brink of war, you don’t imagine places like this.”

“Most people living out here don’t care about the capital’s politics,” Lucian replied. “They only want to survive. Grow food. Raise children. Wars are something that happens to other people.”

“Until it doesn’t,” Aria said softly.

Lucian glanced at her. She looked thoughtful, not frightened. She was beginning to understand the weight of the world she had stepped into.

They rode for several hours before the first sign of trouble appeared. A dead silence. Not the peaceful kind. The kind that made the hairs on Lucian’s neck rise. Birds had stopped singing. The wind had dropped. Even the horse beneath him shifted uneasily.

Aria noticed too. “Something’s wrong.”

Lucian lifted a hand, signaling her to hold back. Tamsin fell quiet instantly, his hand drifting toward the dagger at his belt.

Lucian dismounted. “Stay here.”

He moved forward down the road, every step measured, senses sharpening the way they always did before danger. The air had a faint metallic smell. The trees to the right were bent unnaturally, as if something forced its way through them. Something large.

He found it a moment later. The remnants of a merchant wagon overturned and torn open. Supplies scattered everywhere. Not burned. Not looted. Just destroyed.

Aria came up behind him before he could stop her. She covered her mouth, her eyes widening with horror at the sight. One of the horses from the wagon lay nearby, twisted unnaturally like the creatures they had fought days earlier.

Lucian cursed quietly.

“It happened again…” Aria whispered.

He nodded. “This wasn’t a bandit attack. The damage is too clean. Too deliberate.”

Tamsin knelt beside the broken wagon, poking at the shattered wood. “Whatever did this didn’t stick around.”

Lucian knelt next to the horse’s body. It bore the same warped marks, as if reality had been pulled out of shape around it. He looked up at Aria.

“You feel anything?” he asked.

She hesitated, then closed her eyes and breathed in slowly. Lucian watched her closely. Her brows drew together. Her hands trembled slightly.

“There’s something…” she said quietly. “A trace of something. Not a creature. More like… a pull. A thread that feels familiar but wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“Like someone is trying to mimic what I can do.”

Lucian felt a chill pass through him. That confirmed his worst suspicion.

“Lucian,” Aria whispered, opening her eyes. “Someone knows about me.”

He placed a steady hand on her shoulder. “We already knew that possibility existed.”

“But this is proof,” she said. “They aren’t just watching. They’re acting.”

Lucian looked over the wreckage again. “We leave now. The longer we stay in one place the more we risk.”

They mounted up quickly. Aria kept glancing back, her hands gripping the reins tighter than usual. Lucian rode beside her, watching the treeline.

“What if I’m drawing these things to us?” she asked quietly. “What if people get hurt because of me?”

“Then we protect them,” Lucian said firmly. “You have power, Aria. Power always draws attention. But you’re not alone. And nothing that comes for you will get through me first.”

She didn’t respond immediately, but a little tension eased out of her shoulders.

By late afternoon the walls of the capital rose in the distance. Tall stone arches, banners fluttering from the towers, the faint glimmer of watchfires even in daylight. Aria’s breath caught.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

Lucian didn’t answer. Beauty wasn’t what he saw. He saw politics, old scars, secrets buried beneath layers of stone. The capital was a place where small mistakes became deadly. And the queen was not someone who tolerated surprises.

As they approached the gates, soldiers in polished armor straightened, recognizing Lucian instantly. Their expressions shifted from boredom to rigid attention.

“Commander Lucian,” one of them said, bowing slightly. “We’ve been informed to expect your return. The queen requests your presence immediately.”

Of course she did.

Lucian glanced at Aria. “Stay close to me. Do not wander. Do not speak to anyone unless I say it’s safe.”

Aria nodded firmly. She looked nervous but ready. Determined.

They passed through the towering gates into the capital’s inner streets. People moved in bustling waves, market stalls stretched across the square, and the scent of baked bread mingled with incense from a nearby temple. Aria’s eyes flicked everywhere, taking it all in.

But Lucian didn’t slow. His focus was locked ahead, on the palace rising at the heart of the city. White stone. Gold inlaid windows. Guards stationed at every level.

Tamsin whistled low under his breath. “I forgot how big the place is.”

“Try not to look too impressed,” Lucian said.

“Too late.”

As they reached the final set of stairs leading to the entrance, Aria leaned closer to Lucian.

“What will she be like? The queen.”

Lucian paused. “Powerful. Intelligent. Unpredictable. She will look at you and see more than you want her to. But don't be afraid. She will not harm you as long as I stand with you.”

Aria exhaled shakily. “Then I’ll hold on to that.”

Lucian offered the smallest nod.

He had faced armies. He had stood before ancient beasts. Yet as the palace doors opened and the echoing hall pulled them in, he felt something he rarely felt.

Uncertainty.

And the uneasy sense that everything in his life was about to change.