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Chapter 63: The Crownbearer’s Oath
The Cinder Wards stank of smoke and blood.
The dead had been burned by dawn — there was no time for graves, and fire was the only way to deny the Dominion’s scavenger drones the satisfaction of feeding. Ash still drifted in the air as the survivors gathered in the cracked cathedral at the ward’s center.
Once, this place had been a church. Its windows were long shattered, saints reduced to shards of colored glass scattered across the floor. The pulpit leaned like a broken tooth. Yet the rebels had chosen it for the meeting, because its walls still stood, and because even ruins felt like sanctuary in a city that had forgotten the word.
Dante hated councils.
He stood at the back of the hall, his arms folded, his blade strapped across his spine. Ari
