them, along with an old man garbed in the colors of Cobb but wearing a sash of Brailing blue. He introduced himself as Dolf Zeller, the new commander of Brailing’s devastated Dynast Guard.
Beside Zeller stood a tall, thin woman with stark silver hair and bright silvery eyes. Nic felt a jolt of surprise as he realized she had to be Lady Rakel Seadaughter, Vagrat of Vagrat. Since citizens of Vagrat never took up arms in any conflict, Nic realized she must have brought her people across all of Eyrie to help with healing the wounded. Lady Vagrat had her hand on the shoulder of a scrawny boy who looked to have Vagrat heritage, bearing Thorn’s cardinal red badge on his chest.
“He’s a sanctioned messenger,” Dari told him as she rested her palm against his forehead. “This is the best we can do, since Brailing has no heirs, and Lord Altar and his sons have been taken to the House of the Judged, as have any Thorn Brothers not dead on the fields around us.”
“It’s enough,” Lord Ross said. “No one will challenge what you say here, Nic. Your word is our law, and all dynasts and guild leaders, or their nearest representatives, are present to accept your commands.”
Nic closed his eyes for a moment to muster his strength, and accepted yet more energy from his wife, until he could raise his voice enough to be heard by all who stood near.
“Come forward,” he told Lord Ross. “Kneel beside me, please.”
Lord Ross did as Nic asked, crouching to the ground on the side opposite Dari.
Though Nic thought he would die yet again from the brutal stab of the movements, he used graal energy, his own and that which he borrowed from Dari, to move his left hand enough to lay his fingers in the blood on his chest, directly over his heart.
It was at that moment Dari seemed to realize what he was doing, and why.
She cried out and would have stopped him if Kate and Platt hadn’t seized her arms and hauled her back from him. The sound of her anger and grief stabbed him deeper than any physical pain, but this he did as a king, not as a husband.
Lord Ross didn’t flinch as Nic raised his bloody, trembling fingers and touched the man on both cheeks.
Every witness in the circle drew a sharp breath as they recognized the passing of power in the oldest of known ways—blooding the victor on the field of battle.
“Rule in my stead,” Nic told Lord Ross. “Protect my queen and help her serve as regent for my son, until he, in turn, assumes my throne. If my bloodline doesn’t live to adulthood and to sire his own legacy heirs, then it will be your heirs who guard and protect this land.”
“My great-grandson will survive.” Lord Ross took Nic’s hands in his and held them to his massive, muscled chest as he made his oath. “On that I stake my honor and my dynast. On that I stake my soul.”
“Stop this,” Dari shouted as Lord Ross folded Nic’s hands atop his broken chest and got to his feet to the deep bows of many of his watching subjects.
“I won’t have it.” Dari’s voice was muffled by Kate’s relentless embrace—then it turned louder and sharper, a new sort of screaming, fresh and angry and desperate. “No! Don’t let him near my husband. You stay away!”
And Nic knew, at last, that relief had come to him.
Platt’s graal and Kate’s arms restrained Dari as the crowd parted to admit Aron Weylyn, who once was Aron Brailing, and always would be, in some distant corner of Nic’s heart. Nic’s dimming vision saw not the Stone Brother in his soiled and torn gray robes, but the skinny, terrified boy Aron had been when Nic first saw him through his spirit-eyes, the night of Harvest, when Nic tried to die and Aron used the full force of his burgeoning Brailing legacy to order Nic to heal himself.
Nic’s body was still following that command, all these years hence, beyond his own wishes, and beyond any reason.
Just as he had done that fateful night, Aron turned loose his own graal and let his essence flow into Nic’s. Unformed thoughts and words rushed between them. Love and pain. Victory and defeat. Damnation and redemption.
“I will never forgive you,” Dari said to Aron, “Never, Aron.”
Aron kept his connection to Nic as he lowered his head.
“I know,” he said, but Nic didn’t feel Aron’s resolve