CHAPTER 90

JARRETT'S POV

The old stone bridge was already soaked by the time we got there.

Thirty minutes was a lie. It took twenty. Helena didn’t waste time, and I wasn’t about to let her walk into Vane’s teeth alone.

We rode hard through the wet pine trail from the shrine, Kael ahead, me tight on Helena’s left. The rain had started while we were still inside, a cold, thin drizzle that turned the dirt path to mud. Her cloak was already dark with water by the time we cleared the tree line.

The mist rolled off the River Bend in thick, slow banks. The river below was black and fast, swollen from three days of northern melt.

And one man in velvet at the center of it; Lord Vane.

He was everything I expected. Fat, soft, and draped in damp red velvet that had cost more than the entire northern granary combined.

His face was flushed, his jowls damp with rain and sweat. Irritable, just like Kael had said. Two archers flanked him, bows strung but not drawn. Yet, the cavalry behind him sat still, but their horses were restless, stamping on the slick stone.

Helena stopped ten paces from him. I stopped one step behind her right shoulder. Close enough to grab her if I needed to and close enough that anyone who wanted her would have to go through me first.

“Crown-Bearer,” Vane said, and he made the title sound like a curse, like something rotten he had to scrape off his tongue. “And the dog.”

His eyes flicked to me. Small, pig-like eyes that tried to look cruel and mostly just looked tired.

I didn’t blink or move.

“Lord Vane,” Helena replied. Her voice didn’t shake. It didn’t rise. It was the same ice from the shrine, just sharper now, honed by sleep and cold tea and anger. “You wanted to discuss taxes.”

“I wanted to discuss survival,” he said, wiping rain off his jowls with a silk cloth that was already soaked through. “The Southern Council is not pleased with your little charity run, girl. Feeding Blackriver. Arming the Frostfang. You’re building an army with our grain. Our gold.”

“We’re keeping children from starving,” Helena said. Her hands were tucked under her cloak, but I knew they were bruised. Cold. She’d been holding that hot mug too tight this morning. “If that looks like an army to you, then your priorities are worse than I thought.”

Vane’s smile thinned. The pleasantries were over. He never was good at them.

“Careful,” he said, leaning forward in his saddle. The horse beneath him groaned. “Lucian thought he could ignore the Council too. Look how that ended for him. The Crown-Bearer before you was far stronger and far better bred, and even he learned to kneel.”

The air went still. Even the river seemed too quiet. That was a mistake. Mentioning Lucian in front of Helena was like pressing a knife to a fresh scar. Mentioning breeding was worse.

Behind Vane, one of the cavalry horses shifted. A hoof hit stone, the sound was too loud in the quiet.

Helena didn’t look at me, but I felt her hand brush, just barely, against the back of my coat. Not asking for help. Telling me to wait. To let her handle this.

I let my hand rest on the hilt of my sword. Not drawing. Just reminding them it was there. Just reminding her I was there.

“Lucian ended,” I said, finally, because I was done listening to this fat lord in velvet talk about my queen like she was a lost child, “because he tried to make Helena a weapon and she chose to be a queen instead. You’re late to the same mistake. You all are.”

Vane laughed. Wet, ugly, full of phlegm.

“Bold words from a bodyguard. From a northern stray,” he sneered. “The Council is prepared to offer terms. Cede taxation rights of the northern granaries to us. Dismiss the northern riders. Renounce your claim to trade authority north of the Bend. And we’ll recognize your little crown. For now. Refuse, and the Vanguard crosses that river tonight and takes what you won’t give.”

Helena took one step forward. Just one. The archers tensed. I was tense.

Those granaries were everything. Kael had told us this morning the kids in Blackriver finally had full bellies for the first time in two winters. Grain meant life. Taxing it meant death.

“Those granaries feed the north,” she said quietly. Her voice was so low I almost didn’t hear it over the river. “You want to tax them to pay for the marble in your hall. For new chandeliers while our wolves eat bark. I won’t. I will never sign that.”

“Then there will be blood,” Vane said, spreading his hands like this was all so reasonable, so inevitable. “Pity. You had potential, girl. Lucian was right about that much. Pity you’re so sentimental.”

He was about to raise his hand. I saw it. The signal to the archers. My sword was halfway out of its sheath before I even thought.

And then the mist moved.

From the tree line on the far bank, a horn blew. Low. One note. Long and mournful and unmistakably northern.

Kael.

On the ridge, twenty riders broke through the fog. Tova at the front, her hair braided back, her bow already strung. Behind her, twenty northern wolves with banners that weren’t Southern red, but slate gray and white. The colors of the Crown.

They didn’t charge. They just lined the ridge, bows raised, arrows knocked. Still. Silent.

Vane turned, slow, and saw them. The color drained from his face, from his jowls, from his fat hands. He looked suddenly very small in all that velvet.

Helena didn’t smile. She didn’t gloat. She just looked tired.

“You brought forty cavalry to threaten me, Lord Vane,” she said, her voice carrying perfectly across the wet stone, “because you thought I was alone. Because you thought the north was still broken and begging.”

She shook her head, rain dripping off her cloak.

“I brought the north to show you why you shouldn’t.”

The place fell silent.

Then, with the kind of quiet that makes grown men flinch, she turned. She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t wait for a reply. She started walking back across the bridge.

I fell into step beside her. My shoulder brushed hers. My sword was still half-drawn, dripping rain.

Behind us, Vane spluttered. His voice cracked. “You... you can’t... this is treason...this is war... the Council will...”

“Then arrest me,” Helena called over her shoulder without looking back, without breaking stride. “The bridge is open ground, Lord Vane. You brought the men for it.”

No arrows came, no steel rang, it was only the river and the rain.

By the time we reached the other side, Kael was already there with the tea gone cold in his hand, leaning against the stone wall like he’d been waiting for a show.

“Well,” he said, looking at Vane’s red-faced cavalry still stuck on the other side of the bridge, too scared to cross and too proud to retreat. “That could’ve gone worse.”