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Chapter Twenty-Seven - What an Alliance Costs
publish date:
2026-08-14 17:55:02
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Sold to the Broken Throne Chapter Thirty-Two - Hands That Know How
Barrick POV“Teach me to fight,” Ondine said, arriving at the training circle Barrick had cleared behind the garden with the same directness she brought to most things that mattered to her. “Properly. Not just running, not just the Sight when I’m desperate enough to find it. I want to know how to protect myself with my own two hands.”Barrick set down the blade he’d been sharpening and studied her for a moment — steady stance, jaw set, the particular resolve she wore when she’d already made up her mind about something and wasn’t asking permission so much as informing him of a decision.“Why now,” he asked, not because he doubted the request, but because he’d learned, these past months, that the reason behind a want usually mattered as much as the want itself.“Because I’ve spent my whole life being someone things happened to. The auction. The bond. The Sight showing up whether I called it or not.” She crossed her arms, some of the old vulnerability from the block still visible underne
Sold to the Broken Throne Chapter Thirty-One - Learning What’s Mine
Ondine POV“Call it,” Yselda said, standing a careful distance back in the clearing behind the garden, arms crossed, watching Ondine with the same steady patience she brought to everything. “Not in fear. Not under threat. Just call it, the way you’d flex a hand you’ve never properly used before.”Ondine closed her eyes, reaching for the same place the silver had come from at Hollow Creek, at Vaunt’s own court — that deep, buried thing that had spent her whole life dormant under a lifetime of being told she was nothing. It came slower here, without a blade at her throat or a room full of strangers deciding her worth, and for a long moment nothing happened at all.“I don’t know how to find it without being afraid first,” she admitted, opening her eyes, frustration prickling under her skin. “Every time before, it’s come because I needed it to survive something. I don’t know how to just — reach for it, calmly, and have it answer.”“That’s not a flaw,” Yselda said. “That’s simply where you
Sold to the Broken Throne Chapter Thirty - The Ones Who Come Home Anyway
Fenwick POVThey returned to Hollow Creek eight days after the alliance was struck, travel-worn and lighter for it, and found someone already waiting at the treeline — a lean, gray-haired figure sitting patiently on an overturned log, a healer’s satchel at her feet, watching their approach with an expression Fenwick couldn’t read from a distance.It took him nearly the full last stretch of the path to recognize her.“Yselda.” His voice caught on the name, disbelief and something warmer tangled together in his chest. “How did you—”“I left the camp three days after you did,” she said, rising, brushing dust from clothes that had clearly seen a long, hard road. “That officer’s report made me a liability the moment word reached anyone with real authority. I’d spent three years making myself unremarkable enough to survive there. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that would last once a Kessler patrol had my face attached to yours in their reports.”“You should have sent word. We’d have come
Sold to the Broken Throne Chapter Twenty-Nine - Enough, Divided
Ondine POVOndine woke before the others, the celebration’s warmth still sitting pleasantly in her chest, and found she couldn’t quite settle back into sleep despite how little rest she’d actually gotten. She slipped out from between Corvain and Barrick, careful not to wake either, and found Perpetua already awake in the kitchen garden, sipping something bitter and steaming, watching the sun come up over the Voss holding’s fields.“Couldn’t sleep either?” Perpetua asked, not looking up.“Too much to think about.” Ondine settled onto the low stone wall beside her, pulling her knees up. “Good things, mostly. Which somehow makes it harder to quiet my mind, not easier.”“Tell me.”Ondine turned the thought over before she let herself say it out loud, testing whether it would sound as small and foolish spoken as it felt sitting in her chest. “Last night, watching all three of them — Barrick dancing badly on purpose, Fenwick counting beats like an idiot and loving it anyway, Corvain laughin
Sold to the Broken Throne Chapter Twenty-Eight - Something Worth Celebrating
Barrick POVBarrick had never been much for feasts. Growing up, they’d always meant formal posture and careful words and the specific exhaustion of pretending to enjoy himself for the benefit of people who mattered more to his family’s standing than to him personally. Yvaine Voss’s version of a celebration, it turned out, was nothing like that at all.“Sit down properly,” she told him, not unkindly, when he tried to hover near the wall the way old habit demanded. “Nobody’s assessing your posture tonight. We’re celebrating an alliance that might actually mean something, and I intend to enjoy it without a room full of stiff-backed men pretending they’d rather be elsewhere.”He sat. The hall had transformed since the morning’s careful negotiation — long tables now, actual food instead of careful diplomacy, a trio of musicians tuning up in the corner with the easy familiarity of people who played together often. Fenwick had already gotten cornered by two of Yvaine’s advisors deep in a con
Sold to the Broken Throne Chapter Twenty-Seven - What an Alliance Costs
Corvain POVMatriarch Yvaine Voss received them in a hall considerably plainer than anything Corvain had grown up walking through, and he understood within the first minute of meeting her that the plainness was deliberate — a woman who’d built her holding’s survival on substance rather than spectacle, and expected the same of anyone asking for her support.“The Ashgrove heir,” she said, studying him from a seat that wasn’t quite a throne, though it clearly served the same function. “Alive, after three years of very convincing rumors to the contrary. Sit. Let’s see if you’re worth the risk Perpetua’s been badgering me about for a month.”Corvain sat. Beside him, Ondine’s hand found his under the table, steady, and he drew on that steadiness the way he’d learned to draw on all three of them these past months — not as a weakness to hide, but as a strength he no longer had to carry alone.“I won’t waste your time with more ceremony than the situation deserves,” he said. “I’m here because
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