The Penance

(Paige’s POV)

The vision doesn’t come like a dream. It comes like a theft.

One moment, I’m standing by the newly repaired storehouse roof, handing Mara a bundle of shingles, the late afternoon sun weak but welcome on my face. The next, the world bleeds out.

Cold so deep it burns. Not the clean cold of the north, but a damp, stealing cold. Snow falling in thick, silent waves. The black line of the forest edge. And Noah.

He’s on his knees in the white clearing, head bowed. Not in surrender. In final, exhausted defiance. Dark blood blooms across the front of his heavy coat, vivid as winter berries. It stains the snow between his knees. His sword lies broken beside him, glinting dully.

A shadow stands over him. Tall, impossibly thin, like a crack in the world. The shadow holds a blade, narrow and cruel, poised for a final, downward thrust. The face is hidden in hood and twilight, but I feel its eyes—empty, patient, utterly cold.

A voice, not a sound but a feeling in my marrow: “Penance.”

Then, the worst part. Noah’s head lifts. His eyes find mine across the vision, across the distance. They aren’t afraid. They’re full of a furious, aching regret. His lips shape one word, silent in the swirling snow: “Run.”

The world crashes back. The shingles tumble from my numb hands, clattering on the stones. I’m gasping, clutching my own chest, feeling for the wound that isn’t there. The cold from the vision is still in my bones.

“My lady?” Mara’s voice is sharp with alarm. Her rough hand grabs my elbow, steadying me. “What is it? Are you ill?”

I can’t speak. I can only see the blood on the snow. The broken sword. His eyes.

“Noah,” I choke out. “I need Noah.”

I find him in the armory, inspecting a shipment of arrowheads with Alex. The moment I stagger through the door, my face ashen, my breath coming in short gasps, his entire body goes rigid. He knows.

He’s across the room in three strides, his hands gripping my upper arms. “Paige. Look at me. What did you see?”

The words spill out of me, a broken, icy river. “The woods. The old pine clearing to the east. Snow. Blood. Your blood. A man… a shadow. He called it Penance. He had a blade. You were on your knees, Noah. You looked at me and told me to run.”

Every word makes his face harder, colder. By the time I finish, he looks like the Duke of Ashes again, carved from unforgiving stone. The gentle man from the bridge site, from our bed, is gone.

“Alex,” he says, his voice lethally calm. “Lock down the keep. No one in or out without my direct seal. Double the guard on the walls. Triple it on her door.” His eyes, like frozen earth, scan my face. “You will not leave these walls. Not for any reason. Do you understand?”

The fear in my gut curdles into something hot. “You can’t lock me in a tower. That won’t stop him. I saw it!”

“What you saw is a warning,” he snaps, his control fraying. “A warning I intend to heed. The only way to that clearing is through me. And he will find that a fatal path.”

“And if he succeeds?” My voice cracks. “What then? I’m just supposed to wait up here, listening, until someone comes to tell me you’re dead?”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. The raw terror in my eyes is mirroring his own, and it’s enraging him. “Yes. That is exactly what you are supposed to do. That is what it means to be protected.”

“It means being buried alive!” I shout, the frustration and terror boiling over. “I didn’t escape one cage to be put in another, Noah! Not even by you!”

The silence that follows is brutal. Alex has discreetly vanished, leaving us alone in the cold, weapon-lined room.

Noah’s hands are still on my arms, but they’ve loosened. His gaze searches mine, and for a flicker, I see the man beneath the duke—the one who is terrified of losing me. “Paige,” he says, his voice rough. “This is not a game. This is not a courtier with a poison-tongue. This is a killer. A professional. He was hired because of me. Because of what we are building here. The only thing I care about in this world is in this room. And I will stack stone upon stone around you if that’s what it takes to keep you safe.”

The love in his words is a cage more beautiful and more terrible than any iron bars. It steals my breath.

“Then let me help,” I whisper, pleading. “My visions… they can help.”

He leans his forehead against mine, a brief, desperate touch. “Your vision has helped. It told me where and when. The rest is my job. My penance to pay.” He pulls back, his expression settling into grim resolve. “Now. Go to our rooms. Stay there.”

(Noah’s POV)

The next two days are a lesson in exquisite tension.

I turn Blackstone Keep into a fortress within a fortress. Paige’s movements are restricted to a few guarded rooms. She moves through them like a ghost, her grey eyes huge, watching me with a mixture of fear and betrayal. Every look is a cut.

I set the trap. The old pine clearing. It’s perfect—open enough for a fight, secluded enough for an assassin’s work. I let the information leak through a captured Greymont courier who “escapes”: the Duke will be inspecting the eastern timber line, alone, at twilight.

I won’t be alone, of course. Alex and my best six men will be concealed in the tree line. But the bait, the figure in the clearing, will be me.

The day of, the air is sharp with impending snow. I’m in our chamber, strapping on boiled leather and mail over my woolens. The silence between Paige and me is a living thing, thick and wounded.

She stands by the window, her back to me, a silhouette against the grey light. “He’ll know it’s a trap,” she says, her voice flat.

“Probably.”

“He’ll come anyway.”

“Yes.”

She turns. She’s dressed in a dark grey dress, the color of the sky. Her hair is braided tightly back. She looks fierce and fragile all at once. “Because he’s that good.”

“He’s that arrogant.” I check the edge of my dagger, then slide it into my boot. “Or that desperate to collect Greymont’s f*e.”

She takes a step toward me. “Your men. They’ll be close?”

“Close enough.”

She nods, swallowing hard. Her eyes drink me in, as if memorizing me. The love and fear in her gaze is a physical weight. I cross the room and cup her face, my thumb stroking her cheek. “I will come back to you,” I vow, the words a sacred oath.

Her lips tremble. She doesn’t say “I know.” She just leans into my touch, her eyes closing for a second. “Be the mountain,” she whispers, a phrase from the north.

I kiss her, hard and quick, pouring every promise, every fear, into it. Then I turn and walk out, before I lose the will to leave her at all.

(Paige’s POV)

The moment the door closes, the silence in the room screams.

I stand there, feeling the ghost of his kiss on my lips, seeing the blood on the snow from my vision. He will come back to you. But in my vision, he believed that too.

The thought of waiting here, by this fire, while he walks into that clearing… it’s not fear. It’s a kind of death. I am not a treasure to be locked away. I am his partner. The seer. The one who saw this.

An idea, reckless and bright, sparks in the dark dread.

I move quickly. I shed the grey dress for the dark brown wool trousers and tunic I sometimes wear to help in the stables—clothes that blend into forest and shadow. I pull on my warmest, quietest boots. I don’t take a weapon. What good would it do? But I take the one thing I have that no one else does: the knowing.

Slipping into the corridor is easier than I thought. The guard is at the far end, his attention fixed on the stairwell leading down. He’s watching for threats coming up, not for me going down the servants’ passage I’d noted weeks ago.

The keep is a maze of cold stone and tension. I move like a whisper, using the knowledge of its rhythms I’ve gleaned. I sneak into the armory, my heart hammering against my ribs. There, I take a long, dark cloak from a peg—one of Noah’s spare ones. It swallows me, smelling of him, of cedar and iron.

Getting out is the hardest part. I wait by a sally port until the guard on duty is called away for a shouted question, then I slip into the twilight, melting into the deep shadow of the wall.

The cold is immediate, biting. The sky is the color of a bruise, heavy with unshed snow. I pull the cloak tight and begin to run, not towards the main gate, but along a little-used hunter’s path I’d seen on the maps, one that curves around to approach the pine clearing from the steep, rocky back.

My breath tears at my lungs. Every snap of a twig, every rustle in the undergrowth, feels like the assassin’s approach. But the vision drives me forward. I have to see. I have to be there.

I reach the ridge above the clearing as the last light bleeds from the day. I crawl to the edge, peering through a thicket of bare brambles.

Below, it’s exactly as I saw it.

The clearing, a bowl of white. The sentinel pines, black against the grey. And Noah.

He stands in the center, a statue of dark leather and resolve. His breath plumes in the air. He is profoundly, terribly alone. My heart squeezes so tight I can’t breathe. Where are Alex and the men? I scan the tree line. Nothing. No movement. Are they that well hidden? Or has something gone wrong?

A figure detaches itself from the shadow of a massive pine.

The Penance.

He is tall, lean as a starving wolf. Dressed in shades of grey and black that make him seem like a walking piece of the twilight. His face is obscured, but his movement is liquid, effortless. He makes no sound as he enters the clearing.

Noah turns slowly to face him. He doesn’t draw his sword. Not yet.

The two men regard each other across twenty feet of snow. The air crackles with a deadly, silent recognition.

“Wingknight,” the Penance says. His voice is dry, rustling, like dead leaves. “You made it easy. Sentimental.”

“I like to be accommodating to guests,” Noah replies, his voice calm, conversational. The Duke’s voice. “Greymont’s coin must be running low to hire a relic like you.”

A thin, humorless sound escapes the hood. “The old duke pays for a result. Not for gossip.” He takes a step forward. “They say you have a witch. That she whispers the future in your ear. Did she whisper this?”

Noah’s stance shifts, ever so slightly. Ready. “She told me you’d be late.”

The Penance moves.

It’s so fast it’s a blur. One moment he’s there, the next he’s crossing the space, a thin, cruel blade appearing in his hand. Noah’s sword rings as it clears its scabbard, meeting the assassin’s thrust in a shower of sparks.

The dance begins. It’s not like the brawls I’ve seen. It’s brutal, efficient, a series of lethal calculations. Noah is stronger, his blows like hammer strikes. The Penance is faster, a viper, slipping, dodging, his blade seeking openings with cold precision.

Metal shrieks. Snow is kicked up in clouds. I watch, frozen, my nails digging into the frozen earth. Now, Alex! Now! But no one comes.

The Penance feints low, then strikes high. Noah blocks, but the assassin’s other hand flashes. A dagger. It grazes Noah’s arm, slicing through leather and mail. A line of red appears.

A echo of my vision. Blood in the snow.

Noah grunts, pivoting, his sword sweeping in a wide, powerful arc that forces the Penance back. But the assassin is relentless. He presses the attack, his twin blades weaving a web of silver death. Noah is defending, being driven back toward the center of the clearing.

Where are the men? Panic claws up my throat. This was a trap. But we are the ones caught.

The Penance lands a kick to Noah’s knee. Noah stumbles, going down on one knee in the snow. Just like the vision. The assassin raises his main blade for a final, downward thrust.

“NO!”

The word tears from my throat before I can think. I’m on my feet, scrambling down the rocky slope, stumbling into the clearing.

Both men freeze. Noah’s head whips toward me, his eyes wide with pure horror. “PAIGE! RUN!”

The Penance turns his hooded head slowly toward me. I feel the emptiness of his gaze. “The witch,” he rasps, a note of perverse interest in his dead voice. “A two-for-one bargain.”

He takes a step toward me, abandoning Noah.

“Look at me!” Noah roars, surging to his feet, but his injured leg buckles.

The Penance ignores him. He’s focused on me, the easier, unarmed prey. He closes the distance with those terrifying, silent strides.

I stand my ground, trembling, the cloak too big around me. The vision of Noah’s broken sword flashes. The word he heard: Penance. It echoes in my soul, not as a name, but as a concept. A debt. A sin waiting to be answered.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no power, no magic. But I have the truth. I have the story. And in this moment, that’s all I am.

I look straight into the void of his hood and my voice comes out, not a shout, but low, clear, and echoing with a certainty that does not feel like my own. It feels ancient. It feels like the mountain.

“Your penance is not here.”

The Penance stops. Utterly still.

“Your debt is not to Greymont’s gold,” I continue, the words flowing through me. “It is to the child you left fatherless in a ditch south of Rosemere. It is to the silence you sold for a bag of silver. It is to the light you have spent a lifetime extinguishing.”

A shudder runs through the tall, lean frame. A low, pained sound, like a wounded animal, escapes him. His blade wavers.

“Your penance is over,” I say, and the finality in the words rings across the clearing like a bell. “Because you are finished.”

In that second of shattered focus, Noah finds his footing.

He lunges, not with his sword, but with his body, a battering ram of fury and protection. He tackles the Penance from the side, driving him into the snow. There is a brutal, grunting struggle. A sharp crack. A gasp that ends in a wet gurgle.

Then silence.

Noah staggers to his feet, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his arm. The Penance lies motionless in the snow, his neck at an unnatural angle.

Noah doesn’t look at him. He stares at me, his chest heaving, his face a mask of shock, fury, and something like awe.

From the tree line, Alex and the men finally break cover, their faces stricken with confusion and shame. “My lord, we were pinned—there were decoys in the woods—we couldn’t—”

Noah holds up a hand, silencing him. His eyes never leave mine.

He walks toward me, each step deliberate in the deepening twilight. The first flakes of snow begin to fall, catching in his dark hair.

He stops a foot away. The air between us vibrates with the aftermath of violence and the echo of my strange, powerful words.

His voice, when it comes, is raw, stripped bare.

“What,” he says softly, dangerously, “are you?”