The Seige Of Stone

(Paige’s POV)

The question hangs in the air between us, sharper than the assassin’s blade.

What are you?

The snow falls thicker, settling on his shoulders, on the fallen man at his feet, on my own trembling hands. I don’t have an answer. The power that spoke through me is gone, leaving a hollow, echoing fear in its place. I just faced down death with words I don’t understand, and the man I love is looking at me like I’m the stranger.

“I’m Paige,” I whisper, my voice small against the howl of the wind rising in the pines. “I’m just… me.”

Noah’s jaw is a hard line. The awe in his eyes is being swallowed by a darker, more familiar emotion: a duke’s calculating suspicion. The blood from his arm is a stark, red trail in the white.

Alex reaches us, his face grim. “The decoys were a ruse. Well-trained. We were drawn into a skirmish half a mile west. It was a diversion. My lord, I failed—”

“Later,” Noah cuts him off, his gaze still locked on me. “Secure the body. Search it. I want every scrap on him.” His command is cold, efficient. The moment of vulnerability is gone, buried under duty. He strides toward me, and for a heart-stopping second, I think he’s going to grab me. Instead, he strips off his own heavy, blood-spattered outer cloak and wraps it around me over my stolen one. The gesture is possessive, practical, and furious all at once.

“You will explain,” he says, his voice low and taut. “Every word. But not here.”

The journey back to Blackstone is a silent, frigid nightmare. Noah rides ahead, a brooding silhouette, his back rigid. I’m placed in the center of a tight knot of soldiers, a protected prize, a perplexing problem. The warmth of his cloak does nothing to melt the ice in my veins. I hear my own voice echoing in the clearing. Your penance is over.

How did I know about Rosemere? About a child? I’ve never been there. The knowledge had simply… been there, in the space between the assassin’s soul and mine, waiting to be spoken.

The great gates of Blackstone loom out of the blizzard, a welcome and a prison. The moment we dismount in the torch-lit yard, chaos descends. Fergus meets us, his usual stoicism cracked with real alarm.

“Scouts have returned, Your Grace,” he says, dispensing with any formality. “Greymont’s men. Not a raiding party. An army. They’re moving up the southern pass. They’ll be at the foot of the ridge by dawn.”

The news hits the yard like a physical blow. The fear of a single assassin is now replaced by the vast, rolling thunder of war.

Noah doesn’t flinch. He becomes a conduit of terrifying energy. “Close the mountain passes. Every last one. Bring all outlying families and their flocks inside the walls. We need an inventory of every grain of wheat, every arrow, every barrel of water. Rationing starts now. Man the foundry—melt anything that isn’t essential and make it into arrowheads or shrapnel.”

He barks orders, a general born in this moment of crisis. Men scatter like leaves before a storm.

Then he turns to me. “You. With me.”

He leads me not to our chamber, but to the war room—a sparse, fireless cell off the main hall dominated by a huge, crude table holding a map of the duchy. He shrugs off his gear, wincing as the movement pulls at the gash on his arm.

“Sit,” he orders.

I don’t. “Your arm needs to be seen to.”

“It can wait.” He leans on the table, palms flat, his head bowed for a moment. When he looks up, the anger is still there, but it’s laced with a desperate exhaustion. “The words you spoke. To the Penance. Where did they come from?”

I wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t know. They just… were there. When I saw him, when I knew he was going to kill you… it was like I could see the weight he carried. The crimes. It was a… a feeling. And the words came with it.”

“A feeling,” he repeats, his voice flat. “You looked into the eyes of a legendary killer and recited his unconfessed sins like a priest at a hanging. That’s more than a feeling, Paige. That is a weapon I did not know you had.”

“It’s not a weapon!” I cry out, the frustration and fear boiling over. “I can’t control it! I didn’t try to do it! I was just trying to stop him, and that… that thing came out of me!” Tears of helplessness sting my eyes. “I’m as scared of it as you are.”

My tears seem to fracture his icy control. He pushes off the table and crosses the small space to me. His hands come up, but they don’t grab. They frame my face, his thumbs wiping roughly at the tears on my cheeks. His touch is calloused, warm, real.

“Don’t you understand?” he says, his voice a raw whisper. “That is why I am terrified. Not of you. For you. A seer is one thing. A woman who can unravel a man’s soul with a sentence? That is a power that kings would burn continents to own or destroy. And Greymont’s army is at our gate. What if they’ve heard? What if they’ve come for that?”

The true shape of his fear dawns on me. It isn’t suspicion. It’s the primal, protective terror of a man who has finally found something precious in a barren world and sees a thousand new arrows aimed at its heart.

“I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I’m sorry I left the keep. I’m sorry I interfered. I just… I couldn’t let the vision be true.”

His expression softens, just a fraction. “You saved my life. Again.” He says it like it’s a burden, a wondrous, terrifying debt. He rests his forehead against mine. “But you must promise me. No more heroics. When the siege begins, you stay in the deepest, safest cell of this keep. You do not come to the walls. You do not try to help. Your only duty is to survive. Promise me.”

I want to argue. The thought of hiding while he fights makes my soul scream. But I see the absolute seriousness in his eyes. This is the line. “I promise,” I whisper, the taste of the lie bitter on my tongue.

He kisses me then, a brief, hard seal on the promise. “Good. Now, I need to see what the Penance was carrying.”

Alex enters, carrying a small leather pack and a few items. “Nothing of direct value, my lord. Standard gear. Except this.” He holds up a single, folded piece of parchment, sealed with plain grey wax. “It was sewn into his tunic.”

Noah takes it, breaks the seal, and unfolds it. He reads, his eyes scanning the lines. His face, already pale from blood loss and cold, goes ashen.

“What is it?” I ask, dread coiling in my stomach.

He doesn’t answer. He just hands me the parchment.

The handwriting is neat, precise, and utterly merciless.

Lord Greymont’s compliments. The Duke is a secondary objective. The true price is for the witch, alive and unbroken. Her mind is the key to the north’s spirit. Extract it, and the mountain itself will kneel. The assault will provide the distraction. Your payment is doubled upon delivery. Do not fail.

The words swim before my eyes. The true price is for the witch.

Extract her mind.

The mountain itself will kneel.

It was never just about killing Noah or taking land. I am the target. My visions, this new terrible power… I am the prize.

Noah takes the note back from my numb fingers. He holds it over the lone candle on the table. The flame catches the edge, curling it black, consuming Greymont’s vile words.

“No one else sees this,” he says to Alex, his voice deathly quiet. “The men are to be told the assassin was here for me. To break our spirit before the siege. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Alex’s face is stone, but his eyes meet mine for a fleeting second. In them, I see a renewed, ferocious resolve. The guard’s duty has just been reforged into something deeper.

“The siege…” I manage to say.

“Is a feint,” Noah finishes, his eyes like chips of flint. “A giant, bloody diversion to pull every man to the walls, to create chaos, so that smaller, quieter men can slip in and take you.” He turns to Alex. “Change the guard rotations. No one guards the duchess alone. Two men, at all times, on her door. Men we trust with our lives. Her life.”

“It will be done.”

The door bursts open before Alex can leave. A young scout, coated in snow and panting, stumbles in. “Your Grace! Forgive me! The vanguard… they’re moving faster than we thought. They’ve reached the lower valley. They’re… they’re lighting fires.”

Noah strides to the narrow window. In the distance, down the dark slope of the mountain, a flicker of orange light blooms against the night. Then another. And another. Not campfires.

The burning homes of our people.

The siege has begun.

The sound that leaves Noah is not a word. It’s a low growl from the depths of his chest, the sound of a wolf seeing its territory violated. The last vestige of the southern duke is gone. In its place is the raw, unforgiving heart of the North itself.

He turns from the window. The fear for me is still in his eyes, but it’s now encased in a colder, harder substance: a wrath as vast as the mountain range at our backs.

“They want a war for a witch?” he says, his voice filling the cold stone room. “Then let them see how a mountain fights.”

His gaze finds mine, and in it, I see a terrifying promise. He will turn this entire fortress into a slaughterhouse to keep Greymont’s hands off me.

The first distant thud echoes through the stone floor. A battering ram? A catapult? The walls tremble.