“Aldrik? Fritz? Elecia?”

 He didn’t torture her. “All fine.”

 “Were they injured as well?” Vhalla asked as the cleric worked on the last of his stitches.

 “Not as of when I left.” Jax grinned. “I was the only one foolish enough to be willing to throw his life away to save a lovely lady in distress.”

 “Well, I’m glad you were unsuccessful in throwing it away.” Vhalla patted his shoulder, standing. “Go to your room and rest when the cleric is finished.”

 Jax looked utterly exhausted. Vhalla rubbed her own eyes tiredly. However worn she was, it was nothing to what the soldiers were facing at the front.

 As the battle outside slowly began to quiet, the noise within the government building grew. The cries and groans of men and women, engaged in a different sort of fight for their lives, filled her ears and punctuated Vhalla’s every order. These people were in her care, and she would do everything she could to protect and save them.

 Fritz was the next to return. Vhalla caught sight of him instantly as she had keep one eye on the door. She crossed over to him quickly, weaving through the men and women arranged on the floor of what was once her orderly medical station.

 “Fritz,” she breathed in relief.

 “Vhal.” He tiredly returned her embrace.

 “Thank the Mother you’re all right.”

 “You too, Vhal.” Her friend released her. “I was nervous something broke through.”

 She shook her head. “The army held the line.” She’d been asking messengers all night for reports on the state of the city. They hadn’t even lost one building. “What’s the status?”

 “The abominations are all dead. Aldrik is passing judgment on the remaining sorcerers now.”

 Vhalla glanced at the room. If the battle was winding down, there wasn’t likely to be another influx of people to attend to. The clerics had developed their own systems based on her original suggestions as the night had waned, and Vhalla felt confident leaving them to it.

 “Do you have a horse?” she asked her friend.

 Fritz nodded.

 “Stay here, get cleaned up.”

 He stopped her. “Where are you going?”

 “I should be there.” Vhalla shifted her arm to take his hand rather than gripping his wrist. “I need to be with him for this.”

 “Vhalla, do you understand—”

 “Of course I do.” She squeezed his fingers. “That’s why I must be there.”

 Her Southern friend smiled tiredly. “Go on then, Miss Empress.”

 Fritz let her go, and she was off. Vhalla appreciated that he hadn’t insisted upon going with her for her protection. She borrowed a sword from a soldier who would no longer need it, strapping it to her back. Even if the fight was over, she knew better than to charge unarmed into a battlefield. She had too much training now to even think otherwise.

 With just the one weapon and a leather jerkin, she struck a course northward. Given all the reports she’d been receiving, it seemed like the most logical location for her Emperor. A red sunrise streaked across the sky, mirroring the crimson land before her.

 The casualties had been heavy, heavier than she expected given the number of soldiers who had been in the Western force surrounding the city. But the hulking corpses of giant winged beasts offered a chilling explanation. Teeth longer than her body jutted out from their massive jowls. They had almost canine-like heads but with thick leathery skin pulled taut against oddly shaped muscles. Some had two arms, some had four, one even had six. They had the wings of a wyvern and scorpion-like tails. It was a creature that the Gods had never intended to exist, and the now-dormant crystals embedded in their bodies glinted like dull obsidian in the sunlight, slowly cracking into dust.

 A handful of men and women were surrounded, forced to their knees. Soldiers waited around them, sorcerers and Commons alike, ready to execute the traitors who had ridden in to kill them all on the backs of monsters. The lean figure of a man was mounted before the lot—an Emperor casting judgment on those who fought against his throne.

 “. . . forsake the false king.” Vhalla could hear Aldrik’s words as she approached. “Those who give information will be rewarded with their lives.”

 No one spoke.

 “You protect a coward,” Vhalla called out, announcing her presence. Aldrik turned in surprise as she rode up next to him. “You stand with a man whose power comes not through his own merit—as he would have you believe—but through theft.”

 “What would you know?” one of the kneeling sorcerers demanded, curiosity drawing the words from him.

 “I know all too well,” Vhalla replied quietly, “because I was the one whose powers he stole.”

 Now she had their attention.

 “Victor could not open the caverns on his own; he wasn’t strong enough to manage the crystals. I know because he needed me to help him do it. When he had what he wanted, he stole my magic to make him immune from the taint.”

 “Lies!” one sneered. “The taint only affects those of weak will, Commons, and lesser sorcerers.”

 Desperation carved the way for stupidity in the hearts of men.

 “You can’t possibly believe that. Is that what Victor has told you? That you are the strong ones and immune?” She shook her head with a bitter sorrowful laugh. “He has written you off as expendable with his lies.”

 “Are you really the Windwalker?” a timid voice asked from among them.

 “I was.” Vhalla spoke only to the man who had asked. “I was the Windwalker until he stole my powers. Now I am a Commons. It was my magic that unleashed this monster upon the world—”

 “Vhalla . . .” Aldrik had a cautionary note.

 “—but because of that, no one will fight harder than me to do what is necessary to right that wrong.” The words hurt. They hurt like the wind still hurt on her cheeks, plain and un-magical. But it was finally the right kind of hurt. The hurt of a confession that needed to be said. “This is but a night. The sun will rise again, and I stand with the dawn.”

 She looked to the Emperor. His eyes were a chameleon over the past few weeks, constantly changing to match the woman she was becoming.

 “Who will stand with the sun?” He tore his eyes away from her to make his final demand.

 The man who had asked his timid question stood slowly. “A false king sits on a false throne.”

 “You disgrace sorcerers,” another loyalist spat. “You’ll follow a liar and a Commons.”

 “Strength channels its own magic,” the man said in reply, looking directly at Vhalla.

 “Who else will stand with us?” Vhalla demanded.

 Two more stood.

 “Why take pity on them?” a Western soldier finally spoke. “They fight against your Empire. Put them to death.”

 “Because a wise woman taught me that no soul is beyond saving,” Aldrik replied easily.

 Vhalla’s chest tightened, instantly thinking of Larel.