Wed to the War King
CHAPTER 8: Bleeding Crowns
Kael's POV
The battlefield was a living nightmare.
Rain fell in icy sheets, turning the earth to a churning sea
of mud and blood. The screams of dying men and horses pierced through the
thunderous roar of clashing steel, the air thick with the stench of iron and
burning flesh. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the carnage in flashes of
ghostly white—bodies tangled in death, arrows protruding from shields like
spines on some monstrous beast.
I cut through the chaos, my sword arm burning with
exhaustion, my armor slick with rain and other men's blood. Somewhere in this
hellscape, Aria fought—her crimson cloak a beacon amidst the slaughter.
Then I saw it.
A glint of poisoned steel in the storm-dark.
"Aria!"
My voice was lost in the din of battle. The assassin—one of
Dainthar's last loyalists—lunged from the press of bodies, his blade aimed
true.
Aria turned, her sword flashing up—but too late.
The poisoned steel slipped between her ribs with a
sickening shunk.
Time stopped.
Her eyes—those brilliant, wildfire eyes—widened in shock.
The assassin twisted the blade with a snarl before I could reach them. My sword
took his head clean off, but the damage was done.
Aria collapsed into the mud, her blood spreading dark
beneath her.
The Fall
The healers' tent was a tomb.
Aria lay motionless on the bloodstained cot, her skin
already taking on a ghastly pallor. The poison worked fast—black veins
spiderwebbing from the wound, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.
Healer Lin's hands trembled as she pressed a poultice to the
injury. "The poison...it's northern wolfsbane mixed with something else.
Without the antidote—"
"Then find it!" My roar sent instruments
clattering to the ground.
Across the tent, Vareen's physician, old Harron, paled.
"The northern tribes guard their recipes jealously. Even if we knew the
ingredients..."
Aria's fingers twitched in mine, her grip weakening by the
second. I remembered those hands—how they'd wielded a sword with lethal grace,
how they'd traced the scars on my back with such tenderness just nights before.
Now they were cold.
The Broken King
For three days and nights, I became something less than
human.
Hour 1: I rode through enemy lines alone, my
sword singing as I carved a path to the northern shaman's tent. The old man
spat at my feet until I dropped to my knees in the dirt. "Please."
Hour 12: I stood before both war councils,
baring Aria's poisoned wound before them all. "Look!" I roared,
tearing open her bloodied tunic. "This is what your feuds have
wrought!" Ravensburn and Vareen lords alike flinched at the blackened
flesh.
Hour 36: In the library tent, I watched as
healers from both sides—who'd refused to speak for generations—bent over the
same crumbling scrolls. Their whispers blended together in desperate harmony:
"Mountain bloom...moonpetal..."
Hour 72: I held Aria's limp body as the shaman
administered the antidote, my unwashed hair sticking to her clammy skin. Her
breath hitched—then steadied.
When her eyelids finally fluttered, the cheer that rose from
the united camp shook the very earth.
I didn't hear it.
The Awakening
Aria's POV
Light.
Golden and warm, unlike the cold, clinical light I'd seen in
my fever dreams. It painted the tent canvas in hues of honey and amber, chasing
away the nightmares of poison and pain.
Voices reached me first—not the tense whispers of impending
death, but lively debate:
"—the moonpetal must be harvested at dawn to—"
"—agree, but combined with the mountain bloom's roots—"
I turned my head, the movement sending a dull ache through
my side.
Vareen's physicians sat elbow-to-elbow with Ravensburn
healers, their fine robes muddied and sleeves rolled up like common laborers.
Beyond them, soldiers from both armies mingled freely—a Vareen knight showing a
Ravensburn archer how to mend a bracer, a pair of young healers' apprentices
giggling over a shared bowl of stew.
And at my bedside, slumped in a chair never meant for
sleeping, was Kael.
His crown lay discarded in the dirt beside him, its silver
spikes dulled by mud and blood. His hands—those strong, sword-calloused
hands—were raw and blistered, his fingernails cracked and blackened as if he'd
dug through stone with them. Three days' worth of stubble shadowed a face gone
gaunt with exhaustion, dark circles bruising the skin beneath his closed eyes.
I reached out, my fingers trembling—
His eyes snapped open before I could touch him.
The Reckoning
The world stopped.
Kael's hands framed my face like I might vanish, his thumbs
tracing the hollows of my cheeks with unbearable gentleness. His breath came in
ragged bursts, his storm-gray eyes wild with three days' worth of unshed tears.
Up close, I could see the cracks in him—the bloodied
cuticles from digging through endless herbology texts, the tremor in his
shoulders from nights spent holding vigil, the split lip where he'd no doubt
bitten through the skin to stay awake.
"You idiot," I whispered, my voice rough with
disuse.
His laugh was half a sob. "Says the woman who took a
poisoned blade to the ribs."
I yanked him down by his collar.
Our kiss tasted of salt and desperation, of three days'
worth of terror poured into a single, shattering moment. His fingers tangled in
my hair, mine clutching his shirt hard enough to tear seams. Somewhere beyond
us, someone discreetly closed the tent flaps.
When we finally broke apart, Kael rested his forehead
against mine, his voice raw:
"Never do that again."
I nipped his lower lip, drawing blood. "Make me."
The Aftermath
We emerged at dusk to a transformed camp.
Where there had been two armies, now stood one—Vareen silver
and Ravensburn crimson mingled together at the cookfires, sharing stories and
songs instead of arrows and insults. A young healer's apprentice—her robes a
patchwork of both kingdoms' colors—rushed forward to press a joint salve into
my hands.
"From both kingdoms' herbs," she beamed.
"Stronger together!"
Kael's arm tightened around my waist as we surveyed our
people, his touch both possessive and protective. His whisper brushed my ear
like a secret:
"Worth almost losing you."
I elbowed him in the ribs. He kissed my temple. The soldiers
cheered.
And for the first time in centuries, the borderlands knew
peace.
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