Chapter - 11 Ashbound Accord

“You’ll return to the war council on the tenth.” Aldric Solmere had made the decision for her.
Three weeks after the soil closed over Hercules’s grave, he appeared in her room one morning with the summons already written and no room in his voice for argument.

“I’m not ready,” she whimpered, dark crescents hanging under her eyes.

Flare heard the rumors even inside her room: The Champion who ran. She’d heard it said a dozen different ways since the funeral—cruel, almost pitying. Nobody said it to her face, but palace guards straightened a little too formally when she passed. Sparring partners who used to chat with her freely kept their eyes fixed on their own training. She hadn’t seen Master Orin for a month.

“You don’t have the luxury,” he said. “Every week you stay in this house hiding, the rumors get louder. You want them to stop? You don’t get there by hiding. You get there by showing what you’re still capable of.”

She hadn’t argued. There hadn’t seemed to be much point.

The war room hadn’t changed: same long table, scarred from decades of use; same map of the continent stretched taut across it; same tired, important faces.

What had changed was how those faces looked at her now.

A month ago, they’d seen a Champion—untested, but full of promise. Young and bright. Now, they saw a liability wearing the title, their expressions aghast.

General Shgrove stood near the map as she entered, arms crossed. She didn’t know him—not really, beyond his name and his reputation—but the set of his jaw told her everything he thought of her presence here.

“Champion.” Her father’s voice was formal in front of the council. “You’re up to date on the southern reports?”

She wasn’t. She took the offered seat and let the briefing fill in what her sniveling had cost her.

“Kaldreth has a new ruler,” said one of the eastern envoys, tapping the map. “Calls himself Kaldreth-Vahn now—took the nation’s own name as his title.”

“A coup,” Shgrove said.

“A bloody one. He’s spent the months since executing what’s left of the old court.”

“And there’s Serevine.”

“Their civil war finally burned itself out. One faction left standing: a commander named Thessaly Draor. Won by outlasting everyone else from what our people can tell, not by winning anything cleanly.”

Flare’s father set both hands flat on the table. “Three weeks ago, they signed a treaty with each other. They’re calling it the Ashbound Accord.”

“Against who?” Flare asked.

“Against us.”

The room went quiet at that. Not fearful, she noticed—amused, even.

“With respect,” said a portly official, “one nation just crawled out of a coup and the other just finished eating itself alive. What exactly are two broken states meant to threaten us with?”

“They think we’re weak,” Shgrove said. “They’re wrong. But wrong assumptions still start real wars.”

“Wrong about what, precisely? We haven’t lost a war in living memory.”

“We haven’t fought one in living memory,” Flare said, her eyes still on the reports.

That earned her a few surprised glances—that she’d spoken at all.

“Word of Hercules’s death reached both within days,” her father said. “Word that his successor is young and untested reached them not long after. That’s not a coincidence of timing. That’s the whole reason they think now is the moment.”

Flare felt the sentence hit her right beneath her lungs, though he hadn’t meant it unkindly—just fact again. Everyone in the room already knew it; he was only the first to say it out loud.

“Complacency,” Shgrove said into the silence that followed, “is exactly how strong nations lose wars they were never supposed to lose.”

Nobody argued with him outright. But nobody in that room, Flare could tell, actually believed him either.

She wasn’t sure she did. But his certainty unsettled her more than the council’s confidence reassured her, and she carried that unease home with her that evening, unable to shake it.

Her mother, Lady Miriess, had gathered a small circle in the receiving room. Aunt Seraphina sat among them with the effortless composure she always carried, her two children half-asleep against the cushions beside her. Seraphina was her father’s younger sister—slender and striking even now, with the same red hair as Flare, though styled in the elaborate way she’d favored since Flare was small. Beside her, Flare’s mother took up twice the space and moved with twice the effort, sinking heavily into her chair.

Flare lingered in the doorway a moment, unnoticed.

“Accord or not,” Seraphina was saying, swirling wine she hadn’t touched, “I can’t imagine either of those broken little nations seriously believes it can take Luthain.”

“Of course they don’t,” her mother agreed. “Luthain doesn’t lose wars. We haven’t in living memory.”

“We haven’t fought a real one either,” Flare said, stepping in.

Both women turned. Neither seemed to know quite what to do with her for a second—wearing the same careful, uncertain look she’d gotten used to over the last month, though at least it wasn't the pitying kind.

“Champion.” Seraphina recovered first, waving her toward a seat. “Come. You look thin. Warrior God or not, a woman should always look charming.”

“You don’t say my daughter isn’t charming—”

“That’s not what I mean,” Seraphina said. “She’s trying way too hard. I can tell. The men should do their jobs properly, I say.”

Flare sat. “The council thinks Kaldreth and Serevine are actually preparing.”

“Let them prepare, then.” Her mother waved a heavy hand as if swatting a fly. “Two nations that can barely hold themselves together, throwing what’s left of their armies at us. It’d almost be funny.”

“Hercules is dead,” Flare said, her voice quieter. “That’s why they think now’s the moment. Because the Champion who’s left is—” She stopped before finishing the sentence.

Her mother’s face shifted, hardening as old irritation surfaced beneath what was supposed to still be fresh grief.

“Hercules,” Miriess said, “was a concubine’s son who was handed a title that should have stayed with true Solmere blood from the start. It’s a tragedy he died the way he did, but let’s not pretend it weakens this family. You are pure Solmere, Flare—on both sides. He never was.”

“He was still my brother.”

“He was your father’s mistake’s son. And that woman’s, besides.” Her mouth thinned. “That witch always did have a way of making people forget where a bloodline’s supposed to begin and end.”

“Lady Borghanai is not a witch, Mother.”

“She’s whatever.” Miriess waved the distinction off. “I never trusted her. Not since the day your father brought that boy into this house. Even from what I saw of you at the funeral …”

Flare said nothing. Her throat had gone tight.

Seraphina softened her voice, sensing the shift. “Your mother only means you carry the truer blood. Nobody blames you for what happened out there, darling. You went in as the Champion, same as you should have. Whatever went wrong wasn’t your doing.”

“Everyone else seems to think it was.”

“Everyone else,” her mother said with the same certainty she’d used on the council’s warnings, “is full of frightened people looking for someone to blame. You’re not at fault, Flare. You’re the strongest thing this family has ever produced—purer blood than that boy ever was. I won’t have you carrying guilt that was never rightfully yours.”

It should have felt like comfort. Flare waited for it to settle into her like relief and found only a colder unease instead.

She thought of Hercules flicking her forehead, telling her, half-serious, not to embarrass the family name. She excused herself not long after, claiming exhaustion, and sat alone in the dark with her mother’s voice ringing hollow in her ears.

Two broken nations. A treaty built on mutual desperation. A court too proud to imagine losing at all.

She’d spent years learning from textbooks how badly it could go.

She had a feeling Luthain was about to learn a lesson.