"Love is the final battlefield."
That's what my mentor once told me, just before he carved his own name from every military record, burned his strategies, and vanished into the haunted wastes.
I used to think it was poetic nonsense.
Now, standing in the shadows of the Thorn Queen's palace, I'm not so sure.
The scent of war still clung to my cloak, smoke, iron, the last breath of dying men. Even after three days of travel, the stench of battlefield mud and ash hadn't left me. I didn't bother hiding it.
Let the court see it. Let the nobles whisper about the "half-blood warhound" the Queen dragged in from exile.
Cindergarde's walls had loomed black and jagged on the horizon when I arrived. The fortress-city looked like it was carved from the ribs of a dead god, its towers twisting upward in unnatural angles. Now I walked through its guts.
Stone hallways stretched like arteries, pulsing with a dull red glow from witchflame torches. Shadows flickered on the floor in distorted shapes, like antlers, like fangs. Someone thought they were clever, designing a palace that devours loyalty and breeds fear.
It would have impressed me ten years ago.
I stepped into the throne chamber without flinching. I didn't bow immediately. I let my eyes scan the room. Marble pillars. Ten guards. Four hidden blades under tapestries. Two nobles whispering near the archway, House Varyn and House Kaelthorn, if their rings were true. I remembered their colors from the last war.
And then I saw her.
She sat on a throne of twisted crimson metal. Not gold. Not stone. Thorns.
She wore them like a challenge.
Queen Elyra Nocthollow.
Younger than I expected. Pale, poised, and still as death. But her eyes were alive. Too alive.
They watched me the way a falcon watches a hare, not for fear, but calculation.
She knows what I've done.
She knows what I am.
And she summoned me anyway.
I knelt. Not out of loyalty. But because I wanted to see how long she would make me wait.
"I am Lirien Velcrath," I said. "You summoned me."
"You arrived quickly," she replied. "You expected the summons?"
"I expected desperation."
A flicker of something, amusement? annoyance? crossed her lips. The court shifted, uncomfortable, but she didn't speak again right away. She rose from her throne with deliberate grace, descending toward me like a blade unsheathed.
Each step echoed.
She stopped one breath too close.
She's testing proximity. Command presence. Eye contact.
This is a strategist's language. Not a monarch's.
"You understand curses, don't you?" she asked.
"I understand patterns."
She tilted her head.
"The Curse of Red Thorns," she said. "It twists love into ruin. Binds my bloodline to those we should never trust. You know the tale."
"I know the outcomes. Every Nocthollow ruler died mad or in love. Or both."
"And you still came."
Of course I did.
I didn't come for the crown. Or the court.
I came for the war.
"I came," I said, "because you're losing."
Silence followed. Thick. Heavy. But she didn't flinch. Neither did I.
Then she said: "I need someone who sees further than generals. Someone who will not fall victim to sentiment."
"And what makes you think I won't?"
"Because I've read your campaigns. You don't believe in sentiment."
She was wrong. I believed in it deeply.
I simply never let it live.
"You want me as your strategist," I said.
"I want you as my sword," she replied. "Sharp enough to cut through bloodlines. Cold enough to outlast temptation."
I studied her.
The Crimson Veil, her crown, pulsed faintly with arcane red. I could feel the curse humming in the room now, like a predator exhaling down my spine.
"Serve me," she said. "Or leave. But know this, if you stay, you may lose more than your life."
A warning? Or a lure?
It didn't matter. I already knew the shape of this battlefield.
"I accept," I said.
Not because I trusted her.
Because something deeper had stirred in me the moment I saw that throne of thorns:
Curiosity.
I've seen kings collapse. Armies fall. Empires burn. But I've never seen a ruler try to love through a curse designed to end her.
This will be a magnificent failure.
And I intend to be there when it happens.