Page 217 of Of Iron and Moonlight

“Yes.” Merrick’s voice carried an edge sharp enough to cut. “He will.”

“Where is the bastard?” Cairon growled, already rolling up his sleeves, ready to hunt the continent himself. Garric gripped his arm to hold him in place.

“No one knows.” Kora swallowed. “Ernst and Seraphine were captured when Wolmer ordered the arrests.” She looked at the angry, distraught faces around the canvased chamber. “Firrigan escaped.”

Duncan’s head lowered until the weight of him sagged fully against her. “I can’t bear any of this any longer.” The confession was barely audible, devastating in its honesty.

Words rose in Kora’s chest and stalled in her throat. She drew him closer instead, holding him tightly as silence filled the tent. No other answer felt sufficient.

“You can and you will, Duncan.” It was Merrick. Torchlight traced the hard lines of his face and the raw agony carved beneath his eyes. “I feel both losses as deeply as you do,” he continued, still refusing to look at any of them. “But there is a war that can only be fought in this moment. We have a lifetime, however long fate allows, to mourn afterward.”

His brown eyes, so like Isander’s, finally met Duncan’s. “That is what Alaric would have said.”

“Aye.” Osric stepped forward and settled a hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “Take a moment. Then we must fight. Ardor’s arrival helps, but we are still outnumbered without the Citadel.”

Duncan drew a long breath. One steady inhale. One controlled release. When he rose, he pulled Kora gently up beside him, still holding her hand.

“How did Brannoc fall?” Merrick asked. Rasped.

Kora listened in strained silence, trying to follow the torrent of words as the Council spoke over one another. Pieces gathered slowly in her mind: human soldiers with fae colors in their eyes, magic channeled through them like borrowed weapons. Fae ancestry. The thought sat heavily in her stomach, too vast to unravel in the fire of now.

Cairon set both hands against the edge of the table, bringing them back to the present. “We cannot fight this the way we would fight any other army,” he said. “Whatever we face out there has overturned every rule of the battlefield.”

“Bran had an idea before he…” Duncan began. The rest refused to leave his throat.

Osric looked at Duncan with quiet understanding and continued in his stead, “Each division of Valdir’s army is directed from a distance by a Norrelian fae stationed at Kryovarre’s camp,” he said. “We assume, if one of those fae dies, the compulsion over their entire unit should fail.”

“Without it,” Cairon added grimly, “they are nothing more than farmers holding swords.”

Kora felt a surge of horror at what the humans in Kryovarre’s army must be enduring. To wield a strange power they did not understand. To act against their own will.

“We cannot reach those fae without alerting them,” Duncan finally managed, though Kora felt his grip tighten around her fingers. “Their power is far greater than anything we have seen from Valdir’s soldiers.”

“Iron arrows,” Cairon offered. “We have a supply already, but I will have more forged.”

Rensaya leaned forward. “If they are coated in ashvael root powder, each strike will be more damaging. It is rare in Ardor, but there must be some we can still obtain.”

“Spread the archers wide,” Garric said, tapping the map with two fingers. “Strike from several directions so they cannot follow the origin of the shots.”

Merrick shook his head. “The moment the first arrow flies, the Norrelians will understand what we are doing,” he said. “After that, they will hunt the archers first.”

The tent fell quiet for a beat.

“There is no choice but to get close,” Merrick added.

“Merrick,” Duncan warned, fury lacing through his voice, “if you place yourself in that kind of danger, I swear by every cursed moon in the sky I will kill you myself.”

“Duncan,” Merrick snapped back, “if you make me sit idle while House derDobroiov claws its way back to power”—he jabbed a thumb toward himself—“then it will be I who kills you.”

Eamon absorbed the exchange between duke and criminal, with the composure of a man who had just seen the moons fall from the sky.

Kora slipped free from Duncan’s arm and stepped between them. One hand rested lightly against Duncan’s chest while the other lifted toward Merrick. “Please,” she said quietly. “This is not the moment for division.”

She glanced down at the map spread across the table. Wagons marked the supply lines behind Valdir’s army. The sight stirred a thought she had not fully formed until that moment. “If their strength depends on what they carry with them,” she said slowly, “then perhaps we should strike the wagons. Destroy the reserve before it reaches the field.”

“Arrows treated with smoked vaelthorn vine?” Cairon considered, rubbing his jaw.

“If we get close enough to—” Garric began.