The Ballroom
The dolls moved with precision.
Most of the audience watched the performance. Dot watched the story being told through it — the gestures, the weight of each movement, what the puppeteer was trying to say underneath the spectacle.
"It's something, isn't it," Astrid said, glancing at him.
Dot turned. "Yeah." A pause. "When do we get to see the one pulling the strings?"
"Not until the end."
He looked at her properly for a moment. "This isn't your first time. I can tell."
Astrid's hand went to her hair, turning a strand slowly. "When I was younger my mother and I used to visit a doll maker in Thornhold. The best there was. He performed at the castle — I can still remember how hard he made my father laugh." She smiled without meaning to. "My mother too."
"William," Dot said.
"William."
"We're going to find him." He watched her face. "Maybe you'll get to thank him."
Astrid turned to look at him.
"WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP."
Someone from the row behind them. Dot faced forward immediately.
"Sorry," he said.
Astrid pressed her lips together. Looked at her lap. Laughed quietly.
Somewhere in the Capital — An Alley
Garon drew Skógrimr.
The blade caught the dim alley light and held it differently than metal should — not reflecting it, absorbing it. The edge gleamed with something that had nothing to do with polish. Eight generations of proof humming in his grip.
Roan looked at it.
Something crossed his face. Not fear. Recognition.
"That blade." A pause. "That's it, isn't it."
Sable moved first.
Low and fast from the left, two short blades angled for his forearm not his body.
"Die, you—"
Skógrimr shifted in his hand before he consciously moved — grip adjusting, balance changing, the blade shortening slightly like it had already read the angle.
He caught the first. Turned the second off his forearm — close, the edge kissing his sleeve but not his skin.
No blood.
"Not bad for a girl," Garon said.
Sable reset. Frustrated this time. She'd expected one pass to be enough.
Roan still hadn't moved. Just watching. Reading.
Garon couldn't hear her feet.
Not quieter than normal — completely absent. No footfall at all. The alley was getting darker, the shadows thickening, and he had no sound to track her by.
Roan raised the crossbow.
The bolts gleamed green at the tip — whatever coated them, when it landed it didn't just pierce. It dissolved. The arrow. The material it hit. Both gone in seconds.
The first bolt came fast. Garon caught it on Skógrimr's flat — redirected it, the bolt skipping off the blade and narrowly missing Roan's face.
Roan didn't flinch.
Garon charged straight at him.
Roan let him come — used his momentum, pulled him off balance, fed him directly into Sable's angle.
She was already there.
The blade caught his shoulder. Shallow. Fast.
Blood.
Roan inhaled slowly. The crossbow came up again, firing at speed — bolt after bolt, the green tips burning through whatever they touched. A bystander threw open a window above them.
"What's going on out—"
A bolt dissolved the window frame. The man disappeared back inside screaming.
Garon's eyes lit blue.
He went up — Skógrimr propelling him, using the blade's resonance to push off the alley wall, the crossbow bolts tracing where he'd been a half second behind. He landed between Roan and Sable, closer than either of them expected.
Skógrimr responded.
Not to the wound. To the blood — to the bloodline, eight generations fresh in Garon's veins. The blade brightened. A low resonance moved through the metal, through his hand, up his arm, into his teeth before he heard it.
The aura came off him without announcement. Blue. Low. The kind that doesn't ask permission.
Roan stepped back. First time he'd moved backward in the whole fight.
"Still want to keep going?" Garon said.
Sable came again — no sound, no warning, the phantom step bringing her in from his blind side.
But Garon wasn't tracking her by sound anymore.
Skógrimr turned toward her before his eyes confirmed the movement. Like a compass settling on north. She overextended by half a step — he read it through the blade before his body knew to respond — redirected her and put her against the alley wall with the edge at her throat.
She went very still.
Roan stopped.
Nobody moved.
"Call it off," Garon said.
"You won't kill her." Roan's voice was flat. "She's my only daughter."
"Try me."
Roan looked at his daughter. At the blade. At the boy holding it with both blue eyes and eight generations of something he hadn't expected to see tonight.
"Tell whoever hired you," Garon said. "Garon — prince of Greenwood — won't go home until his promise is kept. Pass that on. Or I deliver the message in pieces."
A long pause.
Roan said one word to Sable.
She stood down.
Garon stepped back. Let her cross to her father. Then walked back toward the capital entrance without looking behind him.
Roan watched the blade until it rounded the corner and disappeared.
He looked at his crossbow. At the bolts he hadn't fired. At the buildings behind him still quietly dissolving where the green tips had landed.
"That was Skógrimr," Sable said.
"Yes."
"Should we—"
He looked at the corner.
"He's a good kid."
Sable stared at him. "Don't tell me one fight changed your entire personality."
"No," Roan said. Smirking slightly at the dissolving wall beside him.
Knights' voices echoed from the far end of the street — drawn by the noise, by the melted stonework, by the window frame that was no longer there.
The Red Fangs were already gone before the first torch rounded the corner.
The Ballroom — Backstage
The show ended.
Dot and Astrid moved through the thinning crowd toward the stage, excusing themselves past people who were in no hurry to leave.
Outside the backstage door a middle-aged man stood alone, smoking. He looked at the door. Looked at his smoke. Chose the smoke.
"William—" Dot called from inside.
The man turned.
"Astrid — is that him?" Dot asked.
Astrid looked up, still catching her breath.
"That's not him," she said. Frustrated. Signed.
Then Cottage crashed through the side door carrying enough weapons for four people, panting, eyes wide.
"Guys. I may have brought all of this inside and I think we're about to get arrested."
"How do you know that name?" the man outside said.
They all looked at him.
"William is my father's name," he said. "Was."
Astrid went still.
"Jeffrey," she said quietly.
He squinted at her. Stepped closer. Tilted his head.
Then — recognition. Slow, and then all at once.
"Astrid." He almost laughed. "Princess Astrid. Don't tell me you've gone rogue."
"Jerk," she said.
She punched him.
Not lightly. Cottage and Dot both flinched backward at the same time.
Jeffrey touched his jaw. Let out a genuine laugh.
"You've gotten stronger."
"Guys — let's go," Astrid said, already walking. "He's a waste of time."
"Hold on," Dot said.
"Dot—"
"We still need to know if he can help us." He turned to Jeffrey. "Do you know anything about the witches?"
The air changed.
Jeffrey's expression closed like a door shutting.
"Brat." He grabbed Dot by the collar. "Be careful what you say out loud."
"You do know," Dot said. Calm. Still.
Jeffrey held him there for a moment.
Then let go.
He turned back to his smoke.
"Not going to happen," he said. "Take your girlfriend and go. She's already tired of waiting."
Silence.
Then — a sound that didn't belong. High and thin and fast, cutting through the air.
Dot's fist moved before anyone else registered it — a single motion, breaking the projectile mid-flight, the pieces scattering across the cobblestones.
Everyone froze.
Two figures stepped out of the dark at the end of the alley.
The Hound. Both axes loose in his hands, swaying slightly. Easy. Like he had all night.
Whisper beside him, smiling the way she always smiled — like she already knew how it ended.
"Long time," the Hound said.
Dot's fist was still raised. Slowly he lowered it.
His jaw tightened.
"You," he said.
Astrid and Cottage moved without being asked — stepping into position, weapons or no weapons, the instinct of people who had been through enough together to know what a stance means.
To Be Continued…