Chapter 230
Power shifts quietly at first.
In glances.
In pauses that stretch a second too long.
And, sometimes, in smoke.
Two days after the council vote passed, training attendance doubled. Women who once watched from afar now laced boots and strapped gloves like warriors born. The sparring grounds buzzed with energy—and something else. Something uneasy.
The celebration hadn’t lasted long.
I first noticed it when I entered the west courtyard and smelled it—smoke, faint but wrong. Not wood. Not fire pit. Acrid and chemical.
Then I saw the panic.
One of the training tents had caught fire. Not a spark, not an accident—a full blaze. The canvas had curled in on itself, blackened and collapsing, gear scorched and unsalvageable.
Ella and Mari were already there, buckets flying, hands blistered.
“What the hell happened?” I demanded.
“We don’t know,” Ella shouted over the crackle of flames. “The tent was clear an hour ago. No one was inside. We came out and it was like this.”
Someone else ran forward—Lila, eyes wide. “The storage crate with the practice weapons—it’s gone. All of it.”
My heart dropped.
This wasn’t a mishap.
This was a message.
I stormed into what remained of the other tent, where we stored emergency supplies. Someone had slashed the lining with a blade. Clean. Intentional.
Sabotage.
I turned, eyes scanning the courtyard. Roman was already approaching from the far side, a hard expression on his face.
He reached me in seconds. “Everyone’s safe?”
“Yes. Barely.”
“I checked the borders. No sign of outside interference.”
I met his eyes. “That means this wasn’t Blackfang. This was us.”
His jaw ticked. “Someone inside.”
A few warriors began combing through the area. Mari wrapped a cloth around her singed forearm. Nessa stood silently in the back, lips pressed into a thin line.
And suddenly, I was furious.
Not afraid.
Furious.
By midday, Roman had interrogated three stablehands and two apprentices—none had answers, and none had seen anything suspicious.
Ella, practical as ever, handed me a flask of water and a report.
“Nothing stolen from the east shed,” she said. “But the crates closest to the fence line were marked with red chalk.”
I frowned. “Chalk?”
She nodded. “A single X. I wiped it, but it was fresh. Maybe a signal.”
“Or a sign to other conspirators,” I murmured.
The more I turned it over in my head, the clearer the pattern became. Someone wanted to scare us out of progress. Sabotage the sessions. Make the women second-guess their safety.
And whoever it was, they weren’t working alone.
I was about to head toward the records cabin when Nessa jogged up to me, slightly out of breath.
“Luna,” she said quietly, “you should come. It’s Elder Malric. He’s missing.”
I blinked. “What?”
She nodded, voice low. “He never returned to his quarters last night. His apprentice says he got a note about a late meeting. But no one knows who called it.”
Roman arrived behind us. “I just heard.”
I turned to him. “Did you know Malric had any allegiance to Halrick’s group?”
Roman shook his head. “He voted with us last session.”
I chewed my lip. “Could be punishment. Or cover-up.”
We sent two scouting teams out to search the surrounding woodland. I went with the second team, tracking through the thick forest that lined the south border. Every snapped twig felt suspicious. Every shadow hummed with warning.
But we found nothing.
No scent. No tracks. No signs of a struggle.
Vanished.
And that was worse than death.
By nightfall, the packhouse felt… brittle. Like glass stretched too thin. The fire sabotage, the missing Elder—it had unsettled everyone.
Ella sat with me at the kitchen table, a steaming mug of tea between us, her expression dark.
“I don’t like this,” she muttered. “They’re pushing. Quietly. Too quietly.”
“They want us paranoid,” I said. “It’s working.”
“What do we do?”
I looked down at my hands. They didn’t tremble. Not anymore. “We move forward like nothing can shake us. We tighten patrols, but don’t announce it. We guard the training grounds—quietly. And we keep our eyes open.”
Ella nodded. “Want me to start a list of who’s been acting weird?”
I gave a small smile. “You already have one, don’t you?”
“Obviously.”
She slid a folded paper across the table. Names, behaviors, sightings. Halrick. Two captains. A stablehand who mysteriously got promoted after objecting to female patrol shifts. And one young advisor who had, according to Ella, “the subtlety of a feral squirrel.”
I studied the list. My stomach twisted.
Roman entered moments later, his presence instantly grounding me.
“Still no sign of Malric,” he said. “The scent trails lead nowhere. I’ve assigned silent trackers to follow known Halrick loyalists.”
I handed him Ella’s list.
His eyes scanned it. “Good.”
He looked at me, quiet for a moment. Then, “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “No. But I will be.”
He reached for my hand across the table. “We’re going to find out who did this. And we’re going to shut it down before anyone else gets hurt.”
“And if it’s one of the council?” I asked softly.
His voice dropped to a quiet promise. “Then they’ll find out what real consequence looks like.”
The next morning, I returned to the courtyard before the sun crested the hills. The burned tent had been cleared. A new one half-erected. The ash still stained the earth, but the air smelled clean.
Nessa stood alone in the ring, moving through combat forms with silent precision. She didn’t stop as I approached—just glanced, nodded, and continued.
“Early start,” I said.
She finished a sequence, exhaled, and faced me. “Didn’t sleep much.”
“Same.”
She hesitated. “You don’t think this is over, do you?”
“No,” I said. “But it’s started.”
Nessa looked back toward the packhouse. “They won’t stop until one of us bleeds.”
I looked her in the eye. “Then we make sure it’s not one of us.”
The sun rose higher, lighting the ash in gold.
Let them try to silence us with smoke.
We’d answer with fire.
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