This is the final chapter I’ll be releasing for free on my website and serialized podcast. Thank you for joining me on this journey! It has been a joy to share this book piece by piece over the last 9 months.

If you have been intrigued by the story and want to read the last 28 chapters, the whole book is available in ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover options on Amazon, my website, and various other retailers.

In the previous chapter, the villain, Lord Salidar, successfully carried out a surprise raid on the royal palace, kidnapping Queen Adara and whisking her away on an airship crewed by hired sky pirates.

This happened despite Durrin Rendhart arriving at the palace earlier that day to warn the garrison. The commander in charge, Volthorn, had been suspicious of Durrin’s motives and had dismissed the warning as a false trail.

Durrin woke with a start. He jerked upright on his cot. Where was he? Why was everything dark?

Memories flooded back. After his disastrous meeting with Volthorn, soldiers had escorted him to a military barrack to remain under guard until he could be escorted from the province.

He hadn’t intended to comply, of course. His “cell” was only a room with a wooden ceiling. He had planned to burn his way out as soon as night fell, then backtrack to the castle to interrupt Salidar’s assault.

What had happened? He remembered lying down exhausted on his cot in the mid-afternoon, intending to take a short nap. Why hadn’t he awoken?

Durrin rolled off the cot. Igniting a flame in his hand for light, he peered under the bed. There it was: a small basin of liquid, hidden out of sight in the far corner—an aquamancy sleep aroma, most likely. Its fumes had subtly filled the room that afternoon, luring him into a deep sleep.

“Curse you, Volthorn,” Durrin muttered. He rose and went to the tiny window, listening. In the darkness, far away, he heard the panicked clanging of a bell.

“Captain!” he cried, rushing to the door and pounding on it. “Captain! You need to let me out!”

After a moment, an annoyed voice answered. “Captain’s asleep. This is Sergeant Barnum.”

“Sergeant, you must let me go! Someone’s attacking the palace!”

“What in Terramor’s tempests are you talking about?”

He didn’t have time for this. Talking his way out would take forever. Durrin stepped back into a one-legged crouch and spun, the other leg and his two arms kept straight out horizontally. Heat and energy sucked toward him from each corner of the room. Then he corkscrewed upright, channeling the vortex into the ceiling. Fire erupted from his outstretched hands, blasting into the dry wood.

“What’s going on in there?!” the sergeant shouted.

Durrin pulled back his hands. There was now a sizeable hole in the ceiling, the beams around it charred and smoking.

“Should have woken the captain,” Durrin said, then gathered energy into his legs and sprung up into the gap.

The night was dark, with a chill wind. Most of the streetlamps had long dried out. He ran across the rooftops, leaping over ten-foot gaps without a second thought. The palace lights twinkled ahead of him, half a mile away. Half a mile! Why did that rock-headed korrik put him so far away? He increased his speed.

The clanging of the bell grew louder. Something was afire on the right side of the palace—the side with the royal wing.

His lungs were burning. How long ago had the attack begun? Three minutes? Five? The raid would be startlingly quick if executed properly, especially if Grimbo’s liquidation grenade worked like he said it would.

He redoubled his pace, energy surging around him as the flame in his heart soared. He came to a wide street but cleared it easily, landing with a tumble on the rooftop beyond and rolling back into a run.

Shouting and the clash of weapons sounded up ahead as the palace acropolis rose in front of him. He powered into the ascent, springing from rock to rock, flaring the flames in his hands to better see footholds. The slope increased until it became a cliff, and Durrin scrambled up the face, carried by the wave of momentum.

He reached the top of the cliff and clung to the stonework of the palace wall, his lungs heaving for breath. His hands and arms stung from half a dozen scrapes and lacerations.

As he craned his head upward to find a route of ascent, movement caught his eye. A vast shadow floated in the skies above him, drifting away from the palace as it climbed in altitude. Somewhere above him, a voice bellowed the queen’s name.

Durrin collapsed, sinking down with his back to the wall, his legs dangling over the drop. He hung his head between his arms, gasping for air with every ragged breath.

He was too late.

* * * * *

Adara woke slowly from one nightmare into another.

First she became aware of her mouth. It was gagged, with a taut, nasty-tasting cloth digging into the sides of her cheeks. Then she registered the thongs digging into her wrists and ankles.

The cold hit her next. She was shivering uncontrollably, with goose bumps all over her arms and legs. Chill autumn air swept over her, stripping away any shreds of warmth. It was the cold that convinced her she was no longer dreaming.

Adara finally cracked open her eyes, but she saw nothing but darkness. Had she gone blind? Slowly, the darkness gave way to vague shapes. Before her stretched the gondola. Dark figures crouched huddled along its deck.

A thick silence hung everywhere. Adara could almost feel it weighing on her. As hard as she strained her ears, she couldn’t hear anything: no wind, no creak of air against canvas, no breathing—only the dull thud of her own heart.

Coldness. Darkness. Silence. A tingle started at the hairs of her neck, rippling up her spine and down her limbs. Coldness. Darkness. Silence. Was this what it was like in the Void?

As panic threatened to take hold, engrained habits kicked in.

Breathe. Release.

Adara focused on her breaths, though they came stifled through her nose.

Light.Breathe. Darkness.Release.

Memories from the attack ripped through her. She saw, again, the avir falling with an arrow in his shoulder, the Hakiru shoving her toward a basket.

Hope. Breathe. Fear. Release.

Awful reality sunk upon her. She’d been kidnapped, spirited out of her own palace. Now she lay at the mercy of a barbarous race from the far north, a people that gave no thought to taking lives at night. Would they torture her? Kill her?

Death at night. . . . The fear of it threatened to consume her, crowding out her attempts to calm herself. Visions of demons and endless agony coursed through her.

Breathe. Breathe again. What was the opposite of death?

She shivered in the dark, gripped by terror.

“Well, well,” a voice murmured, the sound muffled and sluggish. “Look who’s awake.”

She struggled to turn her head. In the darkness, she could make out no more than the outline of a tall human standing above her. Unlike the rest of the pirates she had heard, he spoke Lurrian fluently, with the accent of a high-bred aristocrat from Calamar.

“I hope your night has been pleasant.” Condescension dripped from his voice. “And I hope your finances are in order. Your kingdom will have to pay a pretty sum to get you back.” He stooped at Adara’s level, his voice falling to little more than a hiss. “That is, assuming no accident befalls you in the meantime.”

The hairs tingled on the back of Adara’s neck again. What did he mean by accident?

The shadow of a snippen approached. The Calamarvan straightened and turned. “Yes?”

“Keep silence, Your Excellency,” the snippen said. Her voice also seemed to come slowly through the air. “Griffins may be near.”

The Calamarvan waved his hand. “You doubt the efficacy of my verbomancy needlessly. No one can hear this ship.”

“We fear the wind,” the snippen said. “It carries sound far, even when muffled by magic.” As she spoke, a gust rocked the cloudship. Adara toppled onto her side, unable to catch herself with her hands tied. Something cold hit her cheek. A snowflake?

The buckling deck had no effect on the snippen, but the Calamarvan stumbled, his hand searching for a handhold.

Another human walked up. “This be a wintah gale coming in,” he warned. “If we don’t land in the next hour, be’en discovered will be the least of our worries.”

“Is this a ship on the open sea instead of the sky?” the Calamarvan demanded. “Are we threatened by waves or rocks? What prevents us from simply flying with the wind?”

Another gust rocked the gondola. Adara’s stomach lurched as the ship got sucked into a sudden updraft.

“Yeh don’t brave a winter gale in a cloudship,” the other human said. Adara struggled to place his accent. Dorinian? “It’s madness! The slightest change in air could send us rocket’n up or down. We could be driven miles off course, sent crashing into the Mitrian Mountains, or ripped t’ pieces by hail.”

“I say we’re landing,” the snippen declared.

The Calamarvan folded his arms. “Landing with a queen that the whole kingdom is looking for?”

“Aye. We’re over hill country. There are plenty of places to stow ourselves unseen until the storm blows over.”

The Calamarvan turned his back. “I see you are determined. Carry on.”

The snippen began barking orders to the crew in a foreign tongue. Soon the ship was alive with activity.

Amid all the commotion, the Calamarvan stood like a monolith, silent and brooding, barely visible in the dark. Then he turned to Adara. “If you think this is your chance for rescue, Your Majesty, you are sadly mistaken. No one beyond this ship has the faintest idea where you are.”

Adara could scarcely focus on his words as a new gust of air rocked the ship. She shivered from the cold and the terror. Every inhale brought freezing air into her lungs. She grasped at the pain, letting it guide her thoughts.

Despair.Release. Hope.Breathe.

Though her mouth was gagged, her mind filled with an unspoken, desperate prayer:

Father of Stars, hear me!Shower thy peace on my heart.Give me the aid of angels!Guide me. Help me. Save me!

In response, her heart filled with a single, quiet phrase. It was a phrase she knew well. Her father had spoken it, long ago.

You are stronger than your fears.

Was she?

* * * * *

Durrin’s heart bubbled with wrath. He hated everything. He hated Elandria for getting caught up in this war. He hated Salidar for lying to him. He hated Halorn for telling him the truth. He hated Commander Volthorn—oh, how he hated Volthorn! Prideful, stubborn, stiff-necked reptile!

But most of all, Durrin hated himself.

He stood at the edge of the Silvermoss, staring into the gloom of the night. The cloud frigate had disappeared an hour before, but a new flight of griffins still left in pursuit every few minutes. The light from a city too worried to sleep illuminated the golden undersides of their wings as they sped into the gathering storm. The wind whipped at Durrin’s cloak, bringing the first whisps of snow.

Why had he even come to this city? What did he really think he could accomplish?

The trot of a horse heralded someone’s approach.

“Ah—Durrin!” said a voice he wished he had never heard. “I thought I might find you around here.”

“Go away, Cymer,” Durrin snapped.

The avir didn’t leave. He dismounted and stepped up beside Durrin, looking across the river as well. “I just arrived at the city,” he said, his voice somber. “The night watch filled me in.”

Durrin didn’t respond.

“What do you think?” Cymer asked after a long silence. “Will they find her?”

Durrin shook his head. “The night is too dark, and with a verbomancer onboard, the Hakiru can travel unheard. And even if they are found, Salidar will not let Queen Everborn escape alive.”

A gust of freezing wind wrapped Durrin’s cloak around his legs. He felt no cold. The smoldering anger inside him made sure of that.

“You knew their plans?” Cymer asked.

Durrin nodded miserably. “I helped make them. But I tried to stop it. I tried, Cymer! I risked my life facing Salidar. I rode forty miles in half a day. I met with dozens of guards and talked my way into the very palace—for what? To be insulted, ignored, and incarcerated by your own chief commander! I tried, Cymer. I tried and I failed.”

A minute passed in silence, the only sound that of the river, ceaselessly flowing down its destined course. Eventually, Cymer walked back to his horse, rummaging for something in his pack.

Durrin hung his head. He had failed. He had botched his chance to rewrite the scroll of his life. He was exactly what Volthorn said he was—a spy and a murderer, doomed for the pits of the Void.

“Ah, here we are,” Cymer said.

Durrin turned. The old avir had laid a cloth bundle on the ground and was unwrapping it. There, in a broken heap, lay the shards of Cymer’s porcelain oil lamp. The half face of a shattered angel stared up from the pile.

“Tell me, Durrin,” Cymer said, spreading out the pieces. “What is justice?”

Durrin’s eyes roved across the fragments. In the wreckage of the lamp, he saw his own life—broken, jagged, and shattered into more pieces than he could ever hope to fix. He saw seven years of imprisonment. He saw a career cut short. He saw the Void lurking in every shadow of his future. And finally, he understood.

“I once thought I didn’t follow any laws. I thought I could do what I pleased, take what I wanted. But like the lamp, I do follow laws—unchangeable laws. If the lamp is dropped, it will fall and break. That is justice. Justice is facing the consequences of the law.”

“You are right,” said Cymer. “So what was just that you receive for what you did seven years ago?”

Tears began to well up in Durrin’s eyes as he stared at the broken lamp. “The laws of the Sun are irrevocable. Murderers, thieves, assassins—these cannot enter there. It matters not if we understand the law or not. That is the law. That is justice.”

Cymer nodded.

Durrin snapped his head up. “But then you lied last night! You said I could change the scroll of my fate!”

Cymer nodded again. “I did.”

“Then how?”

Cymer picked up the largest shard of the lamp. He turned it over in his hands, handling it gingerly to avoid slicing his fingers on the jagged edges. “Do you remember what you said about justice, right after I broke this lamp?”

The memory from Irongate Isle flashed across Durrin’s mind. “I said that the world is never just.”

“Do you still believe that?”

Durrin thought over his life. He had murdered a king in innocent blood—a horrible act, an act that deserved the most severe consequences. And they had come. Imprisonment for seven years. War upon his nation, claiming the lives of his friends. Losing everything he had aspired to become. And he completely deserved it all.

Once, he had seen the world as vindictive and cruel, dealing out success and failure arbitrarily unless you were strong enough to bend life to your will. But now he saw that all the misery of the last seven years was but the effect of pure, unyielding justice. And that was a prospect far more terrifying.

“Not anymore,” Durrin whispered. “I see now that the world is always just.”

“Ah,” said Cymer, sounding almost eager. “Is it?”

Once again, a memory came to Durrin. “In the prison. After I said things are never just, you agreed with me. Then you said, ‘and that is what gives me hope.’ What did you mean?”

Cymer’s eyes sparkled. “Ah. That is the great secret. Tell me: what is mercy?”

“Mercy is—” Durrin paused, then shook his head. “I guess I don’t truly know.”

Cymer looked down at the shards of his lamp, then spoke a command in the Numinous Tongue. “Et evinal, al Abeam!”

Light streamed from Cymer’s hands, weaving around the pile of broken fragments. The shards began to reform, stacking on top of each other in a perfect reversal of their smash, until they coalesced into a perfect whole in Cymer’s hand.

“That,” Cymer said, proffering the lamp to Durrin, “is mercy.”

Stunned, Durrin took the lamp, turning it over in his hands as he stared at it in unbelief. Not a single crack was evident, not a single chunk missing. “How—where—” he stammered. “No magic in the world can do such a feat!”

“That is because all your life, you have studied only the arcane manceries,” said Cymer. “But there is a deeper force. It goes by many names. In the Luminant Order, we simply call it the Light.”

“The Light,” Durrin repeated, still studying the lamp in wonder.

“It is the source of all creation, the wellspring of all life. By it, the Seven Noble Stars shaped the world at the dawn of time. From it, the arcane manceries draw their power. Through it, all laws are enforced.”

Durrin struggled to wrap his mind around Cymer’s words. “If what you say is true, then one who wields the Light can control anything!”

“Yes,” said Cymer. “But there is only One who controls the Light. I command it not, neither does any other mortal. It is controlled only by the King of the Sun, the one we call the Eldest.” His eyes turned bright blue with joy. “It is by the Light that all laws are enforced. That is justice. But by the same power, laws can be reversed. What is broken can be mended. What is wrong can be set right. What is condemned . . .” He looked at Durrin meaningfully, “. . . can be redeemed.”

Something bright flickered within Durrin. “Then I can be forgiven?”

Cymer nodded. “You can.”

Durrin’s heart leapt within him, the flicker growing to fill him with a new resolve.

“What must I do?”

“You have asked this question before,” Cymer said. “The answer is the same.”

“I must do what I know I must?”

Cymer nodded.

Durrin set down the lamp. “Then I go to rescue a queen.”

You’ve reached the end of the chapters published for free on my website and in my newsletter. Thank you so much for reading!

If you have been intrigued by the story and want to read the last 28 chapters, the whole book is available in ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover options on Amazon, my website, and various other retailers. Prices start at $5.99 for the ebook.

What comes next? Over the summer, I’ll be sharing some clean book recommendations, behind-the-curtain numbers of what it’s like to publish and market a book, and some short stories featuring Twigly and her pirate crew. Stay tuned!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeremypmadsen.substack.com