For five years, Alaric Dain had been the name officers cursed over maps.
The Mad General. The man who marched through blizzards, shattered sieges before dawn, and treated impossible terrain as a suggestion. His black standard had carved through three provinces without a single defeat.
That ended last night.
The city burned until the sky turned to ash and red. His cavalry was swallowed by a meticulously laid trap. The northern line collapsed street by street, and the standard finally disappeared beneath smoke and falling stone. The last soldiers who saw him alive remembered him beneath a shattered wall, spear still in hand, blood running beneath his armor.
By sunrise, the enemy was searching every corpse.
They never found him.
A shutter rattled softly in the wind.
Inside the hidden room, the war had become distant thunder. Firelight from the city slipped through narrow gaps in the wood, staining the floor a dull orange. Alaric lay beneath a rough blanket with his armor gone and fresh bandages crossing his shoulder, ribs, and chest.
His black hair had come loose during the night. A streak of dried blood marred his jaw. Even unconscious, his hand rested by the edge of the mattress, fingers curled as if gripping a phantom weapon.
His eyes flew open.
Awareness returned almost violently.
Ceiling. Door. Window. No spear.
Then Honey.
His gaze stopped.
For several seconds, he simply looked.
The most feared general in the North was lying in an enemy's bed—stripped bare, stitched up by a stranger's hands, while his army burned outside.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself upward.
Pain caught beneath his ribs.
His palm locked against the mattress. Muscle tightened across his bandaged chest before he forced himself still, breath controlled through clenched teeth.
He didn't look away from Honey. Even bleeding, even pale and shaking with exertion, he looked lethal.
His voice came low, broken, scorched by smoke and blood loss.
Why did you save me?
