Chapter 3 THE CROWN'S MEN

~MARA ~

I pressed my back against the wall beside the window, my heart beating against my chest.

Down in the square, the torches cast long, violent shadows across the cobblestones. The soldiers moved like a pack of wolves, dragging men and women out into the cold night air.

I watched a young mother fall to her knees, weeping as two men in iron armor pulled her husband from their porch. He tried to pull back, but a soldier hit him across the face with the handle of his sword.

My stomach twisted into a hard knot.

My fingers slipped beneath my dress, finding the black ring hidden against my skin. I had taken it back after Mama went inside. 

I didn't know why….I only knew I couldn't leave it behind.

Growing up, the Crown was just a story. 

A ideational power that lived far away in the capital. But seeing them now, hearing their boots crunching on stone, the reality hit me.

They weren't here to protect Bellmere. They were hunting.

As the commander turned his horse, the torchlight caught the center of his chest plate.

An engraved silver mark glowed against the black steel….a sun with sharp, crooked rays spreading outward.

My breath caught.

The shape was terrifyingly familiar. It looked almost identical to the symbol carved into the black metal ring resting against my chest.

I reached up, pressing my hand over the ring. The metal felt ice cold through the fabric of my dress.

‘Where have I seen that shape before?’

Then my eyes dropped to the heavy leather packs strapped to the soldiers' saddles. Black iron cuffs hung from the leather. Thick silver chains lay next to them, and each link had a row of small, sharp teeth.

I had never seen weapons like them.

---

A hand gripped my shoulder, dragging me back from the glass.

"Get away from there," Mama snapped, her voice low and quick.

I turned. I had never seen my mother move like this. Her face was tight, her eyes darting across the small room as if measuring every inch of space.

She shoved the heavy wooden latch into place on the window shutters. Then she crossed the kitchen, checking the back door bolt, then the front door latch, and finally the heavy bar on the cellar door.

I stood in the center of the room, watching her fast, purposeful movements.

"You've done this before," I said quietly.

Mama froze with her hand on the front latch. "Done what?"

"Prepared."

She didn't answer. She was following a routine she had rehearsed a thousand times in her head.

Mama hurried into the small pantry at the back of the cottage.

She dragged the heavy sack of grain away from the corner, revealing the low wooden floor latch I had seen earlier tonight. But she didn't just open it….she lifted a hidden catch set into the floorboards next to it.

The entire section of the floor swung downward silently, revealing a narrow stone ladder leading deep into the pitch-black space beneath the house.

I stared at the gaping hole in the floor. "Where does it go?"

"Away from here," Mama said without looking at me.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you need." She reached out, her hand trembling as she grabbed my arm. "If they come to this door, you go down into that passage. You run until you smell the river, and you do not look back."

My heart dropped into my stomach. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me."

"I'm not leaving you!" The words burst out of me, fast and intense.

Mama’s calm expression cracked, raw pain breaking through her eyes. She grabbed my shoulders, her grip tight enough to bruise.

"If they see your eyes, you don't stay," she whispered fiercely. "You don't fight. You don't come back for me."

"Why?" I begged, tears burning the back of my eyelids.

"Because if they take you, I won't be able to get you back."

---

I took a step back, breaking her grip on my shoulders.

The pieces crashed together in my mind, forming a picture I had been too blind to see.

The scarf tucked tight around my neck every morning. The constant warnings to keep my head down. The hidden latch in the pantry. The box buried under the floorboards. The ring.

All of it had been leading to this.

"You knew this would happen," I whispered.

Mama didn't move.

"You knew they would come," I said, my voice hardening as the anger washed over my fear. "How long have you been waiting for them?"

Mama looked at me, her eyes twinkling in the dim light.

"Twenty-one years."

---

Outside, heavy boots made loud noises on the dirt road.

A loud crash from the cottage next door was followed by a woman's frightened scream and a soldier shouting.

Mama blew out the single candle on the kitchen table, plunging the cottage into complete darkness.

"Don't make a sound," she breathed into the dark.

We stood frozen side by side.

Slow, heavy footsteps came closer to our front porch. The floorboards outside creaked from the weight of the iron armor.

I held my breath, listening to the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

The footsteps paused right outside our door. Then, slowly, they changed direction and moved on down the lane.

---

In the pitch-black kitchen, I leaned close to Mama’s ear.

"What happens if they find me?" I whispered.

Mama didn't answer immediately. I could hear her shallow, uneven breathing in the dark.

"They don't take people like you to ordinary prisons," she said quietly.

Cold terror ran through my veins. "Then where?"

Mama looked at me, her voice heavy with a grief older than I was. "They have cages."

A sudden, piercing chill spread through my chest, burning through the fabric of my dress.

I reached inside my collar, my fingers wrapping around the black ring.

It was pulsing.

A slow, steady vibration ran through the metal, matching the beat of my pounding heart.

Mama’s breath caught in her throat. Even in the pitch-dark, she felt the shift in the air.

"Take it off," she ordered, her voice laced with panic.

I pulled the ring out from under my shirt. The symbol caught the faint moonlight coming through the shutter cracks…and for one heartbeat, I could have sworn the metal moved beneath my thumb.

Mama grabbed my wrist, her fingers icy cold. "Where did you find this? I threw the box in the fire!"

"It didn't burn!" I hissed back. "Mama, what is it?"

"They cannot see that," Mama breathed, her eyes wide with terror. "If they see that symbol…."

BANG.

The sudden blow smashed against the front door, shaking the entire wooden frame. I jumped, almost dropping the ring as my heart slammed against my ribs.

BANG

"Open the door," a voice boomed from the porch, cold and flat.

Mama didn't move. She stood rooted to the floorboards, her eyes locked on the trembling wood of the entrance.

She looked at me and pointed frantically toward the open passage in the pantry.

‘Run.’

I shook my head, taking a firm step toward her. I wasn't leaving her behind.

BANG.

"By order of the Crown."

Mama lunged forward, grabbing my arm to drag me toward the back of the cottage. Then the soldier spoke again, his voice cutting clean through the timber.

"We're looking for a silver-eyed girl."

---

My whole body went numb.

The air left my lungs in a cold gasp. I stopped dead in my tracks, staring at the front door as if a demon were standing on the other side.

I turned my head slowly to look at Mama.

She was looking back at me, all the color drained from her face, her lips parted in silent horror. And in that awful, quiet moment, the truth settled deep into my bones.

They weren't looking for an Ashborn.

They were looking for a girl with silver eyes.

They were looking for me.