A Blade for Her Name Part 4

The ashes still clung to Elira’s cloak when they reached the edge of the ghostlands.

They left Varnhold burning behind them—its vaults, its secrets, its execution orders—and entered a silence unlike any other. No birds. No wind. Just the soft crunch of frost-covered earth beneath their boots and the memory of Mael’s dying breath echoing like a curse in Vaelin’s ears.

Elira walked ahead. She hadn't spoken since the fortress.

Her true name had been sold. Her death written. Her childhood ghosts resurrected.

And now, they had to kill a king.

Vaelin followed in silence, his fingers brushing the spine of the kill ledger he now carried. Elira’s name—the one that meant the flame that endures—was still the only one written in it.

They reached the Whispering Span by dusk—a shattered bridge of floating stone that drifted over an endless chasm, held aloft by ancient spells Vaelin didn’t trust.

He watched her step lightly across the first hovering slab. Her movements were sure, but something about them felt… looser. Unmoored.

“Elira,” he called.

She stopped. Didn’t turn.

“Are you planning to walk off the edge?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t die. Not immediately.”

“Don’t joke like that.”

Her voice was flat. “I’m not.”

Halfway across, she finally said what had been building since Varnhold:

“I remember now. The day they buried my name.”

He stayed close beside her, careful not to disrupt the delicate drift of the stones beneath them.

“They took us to the Black Mirror Hall. Made us kneel. One by one. Said names were a weakness. Said we’d be safer without them.”

She paused. Her eyes were glass.

“But I wasn’t safer. I just couldn’t scream when they used me.”

Vaelin’s hands clenched. “If Kavros still breathes after this…”

“It wasn’t just him,” she said. “It was the Circle. It was the king who paid them. And now, he’s the one hiding behind the truce.”

They reached the other side.

“Then we tear the truce apart,” Vaelin said.

The royal court of Helmarath was built into the ribcage of a fallen stone colossus—an ancient giant slain in the age before memory. Its bones were blackened and fused into archways and watchtowers. The main hall, shaped like a hollowed sternum, housed the king’s throneroom: no windows, no echoes, only candlelight flickering against glass-veined stone.

They infiltrated during a masquerade.

Elira wore a gold-laced mask and silken cloak stolen from a noblewoman who would wake up in a broom closet. Vaelin wore the uniform of a duskblade sentinel, hood drawn low over his scarred face. Inside the ballroom, lords and spies danced in mirrored steps. No one noticed the pair slipping into the forbidden corridors behind the throne.

At least, not right away.

The king’s private sanctum was smaller than expected. Dim. Sparse. The walls bore no banners—only an enormous tapestry stitched with the ancient symbol of the Veiled Bloodline. Elira froze when she saw it.

“This is our crest,” she whispered. “Before we were erased.”

Vaelin checked the corners, silent.

On a marble pedestal, a single blade rested in an open case—jet-black, its edge etched with names.

Dozens of them.

Some crossed out. Others still waiting to be.

Elira leaned in.

“I know these names,” she murmured. “They were the others. The mage children.”

“Kill list,” Vaelin said. “And trophy.”

Footsteps echoed behind them.

They turned.

And the king entered.

He wore no crown. No armor. Just robes lined with spell-thread and a gold ring shaped like a serpent eating its own tail.

He stopped a few paces away, eyeing them both with something colder than disdain.

“Vaelin,” he said softly. “You always did choose your blades poorly.”

Then to Elira: “And you. I paid a kingdom’s ransom to erase you.”

Her voice was fire. “And I’m here for a refund.”

The king moved fast—too fast for a man his age. The moment he spoke a word in Old Bloodtongue, the room twisted. Magic surged. Reality bent sideways.

Vaelin and Elira split instinctively, dodging the first strike of arcane force that shattered the floor where they’d been standing.

What followed wasn’t a fight.

It was a reckoning.

Vaelin couldn’t get close—the king’s glyph-wards repelled steel. Every shadow Vaelin stepped into curled away from him. The magic knew what he was. What he’d done.

Elira fought with rage and precision. Her spells cracked stone and scorched the air, but they slid off the king’s wards like rain on obsidian.

Until she stopped using magic.

Until she ran.

“ELIRA!” Vaelin shouted.

She sprinted to the tapestry. Tore it down.

Behind it—an altar.

Not to gods.

To names.

Her name. The others. Each inscribed into a crystal tablet, locked in stasis.

A soul-bind circle.

“He didn’t kill them,” she whispered. “He bound them. Fed off them. I can feel them—screaming.”

The king turned, smiling.

“I didn’t destroy your kind, girl. I preserved you.”

She stepped into the circle.

It lit beneath her feet. The air trembled.

“Vaelin—”

He was already moving.

He leapt onto the pedestal, grabbed the black blade, and hurled it toward her.

She caught it.

The king’s spell shattered as the blade—her blade—cut through the circle’s anchor.

Light exploded outward.

The magic, the bindings, the names trapped in stasis—all of it cracked, bled, broke.

The king screamed.

And Elira spoke her name aloud.

The room heard it.

The world felt it.

Then she cut him down.

They didn’t speak for a long time afterward.

The sanctum burned behind them, black fire consuming the names etched into the walls. Only one remained.

Elira.

Not crossed out. Not buried.

Just… written.

Vaelin handed her the ledger again.

“You want to add his name?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I want this book to end with mine.”

“You sure?”

She looked at him, her voice low.

“Because the rest of the names? I’m going to free them. I don’t care if it takes years.”

Vaelin nodded.

“Then I’m with you.”

They walked into the dawn together.

Not cleansed.

Not healed.

But whole.

Together.

And behind them, the pact that once bound them to death now tied them to purpose.

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All Parts of the Series

A Blade for Her Name Part 1

A Blade for Her Name Part 2

A Blade for Her Name Part 3

A Blade for Her Name Part 4

A Blade for Her Name Part 5