The ward pull started before dawn.

Seraphina woke to a dull pressure behind her sternum that dragged toward the northeast. It made her press the heel of her hand against her ribs and hold it there until she could stand.

She dressed in the dark. Yona was already moving on the other side of the tent, folding blankets with quiet efficiency. Neither spoke. Five days since the courier. Three days of grief, then Eleanor's council, then the road east.

Outside, the camp was stirring. Soldiers checked weapons and saddle straps. Dorian had stayed behind at the capital to manage resupply lines. His absence left Liora running double duty on security.

Thalion stood near the horses, giving orders to his second. He did not look at her. He had not looked at her since the capital unless reporting route conditions or overnight watch schedules. Professional distance maintained with military precision. She was cargo. Important cargo with a title, but cargo.

She preferred it that way.

Yona brought her bread and dried fruit. She ate because the food was in her hands and her body required fuel. The bread had no taste. It hadn't for days.

They mounted and rode.

The road northeast cut through land that should have been farmable. It wasn't. The fields on either side had gone to scrub and dead grass. Fences rotted. A farmhouse stood empty with its door hanging open, dark inside. The ward network's decay showed in the soil here, gray and thin where the wards no longer held.

The pull strengthened with every mile. The nearest anchor node was close, bleeding energy into the ground. She could feel it through the fire-scars on her arms, the ward structure weakening by the hour.

Caelan would have noticed her hand pressed against her sternum. Would have asked.

Nobody asked. She counted hoofbeats instead of thinking.

They camped before dark. Thalion picked the site for its high ground and clear sight lines and water nearby. She noticed without acknowledging it.

Yona handled her the way she'd been handling her since the news, gentle and steady, food placed in reach, that low voice that expected nothing back. She'd tucked a second blanket around Seraphina's shoulders without asking and Seraphina had let her.

Liora posted herself between Seraphina's tent and the main camp with her hand resting on her blade. She'd stood watch the night Thalion sat on the floor beside her mistress until dawn. Whatever that was, Liora hadn't decided yet.

The campfire crackled and spat. The flames leaned toward her, pulled by Celestine blood. She used to find comfort in that. Now it just reminded her the magic still worked even when she felt nothing.

She pulled a blank sheet of paper from her pack. The second one. She'd burned the first letter in the capital before departure. This time she didn't even pick up the pen.

Dead men don't read letters.

She put the paper back.

The ambush hit midmorning on the second day of travel.

Twelve demons. They came from the tree line on both sides of the road, drawn to the dead zone around the failing ley line. They moved fast on clawed feet and the noise they made was closer to shrieking than snarling. The kind that bred in unprotected territory when wards stopped holding.

The escort responded immediately. Steel cleared sheaths. Thalion's hand hit the ground and vines erupted across the road, snaring the nearest demon by its legs. His sword came out a second later and stone spikes punched upward through the dirt, catching another demon mid-charge.

The escort soldiers formed up with shields and blades, disciplined enough to hold positions even with the screaming starting behind them.

Her boots hit the dirt before the horse fully stopped.

The first demon reached her and golden flames wrapped around its torso and held. The fire did not finish it. It held the creature alive.

The creature thrashed inside the flames and clawed at itself and fell to its knees. The screaming started low and climbed as the fire tightened against its skin without burning through. It clung to the creature's body and cooked it slow. The smoke that rose carried the smell of scorched meat and something worse underneath.

Seraphina did not move.

Her breathing was steady, but her jaw locked so hard the muscle jumped. The demon clawed at its own chest and she watched without blinking. Her right hand tightened until her knuckles went white.

"Louder," she said under her breath.

The fire tightened.

Feel it.

The second demon changed direction to flee. Fire caught it by the legs and dragged it back. It fell face-first and clawed at the dirt, trying to pull itself forward. The flames climbed from ankle to knee to hip. Its scream was higher than the first and more desperate. Claws left gouges in the packed earth.

When it went still, the flames eased.

When it tried to crawl, the fire climbed higher.

Third. Fourth. Fifth. Fire wrapped each of them and held. Five demons now burned in a ring around her, thrashing and screaming at different stages of agony. The nearest one still clawed at its own ribs while another dragged itself in circles because the fire had taken its legs but not its arms. The last had stopped moving but hadn't stopped making sounds.

Seraphina stood in the center.

The fifth demon dragged itself toward the edge of the ring. Fire caught its ankles and pulled it back.

"Don't stop," she said. "Not yet."

Seven left from the pack. They stopped coming for her.

Thalion's formation was built on the assumption that a Flamebearer drew aggro and every engagement since the palace siege had followed that pattern.

One pulled up mid-stride. Looked at the five burning on the ground. Looked at her.

It turned and threw itself at the nearest soldier instead.

The rest scattered. Three broke left toward the flank. Two went right. One of them circled wide toward the supply horses. Something about the five burning on the ground had changed their behavior.

Thalion saw the shift immediately. Every tactical assumption about positioning around a Flamebearer had just been proven wrong. He shouted adjustments and drove stone spikes into a demon rushing his left flank. Repositioned two soldiers with sharp commands. His vines caught another demon and held it long enough for a soldier to take its head.

He was good. But the gap between old positioning and new cost them.

A soldier on the left took claws across his shoulder. Two demons piled onto a single position that was designed to handle one. Another soldier caught a glancing hit to the thigh from a demon that should have been targeting Seraphina.

She did not let go of the five.

The fire she threw at the others was uneven. It flared wide. It burned too hot.

A golden streak aimed at a demon on the right flank went wide by six feet. It caught a soldier across his left arm and shoulder. He screamed. His sword dropped. The armor heated fast enough to blister the skin underneath before he could unbuckle the pauldron.

Another blast, aimed at a demon Thalion had pinned with vines, tore past the creature and clipped the soldier behind it. Scorched across his breastplate. The man staggered backward, hands clawing at heated steel.

Thalion took a hit. He was mid-engagement, sword in one hand, earth magic holding a barrier with the other. Her fire streaked past the demon he was fighting and caught his shield arm. His earth magic absorbed the worst but the heat got through. He didn't drop and didn't falter, but his jaw locked and his grip on the barrier shifted.

He'd never had to watch for friendly fire from her before. He'd stood still while she burned undead inches from his hands at the palace. He'd trusted the precision.

The five died. The last one took the longest. She watched it go with that same searching expression and found nothing. She remembered the taste of smoke. The way her throat tore before the sound stopped.

She knew that sound. She had made it once, chained to a stake while a crowd watched.

After the torch dropped, she stopped counting.

The screaming stopped.

The silence felt exactly the same.

The remaining demons fell to steel, earth magic, and fire that burned hotter than it needed to.

When it ended, the road was silent.

Two soldiers burned by her fire. One with a scorched arm where the blast had been aimed ten feet to his left, one with blistered skin under heated armor. Thalion's shield arm was singed under his bracer. Multiple soldiers carried wounds from demons that should have been targeting her and weren't.

She healed them.

Knelt beside the first soldier and put her hands on the burn. Golden light from D'Lorien healing fire spread under her palms. The burns closed and blisters sealed and skin knitted clean.

No warmth in her chest when it worked. Her hands glowed. The wound shut. She moved to the next soldier without meeting his eyes. She fixed the second and checked the one with the shoulder wound from demon claws and fixed that too. Wiped her palms on her trousers. The golden light went out.

The men she'd healed looked at her with something they couldn't name. She had burned them and then fixed it. Her hands were warm. Her eyes were not.

On the far side of the engagement, the men who hadn't been touched by her fire stood in a loose cluster with their arms crossed and their hands resting on weapons. One of them kept rubbing the back of his neck and glancing at her, then away. They weren't hostile. They were recalculating.

Thalion approached her.

He'd spent twenty minutes managing the aftermath, checking wounded, reorganizing positions that no longer matched the threat. His shield arm had a red mark under the bracer. He hadn't mentioned it.

"You could have ended every demon on this road in seconds." His voice was controlled and flat and not cruel. "At the palace, you burned three undead to ash while I held them at arm's length. Clean kills. Target discrimination that let me stand within reach."

He organized the next part carefully.

"Today you held five demons alive while the rest redirected onto my soldiers. Your fire hit two of my men and myself. Corporal Edrin has burns across his arm. Sergeant Halwick's armor heated through the plate."

She looked at him. Wind moved the hair across her face and she didn't push it back. Six days of dead Caelan. The pyre smell still on her skin.

"I healed them, didn't I?"

Her voice came out flat and hard.

"It's that or be dead. Be thankful."

A horse stamped behind them. Somewhere down the road a crow called. The quiet between those sounds lasted long enough for Thalion's jaw to tighten and something to shift behind his eyes. He was reassessing.

He nodded once and turned and walked back to his soldiers.

When the next march orders came, he delivered them to Yona.

They camped that evening in a formation that looked different. The spacing was wider. Soldiers positioned themselves further from Seraphina's tent, not dramatically, just enough.

Corporal Edrin settled his gear ten feet from Yona's position. He'd been burned and fixed by the same hands and something in that sequence anchored him. He nodded at Seraphina when she passed. She didn't return it.

The others kept their distance.

Thalion set his post on the far side of camp. If Seraphina needed anything communicated to the escort, it went through Yona to his second to him. Three people between them.

Yona sat with her and put food in her hands. The dried meat tasted the same as breakfast.

The smell from the road was still in her nose, scorched ground and cooked meat. The same smell she carried from the pyre.

Control lost. Her own people burned. Healed with cold hands. And then she'd told the Crown Prince to be thankful.

The blank paper came out of her pack for the third time. She held it on her knee, stared at the empty white, and put it back without writing a word.

Yona watched and said nothing.

Somewhere across camp, Thalion wasn't sleeping either.

Morning broke gray and cold.

They crested a low ridge two hours after breaking camp and the first estate came into view.

Ruins. Whatever this noble house had been a century ago, time and weather had broken it down. Overgrown stone walls and a collapsed roof line through dead trees. The courtyard had been taken by scrub and vine, except within a certain radius where nothing grew at all.

The dead zone.

Trees nearest the perimeter stood blackened and bare. Not leafless. Dead from the roots. The ground beneath them was gray and powdery, drained of whatever made things grow. The dead area ran fifty yards in every direction from the main structure.

Seraphina felt it before she saw it. The anchor node beneath that ruin was failing hard. The pressure in her ribs tightened and her teeth ached. The ley line that should have run clean and strong beneath the estate was hemorrhaging energy into the ground, wider than she'd expected, getting worse by the hour.

Her fire-scars glowed faint, pulsing in response to the dying node.

Thalion pulled his horse alongside hers. First time he'd been within arm's length since the road.

"That's the nearest estate?"

She nodded.

"The briefing mentioned abandoned. It didn't mention a dead zone."

He was looking at the blackened perimeter, calculating approach routes and cover positions and demon probability in the dead ground between tree line and structure.

She dismounted. The pull in her chest was physical now. The ley line under that ruin was bleeding out and the fire-scars on her arms glowed brighter with each step forward.

Something moved in the dead trees. Not wind.

There was no wind.