Song vibe: Stigma – BTS

  __________

  THE WATCHER

  Unknown, Firestone

  The Gift

  From the beginning, people did what Gorda wanted.

  It was early spring, the thaw still half-formed. The kitchen garden lay slick with meltwater, its beds trampled as the men argued over what remained. Rot had taken hold—dark at the stems, soft at the roots. Grubs writhed in the soil when it was turned, pale and fat, chewing their way through what should have grown.

  “They’ll never recover,” one of the men said, boot nudging a collapsed stalk. “The rot’s spread too far.”

  “We’ll have to pull the lot,” another agreed. “Burn it. Start again.”

  Gorda stepped forward. She was small then, hair unbraided, mouth stained with berry juice.

  “Not yet. I helped plant them."

  Her father frowned down at the beds. “It’s wasted ground. Leaving it risks the stores.”

  “Please.” She crouched, fingers sinking into the wet soil. “Give it one more night."

  The arguing stopped—not abruptly, but as if something had eased its grip. The men glanced at one another, frowns softening. Even her father listened with quiet reverence.

  “It won’t hurt to try,” Selwyn muttered, sounding convinced it had been his idea.

  The next day, the rot had worsened, and the grubs surfaced in greater numbers, threatening the nearby gardens. The plants were pulled and burned by midday.

  She cried for a whole day—long enough to satisfy them.

  Later, the moment repeated—at the table, in the kennels, at her great-grandmother’s deathbed. Gorda got whatever she wanted—and everyone loved her.

  Her mother combed out her auburn hair by the hearth one night, slow and careful.

  “You carry the gift of binding—a gift from your Eldritch blood,” she said, her face dark. “Emotion bends for you. But... it’s best if we pretend like I never noticed—” the comb caught in a tangle, and Gorda winced. “—and make sure no one else sees it, too.”

  Her foolish cousin was heir, but her father said she was to learn courtly ways at Firestone, under her uncle’s guidance.

  I was only seven years old, excited to catch a glimpse of the handsome Prince Edwin.

  Within a day, she understood.

  The castle did not need a lady.

  It needed a leash.

  The Cage

  When Gorda thought of Prince Edwin’s son, she remembered the blue bowl.

  It had been sitting on the table between her and Godric when they met—a priceless ceramic from the Jade Routes, painted with blue flowers. Then, his mood turned. One moment, he was calm, fingers sticky with honey.

  The next moment, Godric threw the bowl against the wall, shards skittering across the stone. A knife followed it—thrown with frightening accuracy at a servant's chest.

  People scattered. Someone shouted her name.

  Gorda froze.

  Godric screamed, the sound ripping out of him like a nightspawn loosed from its pit. He lunged, fists flailing, teeth bared. She caught him before he could reach the shards, arms locking around his freakishly strong body.

  “Hush now,” she whispered, sinking beneath the violence, feeding her power into the places that raged hottest. “Easy. Not yet.”

  His thrashing slowed. Breath hitched, then steadied. What remained was a trembling, sobbing child, clinging like a vine cut back too late.

  Later, when the servants returned, a single hand pressed a cloth to her bleeding shoulder. Another voice—tight, impatient reprimanded her.

  Fix it next time, they said. Before it starts.

  So she did. Again and again. She pruned the surface, smoothed the breaks, fed the roots calm and silence. And every time, the rot crept deeper.

  Prince Edwin was not around to see.

  Godric hid in the walls of Firestone, and she was the only one who knew how to find him. He learned how to lock her in, torment her—and soon, not even the darkness or rodents scared her.

  Every day, pieces of her were stripped away—hair torn loose at the scalp, teeth marks leaving purple bruises along her arms, screams leaving her ears ringing. She endured, believing endurance itself was control.

  The servants called the shift in Godric’s behaviour a miracle. But Gorda knew the truth—she was not curing him, she was keeping him alive one more night.

  I wished him dead—that spawntainted thing—and I pulled at his emotions until the wish took root in him, too.

  When the fever finally took him, she stood at the foot of the bed and felt nothing at all. No grief, no relief—only recognition.

  One more night, one more week—eventually, the rot will take care of itself.

  And if it doesn't—I'm the one to prune it.

  The Throne Without a Crown

  Firestone's War Room stank of smoke and wet wool. They had battled Vandele the Undying and his nightspawn for years—Gorda was thirty-one years old and holding Firestone together—taking every fear, every fracture, drawing them inward and forging their emotions into something useful.

  Gorda stood at the head of the war table, hands braced against the stone as another runner was dragged in, boots slick with blood and snow.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “The western pass has fallen,” he gasped. “Vandele’s spawn breached the lower ridge. We barely sealed the gate—”

  “They’ll be through by dawn,” someone said. "Lady Gorda, we should retreat to Lux. Abandon Firestone—”

  “We'll survive dawn,” Gorda replied, and the room bent toward her. "And until the next dawn. We won't break."

  Above: Lady Gorda commands the room at age 31.

  She moved around the table, reading them as she always did, and shifting them as needed. Fear pulsed sharply; one man’s resolve had already cracked.

  “You’ll hold—” she said quietly, stopping beside him. “—or die trying."

  His breath steadied. He nodded, shame burning hotter than fear.

  At the far end, another man’s gaze flicked toward the door.

  “If you leave,” Gorda said, reshaping his feelings into something useful, “your bloodline will be buried in the lowlands."

  He sank back into his chair.

  This is how Firestone survived—not by cutting too soon, but by letting nature take its course. One more night. Then another.

  A horn sounded outside—not the frantic cry of alarm, but a long, unfamiliar note rolling through the stone keep. Another answered it. Then the clang of iron on iron as the gates of Firestone were hauled open.

  Gorda turned toward the slit window as torchlight flared in the courtyard below.

  Horses poured through—mud-splattered, armoured, relentless. Her idiot cousin—always smiling—held a banner of ash grey with a red flame.

  Beside Felix, a man rode at the head, shoulders squared with command. His blade was darkened by fresh ichor, cloak snapping behind him.

  Sir Nocturne of the Ashen Blades. Two spawnlords dead to his name—at only twenty years old.

  In the war chamber, chairs scraped back. Laughter burst out—unguarded, disbelieving.

  “Edwin really sent his best,” someone breathed. “We’re saved.”

  Gorda remained standing, hands still braced against the table, feeling the power shift.

  The war with Vandele lasted for months, victory after victory, with Nocturne at the vanguard. When it ended, they named him Count. The feast followed—days of it—tables groaning with food, ale sloshing, smoke clinging to the rafters as discipline loosened into relief.

  Gorda sat where she always had, dressed in Sunfire red silk.

  They toasted Nocturne. His cup never emptied. Hands clapped his shoulders. Voices retold battles.

  “Firestone owes you everything,” Caelus Yule said, lifting his cup.

  Gorda waited—for acknowledgment, for the years she had spent keeping rot from spreading to be named and honoured.

  Nocturne did not look at her. He laughed, accepted another drink, and turned his shoulder.

  Later, she found him alone near the armour racks.

  His gauntlets hung loose in his hands, knuckles red where the fight had scraped him raw. Sweat darkened his collar. Rage lived just beneath his skin, unexamined and barely banked, leaking through him in the way his shoulders never fully lowered.

  Men like that are simple—if one knows where to water the seeds.

  She stepped close enough that her silk sleeve brushed his bare arm.

  Above: Gorda attempts to seduce 20-year-old Nocturne.

  Tonight, I’ll bind him to me—to Firestone.

  “You held the line well,” she praised softly. “You must be exhausted. Come—share a drink with me, my Lord. In private. You’ve earned the quiet.”

  He looked at her—a single, assessing glance. Then he inclined his head and walked away without a word.

  Gorda remained where she was, her hand lowering slowly back to her side. Men like him don’t care for a real woman, she told herself. Just warmth. A body. An heir.

  He’s still young. When he realises his need, I’ll do my duty to him—strong sons, mountain-blooded.

  She watched him return to his drink, a blonde mountain woman already at his arm.

  Then let him numb himself. I’ll keep the ground intact. I’ll hold Firestone—one more night at a time—and shape it into something worthy.

  The Theft

  The years passed.

  Nocturne was gone more often than he was present—five more spawnlords slain, each return leaving him quieter, more inward, harder for Gorda to shape. When he rode out, Gorda stepped back into her place, keeping the rot in Firestone in check.

  The whispers never stopped. Once, she had been the Beauty of the Mountains. Now the name followed her differently—Gorda the Beauty, sharpened with pity.

  Then, he brought her home. The trampled weed.

  He carried the girl through the gates wrapped in his cloak, cradled as if she were something precious.

  An invasive transplant. Ill-suited to mountain soil.

  At first, Gorda had seen success: snakeroot in tea, missing letters, servants pliant, rumours spreading exactly where she placed it.

  Containment. Careful pruning. But it was not enough.

  One night, she felt it. A sharp tug at the edge of her awareness. Hunger, honed too cleanly to be chance. She followed the pull of hatred until she found the creature lurking within the walls—her walls.

  The human face it wore had not fooled her for an instant. She felt the unnatural rage trapped inside the creature—the rage of the master which drove it—directed at Nocturne, hell-bent on destroying him.

  Another predator had entered the garden—and I knew it.

  She did not destroy it.

  She bent it. Rewrote its purpose. Fed it new blood, a new face, a narrow directive—to harry Nocturne’s allies until the man stood alone. Until he turned back toward what was familiar. Toward her.

  One more night—then another—and he would have been under my control.

  But Nocturne changed.

  His attention lingered where it never had before. He drew the girl closer instead of cutting her loose. He began asking questions—questions he had never needed answered. And rather than thinning, his allies thickened around him, roots tangling, impossible to pull without tearing stone.

  The infestation had passed containment.

  She needed something to burn. A sacrifice obvious enough to satisfy the appetite for blame—something they could tear out and call cleansing.

  Quintus was sloppy, old, and obsessed with exposing the girl to the point of carelessness.

  Gorda had always known about his stash. One night, she went to it herself and planted the evidence—notes, Renatii gold, even the excess blood left behind to tell the right story.

  Saphira was meant to leave.

  Nocturne would rage. He would investigate. He would condemn her uncle. And Firestone—purged, redirected—would settle back into order.

  I was close. So close.

  The memory shook—not with grief, but with fury, clean and clarifying.

  I never believed Nocturne capable of tending anything but violence. Nor did I think a woman would offer her heart to such a brute.

  But I still had one final cut to make.

  The Final Collapse

  Rain kissed her skin, not in drops but as cool relief against the burn creeping up her face. She drew in a breath that rasped in her chest. And then she felt it—pressure, sudden and invasive, as though something had slipped behind her eyes and begun to look out through them.

  No. The truth struck harder than the wound. The mage was inside my mind. Seeing it all.

  The doors she had built, the layers she had locked—every memory bled outward, uncontrolled. She pushed him aside.

  Through the pain, she forced her eyes open and saw the creature running toward her through the rain.

  Good. Save me—before he cuts deeper.

  The mage stepped into its path, blade already rising, his intent sharp and clean.

  Then she felt the shift in the creature. Its intent turned, sudden and absolute, no longer fixed on the man it was meant to kill but on her. The hatred was immediate, feral, and personal, and she knew—without needing to look—that it was done being bent.

  The sword flashed.

  The creature’s arm moved, but not toward the mage. The blade drove into her side with brutal precision, punching through muscle and breath alike before tearing free and vanishing back into the rain.

  My own weapon. Turned against me. Why—?

  Poison flooded her blood, spreading fast, dragging cold through her limbs as the world tilted and blurred. She sank, rain smearing the edges of her vision, her body already slipping beyond her command.

  She understood then why the creature had turned on her.

  Not mercy. Not freedom. It needs my silence.

  Above: August witnesses Gorda's final moments.

  The mage’s hand slid into hers—not to steal more, not to pry, but to hold. To see her end.

  Breath tore wet from her chest as she forced out the last words she had left—not for vengeance, but for the home she had defended.

  “The Prince of Darkness...will consume you...”

  As the rain closed over her, the pressure vanished.

  The garden went quiet.

  Her memory broke.

  Gorda breathed her last—and the Watcher saw nothing more.