Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 934: Rise of the Glowing City

“What are you—” Even the earl, who had weathered more crises than most men could count, could not complete the sentence for a moment.

It was not the idea of a new King of Dawn that had struck him dumb. It was the other part — under Roland Wimbledon’s orders. Those words, in someone else’s mouth, would have meant something different. From Andrea, who stood in his study at midnight, having walked past his guards without sound or injury — they meant something else entirely.

Hawn had suggested much the same thing earlier. But Hawn had meant: the Quinn family, alone, could make a move. That was fantasy. The Quinn family had no army in the king’s city, no soldiers, nothing sharper than a few dozen household guards and the memory of a title.

What Andrea was describing was different in kind.

“Just as you’ve inferred.” Her tone had softened, slightly — the news of her mother’s death still working on her somewhere. “His Majesty Roland does not want Appen Moya on the throne. But he also doesn’t want Dawn destabilized. A new king needs popular support and needs to take firm control quickly. There must be someone the people will accept.”

“But why me?”

“He doesn’t have many people he can trust in the Kingdom of Dawn. His first choice was me.” A pause. “I refused.”

So because the daughter refused, the throne passed to the father.

Horford looked at her for a long moment. The thought was almost absurd. And yet — he did not believe this was theater.

He knew what had happened at Hermes. Everyone did, or knew enough. Appen had locked down the official accounts, but ten thousand soldiers and most of the lords in the country had been there. The ones who came back could not agree on what they had seen, only that they had seen it: fire falling from a clear sky, thunder without storm, entire formations of armored men turned to ash between one breath and the next. The church had not been their enemy that day. It had been Graycastle. And Graycastle had done it with no visible army, no siege engines, nothing the nobles had a name for.

If the reports were even half accurate, the gap in military power between Graycastle and the rest of the continent was not a gap at all. It was a cliff.

With that kind of force, appointing kings for neighboring countries would be simple. The only question was why Roland hadn’t done it himself.

“The nobles of the Kingdom of Dawn,” Andrea said, “would require unified force and a unified banner to rise. And His Majesty Roland has more urgent enemies to face. He doesn’t have three or four years to absorb Dawn into Graycastle. Destroying Appen is simple. Rebuilding what comes after takes time he doesn’t have.”

“More urgent enemies?”

“Yes. The demons.” She said it without drama. “Otto Passi must have told you something of it — all of the church’s actions, all of it, traced back to the news of the Battle of Doomsday. That was only a fragment of a larger war. It’s called the Battle for Divine Will, and it has lasted nearly a thousand years.”

She told him the rest of it: the long defeat, two consecutive wars lost, humanity driven back to what was now the Four Kingdoms, a third defeat carrying extinction as its price. And a king who had chosen, in spite of all of it, to carry this burden and march against the older enemy — not because he was forced to, but because he had decided to.

By the time she finished, cold sweat had traced a line down Horford’s back.

The Four Kingdoms — all of it, the whole of what he had understood as civilization — a single corner of a continent? And the corner losing?

He forgot to breathe for several seconds.

“Why?” he asked, when he found his voice. “What would drive him to take this on? Doesn’t he understand what failure would mean?”

“I don’t know.” Andrea’s sigh was genuine. “Her Highness Tilly had a theory. She said…” She hesitated. “She said he isn’t doing it for humanity. He’s doing it for himself. As if he were searching for a new challenge, and humanity happens to be the side he’s standing on.”

Horford did not answer. He had spent forty years reading nobles — their vanities, their fears, their concealed ambitions. None of them had been anything like what Andrea was describing. He filed Roland Wimbledon under a category he had not previously needed.

“What does he require of me?” he said at last, returning to the concrete. “To fight?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Only to maintain stability in Dawn and provide resources when needed. Manpower, raw ore, other materials. The specifics will be worked out later with His Majesty’s representatives.”

The relief was genuine, and he let himself feel it. A demand with no price would have been more suspicious than this. The fact that there was a cost — material, defined, negotiable — meant the arrangement was real. A conspiracy would have been dressed more attractively.

And even if there were a conspiracy beneath it: with Dawn’s current situation, he would have to bite through it regardless. Feigning illness had been delay, not strategy. It had kept him balanced between Appen and the foreign lords long enough to watch — but the window was closing. If the lords succeeded in overthrowing the Moya family and the Quinn family had done nothing but stand at the window watching, they would be excluded from whatever came next. And if anyone wanted to topple the three great families afterward, rumors of their lingering loyalty to the old crown would provide all the pretext needed.

This was rare. This was, in fact, the kind of moment that only arrived once.

And Andrea was here.

She might hate him. He had earned that. But she would not destroy the family she had come from.

The decision came to him fully formed.

“Please tell His Majesty Wimbledon that I am willing to serve the King of Graycastle.” He rose and gave a slight bow — she was a king’s messenger now, and that required its own formality. “When does he wish to move? It would take at least two or three months to bring Graycastle soldiers into the city without detection.”

He was already calculating: his influence with the gate watch, the city officials who still answered to him, the handful of channels that a decade as Prime Minister had opened and never quite closed.

Andrea’s next words stopped him entirely.

“Now that you’ve agreed, we act at once,” she said. “His Majesty was clear: he does not want a political assassination. He wants a public defeat — Appen Moya finished in front of witnesses, in full view of the city. Not just removed but seen to fall. The greedy lords who are still sitting on the fence need to understand that resistance is futile.”

“Now? But how?” He stared at her. “You came in through the main gate. My guards are not easily bypassed, and this is not even our home territory—”

“I came through the front entrance. The guards attempted to stop me. They couldn’t.” She spread her hands. “Meet the friends I brought with me. All your questions will answer themselves.”

He understood then what it meant: the guards hadn’t simply been persuaded or bribed. They had been overcome, silently and instantly, each of them wearing a God’s Stone of Retaliation. To do that — to silence armed men wearing those stones — was something only one kind of person could do.

“What the Quinn family needs to do now,” Andrea said, “is cause a scene. The louder the better. All of the Glowing City should have its eyes on this, so that Appen Moya has no choice but to come out and face you in public.”

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