“Dante Ashwood took my city,” Wesley said. “And now he’s going to take your realm. I made a deal with your Vice Doyen to stop him and I’d like to follow through on that.”

“Armin Krause was a great man,” Schulze said. “He was smart and he was curious that your friend survived after being injected with the magic sickness. That curiosity got him killed.”

“Magic sickness is a farce,” Tavia said, her back straightening. “It was caused by Ashwood’s experiments to create his Loj elixir. All of those people died for nothing.”

Her voice was as sharp as her knives and Wesley knew she was thinking about her mother, one of Ashwood’s earliest experiments. Wesley may have left his family in search of another life, but Tavia didn’t have a choice. Her mother was stolen from her. Her chance at a different kind of life was ripped away.

Ashwood thought of himself as a god, choosing who lived and died. Choosing whose life to ruin on a whim.

“We’ll make sure nobody else dies because of that monster and his sick desires to destroy all the good in the world,” Tavia said. “And we’re willing to sacrifice our own lives to do it. Are you even willing to sacrifice your pride?”

Wesley frowned. He knew Tavia was in pain, they all were, but he didn’t think predicting and planning their own deaths was going to help. There wasn’t a plan, or any kind of future, where Tavia didn’t make it out of this alive.

The thought wasn’t something he would even entertain.

“Armin trusted Creije’s notorious underboss and his best busker to get the job done,” Schulze said. “Was he right? Can you really end this war?”

Wesley nodded. “With your help. If we’re going to take Ashwood on, then we need everyone. Soldiers from your militia. Buskers from my streets. Crafters from across the realms. We’ve already ticked two of those boxes. The third rests on you.”

Schulze tipped back her Cloverye and finished the glass in a large gulp, like she still couldn’t quite believe she was in this moment, having this conversation. Or the fact that she knew there was no other way out of this war. Wesley saw the twitch on her face. She was desperate and he could work with desperate.

“We have around two hundred and fifty people,” Wesley said.

“Ashwood has double that,” Schulze said.

“But combined with your forces we outnumber him.”

“Except that his forces are mostly Crafters. Do you have a plan to deal with them and save Yejlath from their magic?”