Chapter 14
Kaelren
Night had fallen hours ago, but something was different.
I noticed it first in the way the firelight seemed to pulse—not with the wind, but with something else. A rhythm from outside our reality. Then the temperature dropped, not cold exactly, but thin. Like the air itself was holding its breath.
“Does anyone else feel that?” Vashael asked, her hand going to her throwing knives.
Elle stood, turning in a slow circle. “The wards. They’re… singing?”
She was right. The ancient protections woven into the glade had begun to hum, a frequency that bypassed the ears and resonated in the chest. In the bones. In the marks we all carried.
Then the first silver thread appeared in the sky.
“Oh shit,” Bryx whispered. “Is that—”
“The Star Veil,” I finished, my voice rough with disbelief. “I never thought I’d see it.”
More threads materialized, rippling across the darkness like the universe was showing its seams. Within minutes, the entire sky was latticed with silver light, weaving patterns that hurt to look at directly—not because they were bright, but because they were true. Reality laid bare.
Elle moved to my side, her face tilted up in wonder. “When was the last time this happened?”
“Five hundred and seventy years ago,” Eltrien said softly. “In the Breaking Fields, right before the Fracture War began. It’s said the Veil appears when the world stands at a threshold. When decisions made in one moment will cascade through centuries.”
“So no pressure then,” Peeble muttered.
The silver threads reflected in Elle’s eyes, making them look like captured galaxies. Her marks had calmed since the chase, glowing soft amber—but I could see they’d spread, delicate vines now creeping up the sides of her neck.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
“It’s dangerous,” I corrected, settling beside her.
Close enough that our bond hummed with the proximity, with the weakened boundaries between us.
“The Veil doesn’t just weaken barriers between waking and sleeping, between real and possible.
It erases them. Everything becomes permeable. Vulnerable.”
“Including us?” she asked.
I met her eyes. “Especially us.”
“Between you and being an ass?” she suggested.
Despite everything—Nimor barely holding form, the Hunt waiting beyond our sanctuary—I almost smiled.
“That boundary doesn’t exist,” I said.
“Clearly.”
Through the bond—because yes, it was a bond, I could admit that much—I felt her amusement like warmth against my ribs.
What I refused to name was what kind of bond.
Magical necessity, I told myself. The result of our marks existing in tandem, nothing more.
Certainly not the other thing. The thing that made my chest ache when she smiled.
The thing that made me want to kill men I’d never met for hurting her.
Not that.
The others were scattered around the fire.
Bryx unusually subdued, one hand resting on Kevin who’d shrunk back to pocket-size and hadn’t stopped anxious buzzing since the chase—even small, his distress was palpable.
Sarnyx sharpening thorns with mechanical precision.
Vashael organizing supplies we might never get to use.
Eltrien and the Sage still working on Nimor, who flickered in and out of visibility like a bad transmission.
“I’ve seen this before,” Eltrien said suddenly, looking up at the Star Veil. “Or… I will see it. Or I’m seeing it now in multiple ways.” He shook his head. “The Veil makes time strange.”
“Everything here makes time strange,” Elle muttered.
Peeble landed on her shoulder, looking up at the lights. “Pretty though. In a ‘reality might collapse’ kind of way.”
“Comforting,” Elle said.
“I live to serve.”
The fire crackled, sending sparks up toward the silver threads.
Where they met, tiny explosions of color bloomed—memories given form.
I saw glimpses of other times, other places.
Elle in my arms, both of us covered in blood.
Elle with silver hair, ancient and terrible.
Elle dead at my feet while I screamed at uncaring stars.
“Did you see—” she started.
“Echoes,” I said quickly. “The Veil shows what might be. Don’t trust it.”
“Alright, enough of this doom and gloom!” Bryx said suddenly, his usual cheer forced but welcome.
Kevin buzzed anxiously from his perch on Bryx’s shoulder—even at pocket-size, the bee’s distress was palpable.
“We need a story. Something fun, something dramatic, something with at least one questionable life choice. Anyone? Please? Before I start spiraling about how Nimor might be dying and we’re trapped and—”
“I’ll go,” Vashael said, surprising everyone despite Bryx’s prompting. She rarely shared anything personal. “How about I tell our lovely Elle how I ended up in this rowdy group of misfits.”
She settled into storyteller posture, the firelight making her gold-dusted skin shimmer. “I was a courtesan in the Petal Courts. Trained from childhood in the arts of pleasure and poison. I had a lover—a noble who thought he owned me.”
The fire dimmed as she spoke, responding to her voice.
“He was beautiful the way weapons are beautiful—all sharp edges and deadly purpose. He said he loved me, but what he loved was possession. The idea that something as dangerous as me could be contained.”
Elle shifted beside me, and I wondered if she was thinking of her ex-fiancé. The one who’d betrayed her. The one I’d kill if I ever met him.
“One night,” Vashael continued, “he brought another to our bed. Said I should be honored to share him. Said I should be grateful.” Her smile was sharp as her throwing knives.
“I poisoned them both. Slowly. Made him watch her die first, so he’d know how betrayal felt.
Then I watched him follow, and I felt… nothing.
No satisfaction. No regret. Just empty.”
“That’s horrible,” Elle said softly.
“That’s survival,” Vashael corrected. “The Petal Courts don’t forgive that kind of defiance, even when it’s justified.
They would have executed me—made an example of the courtesan who dared strike back.
But I’d heard stories about a disgraced prince who’d disappeared into the Thornwood.
One who understood what it meant to be cast out for refusing to be what others demanded. ”
She glanced at me, and I kept my expression neutral.
“I knew Kaelren from court functions. Knew he was the kind of monster who had rules. Who protected his people.” Her smile turned softer, almost fond. “So I ran. Tracked him through half the realm until he finally stopped trying to lose me and let me join his crew of outcasts.”
“And now you’re stuck with us,” Bryx added cheerfully.
“And now I’m stuck with you,” she agreed. Then her amber eyes fixed on Elle. “We all have our befores. Our reasons for being here, outcasts in the deep woods. What’s yours, little human? What broke you enough that falling into another world seemed like escape?”
Elle was quiet for a moment. Then: “I wasn’t broken. I was… bent. Bent trying to fit into spaces too small for me. My ex, Julian—he needed me smaller. Quieter. Less. And for two years, I tried. Tried to be the supporting character in his story instead of the lead in mine.”
My marks flared with possessive rage. This Julian had tried to diminish her. Tried to contain something meant to be wild.
“Then I caught him with my best friend,” Elle continued. “In our bed. And you know what he said? ‘You’re too much, Elle. She’s easier.’” She laughed, bitter. “Easier. Like I was some kind of challenge to overcome instead of a person to love.”
“I would kill him,” I said, the words escaping before I could stop them.
Everyone turned to look at me.
“Slowly,” I clarified, not backing down. “I would kill him very slowly.”
Elle stared at me, something shifting in her expression. “That’s… weirdly sweet. In a psychotic way.”
“I don’t do sweet.”
“No,” she agreed. “You do vengeful protection. It’s different but… not unwelcome.”
The moment stretched between us, the Star Veil making everything feel more intense, more real. Through the connection we both pretended wasn’t there—that pull I refused to call a bond—I felt her pulse quicken, felt her lean slightly toward me—
“I should check on Nimor,” I said abruptly, standing.
“Right,” she said, and I caught disappointment in her voice. “Of course.”
I retreated to where Nimor lay—or existed, or whatever state he was in. But I could still feel Elle’s presence, her warmth, her want mixing with mine until I couldn’t tell where I ended and she began.
Later, exhaustion finally claimed us. One by one, the crew settled into sleep. Elle curled near the fire, using her pack as a pillow, her face soft in the flickering light. I took first watch, settling against a tree where I could see both the glade’s borders and her sleeping form.
The Star Veil continued its dance overhead, glittering threads weaving tighter, reality thinning with each passing hour. The boundary between waking and dreaming grew gossamer-thin. Permeable.
I should have expected what happened next.
There was no transition. No sensation of falling asleep. One moment I was awake, watching the fire’s embers pulse in rhythm with my marks. The next, I was standing in sunlight that felt like a memory given form.
Elle’s dream.
The garden materialized around me in layers—first the skeleton of hedge and pathway, then color filling in like stained glass catching light, each hue sharp and deliberate.
Her grandmother’s garden, I realized, but wrong in ways that made my chest ache.
Half the roses were skeletal, thorns black as obsidian.
The other half bloomed with flowers from fever dreams—petals that opened and closed like breathing, stems that bled light when broken, leaves that sang in harmonics only dreams could hear.
Elle stood at the garden’s heart, and she was devastating.