Chapter 32
Ishould’ve gone to Rìan immediately.
Levinica’s discovery about the maps changed everything. The wells. The gates. The quest we would need to undertake if we had any hope of severing the hateful bond between us. I should’ve gone to him at once and told him what she’d pieced together.
But above all of that, I should’ve gone to him because of Dannis. Because I finally understood. About Neeken. About the terrible truth that had somehow been sitting inside me all along while I’d remained too blind to see it.
I should’ve told him Levinica knew too—that she’d touched me and seen the truth for herself.
But something stopped me. Shame. Guilt. Shock.
Shock that the clues had been there all along and I'd somehow failed to piece them together.
That Aedric had hidden the truth in plain sight, even from me.
That I hadn't realized the terrified little boy from those memories had become the dark-haired Fae male I'd briefly met in the forest after Aedric saved me from Thistra.
Neeken.
Gods.
How had I not seen it?
And Aedric… He’d lied.
… Hadn’t he?
But even as the thought came, I knew it wasn't entirely true.
I'd asked him whether he'd killed Dannis, and he'd said no.
Technically, maddeningly, infuriatingly, he'd told the truth—or at least the kind of fractured truth Aedric always dealt in, offering only the smallest sliver of understanding while the rest remained buried beneath the surface.
I lost all track of time pacing the apartments. By nightfall, I’d nearly worn grooves into the carpet. The skin beside one nail stung where I'd picked until it bled.
I should’ve gone after her.
I should've done what a good friend—a true friend—would have done. Sat with her quietly if she wished it. Let her rage if she needed to. Let her cry in my arms.
But like a coward, I stayed hidden in my room.
I told myself she likely didn't want to see me. That she'd want to be alone with her thoughts, alone with the enormity of her grief.
And Aedric—
An ugly heaviness settled low in my stomach.
What had he been thinking, bringing Dannis to Thistra of all places?
Bringing the heir of Dusk—the nephew of the Dark Prince himself—into an enemy Court as though it were nothing?
Had it been arrogance? A quiet, deliberate cruelty?
Some unspoken vengeance against Rìan, parading his stolen heir before those who’d once allied themselves with the Court of Dusk? A reminder of everything Rìan had lost?
Or had it been something else entirely? Some belief, perhaps, that keeping Dannis close was safer than leaving him elsewhere. That so long as he remained at Aedric's side, Aedric himself could watch over him.
I didn’t know which it could be. But Dannis—Neeken—hadn’t seemed afraid. He hadn’t seemed like a captive.
I thought back to him sitting beside the fire, laughing with the others as though he belonged there. As though he weren't a prisoner at all, but simply another member of Aedric's company. A friend, even.
How had he been so at ease, so content, after having been stolen from his mother? From his Court? From his home? After having been mutilated?
Unless he’d been taken too young to remember. Unless three hundred years had worn the painful edges from whatever sorrow and fear had once existed.
Unless—somehow—he’d come to love the man who had taken him.
Shame settled over me like a heavy blanket. I didn’t know how to face Levinica again. And deep down, I was no longer certain I deserved to.
Aedric was my mate. I’d chosen him. And what he’d done… what he’d dared do…
He'd never intended to tell her. Of that, I felt certain. He'd been prepared to let Levinica go on believing her son was alive somewhere, safely held in one of the Courts, while Dannis had been dead for months.
And it hadn’t been to spare her grief. No—it had been because the truth was inconvenient.
Because the moment anyone learned he was dead, Aedric would’ve lost the only thing keeping the Court of Dusk in check.
So long as Dannis remained alive, the Dusklands would kneel.
Aedric had been prepared to lie and deceive for as long as necessary to preserve that control.
But I refused to believe he'd done it for power alone. Hadn't he sacrificed too? Hadn't he been forced to do terrible things for the greater good? For Elantis. For peace.
He’d ended a war that should’ve swallowed the realm whole, and the price of that peace had been one small boy taken from the Court of Dusk and raised beneath his protection. He’d even spared Levinica’s life when her loyalty to the Dark Prince should have earned her execution.
Dannis hadn't been locked away in chains. Aedric had kept him close. Brought him into his own company and raised him at his side. And his death... that hadn't been Aedric's fault.
I still remembered the look on his face when we'd found the body.
The devastation in it. The terrible, haunted silence that followed.
It made sense now why he'd refused to speak of Neeken afterward, why something dangerous had entered the room whenever anyone dared mention him.
He'd grieved. He'd mourned someone he'd genuinely cared for.
Or perhaps… Doubt slithered through me unbidden, foul enough to make my stomach turn. Perhaps his grief hadn’t been true grief. Perhaps he’d mourned the loss of the one advantage he’d held over the Dusklands for three hundred years.
Because the moment Dannis died, so too had Aedric’s leverage.
I spiralled like that, back and forth through my thoughts, trying to understand his motives. The things he'd done. And why.
I'd truly thought I understood him. Thought I'd begun to glimpse the male beneath the High Lord, the heart hidden beneath all that arrogance and entitlement. But he was still, in so many ways, a stranger to me.
My mate... and yet someone I hardly knew at all.
Night fell, then deepened, and still I couldn’t quiet the unease gnawing at me.
At last, I crossed the room and wrenched open the door. If I hesitated, I wouldn’t go—I knew it. I had to find Levinica. I would go to her chambers, fall to my knees, and beg forgiveness before I lost the nerve entirely.
I stepped into the corridor and forced my feet forward. The halls were empty and still. No shadows trailed me for once—Rìan must’ve had Veylan occupied, likely searching for the wells—but their absence gnawed at me all the same.
My pace slowed as I realized, with a stab of frustration, that I’d only been to Levinica’s chambers once. And I had no idea how to find them again.
I wandered without direction until a familiar corridor pulled me up short. The library lay just beyond the bend.
I hovered there, uncertain, my teeth sinking into my lip. I couldn’t tell Rìan. Not yet. The thought alone made me want to tear my heart from my chest.
So I turned away. My steps carried me, almost without thought, into the receiving chamber. The terrace doors were flung wide, the night wind slipping through in restless currents.
Welcoming the harsh bite of it, I stepped outside.
A gust lashed my skin like a whip, but it did nothing to ease the heaviness bearing down on me.
I dragged my hands over my face, pressing hard until bursts of red flared behind my eyes, until the pressure almost hurt. Anything to keep the tears at bay.
I ached for Levinica. But still… I couldn’t face her.
I descended the steps toward the beach, kicking off my boots at the bottom and sinking my toes into the cool softness of the sand. Wrapping my arms around myself against the cold, I made my way slowly toward the water’s edge.
The night was clear, the crescent moon so bright overhead that it cast a shimmering trail across Half Moon Bay, stretching all the way toward the mainland like a rippling silver road back to Elantis.
The wind swept through the narrow mouth of the bay, whistling as it funneled between the towering cliffs on either side.
The waves churned harder with it, crashing against the shore in wild bursts of spray and foam.
A sudden blur of movement streaked out of the darkness. I startled, stumbling backward, but when I looked down, Titter Mouse was already weaving frantically around my ankles, letting out loud, insistent cries.
“What are you doing out here?” I frowned, bending to scratch between his ears. He darted away before I could touch him, then glanced back and meowed again. His fur stood on end, tail puffed wide, ears twitching anxiously. A cold knot tightened inside me.
“Where’s Levinica?”
The cat turned at once, loping back the way he’d come, farther down the beach. I hurried after him.
I spotted her almost immediately. Moonlight turned her skin white as bone against the darkness, her gown snapping around her legs in the wind.
She stood motionless at the edge of the sea, bare feet buried in the sand, one hand wrapped tightly around the pendant at her throat—the only piece of her son she had left. The only piece she’d ever had.
She faced Elantis. Watching it.
“Levinica?” I called uncertainly over the wind.
She turned her head toward me, but I was too far away to make out her expression.
She said nothing. After a long moment, she looked back toward the sea.
Slowly, she peeled off one glove, finger by finger, and let it fall. The wind seized it immediately, almost greedily, carrying it out into the night beyond the surf. Then the other.
A hollow dread opened inside me. “Levinica—”
She stepped forward. The pale arch of her foot disappeared into the icy shallows.
“Levinica…”
She took another step. And then another.
The hem of her gown, which moments before had whipped frantically, now dragged heavily through the surf behind her, spreading thickly across the water like spilled ink. Still she kept walking, farther and farther into the sea without hesitation.
Surely she would stop. Surely she only needed a moment. To think. To grieve. But the water climbed up her shins, and something cold and terrible settled low in my stomach.
She wasn’t stopping.
“Levinica!”