Chapter 29
RETURN TO WAR
Kaan
The Queen's portal deposits us back into reality with all the gentleness of being thrown from a moving horse. One moment we're standing in her chamber, the next we're stumbling through a gateway that tastes like ozone and fucking regret.
I steady myself instinctively, shadows flaring outward to check for threats. Always check for ambush. Always assume the worst. It's kept me alive for centuries and helped me take a throne that wasn't mine by birthright.
"Stay close," I tell Nesilhan, my shadows already reaching for her instinctively. Not a command—a need. After everything we've survived together, the thought of her more than an arm's length away makes something feral stir in my chest.
"Was that an order, Shadow Lord?"
"A request. From someone who's grown rather attached to keeping you alive."
"Romantic."
"I try."
She doesn't respond further. Just follows with Elcin at her side, the two of them moving with the synchronized grace of women who've survived together.
The silver binding-mark on Nesilhan's wrist pulses with unnatural light as she crosses the threshold, and I can't feel her anymore—can't sense the echo of emotion that used to flow between us like breathing.
The Queen severed our bond. That connection lies dark and empty now, a constant reminder of what she destroyed.
Yasar follows, his steps measured and deliberate.
He stays close enough to Nesilhan to satisfy whatever magic binds them, far enough that it might look like choice rather than compulsion.
The pretense fools no one, least of all me.
My shadows writhe, wanting nothing more than to wrap around his throat and squeeze until those unsettling eyes go dark.
But now is not the time. Now is never the time, apparently. I'm collecting grievances like a miser hoards gold.
Banu comes last, moving through the ruins. She pauses at the threshold, her wings trembling slightly as her gaze sweeps across what lies beyond.
Her expression goes from wary to devastated in the space of a heartbeat.
The throne room materializes around us as the Queen's portal collapses with a sound like thunder being strangled.
Devastation.
The word doesn't do it justice. Catastrophe feels closer. Apocalypse might be accurate.
The massive ebony pillars that once supported the vaulted ceiling—each one carved from a single piece of shadow-stone quarried from the deep places where light never reaches—lie shattered across the floor like the bones of murdered giants.
Each pillar had taken a century to carve, enchanted by shadow-mages whose names are lost to time.
Their destruction represents not just structural damage but the erasure of irreplaceable history.
Half the room has collapsed entirely, exposing the night sky above where a dome of shadow-glass once filtered the starlight into something softer, more tolerable.
That dome had been a gift from my mother to my father on their wedding day—back before he became a monster, or perhaps when she still believed he could be saved from becoming one. Now it's just broken glass.
The sky visible through the shattered ceiling is wrong. Reality tears shimmer across it like scars, pulsing with sickly light that makes my shadows recoil instinctively. The fabric of the world itself is coming undone.
Ancient tapestries depicting Shadow Court history hang in tatters from the remaining walls, their threads unraveling like the realm itself.
I can see fragments of the great battles—the War of Seven Nights, the Demon Purge, the Treaty of Twilight—all reduced to faded colors and disconnected images.
Centuries of history, slowly being erased.
The marble floor, which once gleamed, is scorched with blast patterns I recognize all too well.
The marks form concentric circles radiating from specific points—targeting patterns.
This wasn't random destruction. Someone planned this.
Someone calculated exactly where to strike for maximum structural damage while minimizing exposure to our defensive wards.
Light Court magic. Pure, destructive, and deliberately aimed at the support structures with the kind of destruction that speaks to inside knowledge.
Someone told them where to hit. Someone betrayed us.
Add it to the list of people who need killing.
"What the fuck happened here?" My voice echoes off broken stone.
Movement in the shadows near what's left of the eastern alcove. My darkness surges instinctively, coiling into deadly spears aimed at the disturbance. The shadows respond to my fury, eager for violence, practically begging me to let them kill something.
"My lord?"
The voice is familiar but wrong—raw with exhaustion, stripped of its usual crisp military tone.
Two figures emerge from behind a partially collapsed pillar, and the sight stops me cold.
Emir and Zoran. Together. Both looking like they've been through the apocalypse and come out the other side held together by sheer stubbornness and spite.
My Shadow General, who maintains his appearance with religious dedication, who treats his uniform like a sacred text that must be followed to the letter, who has never—in decades of service—appeared before me looking anything less than impeccable...
He looks like he's been through a war. Multiple wars.
His immaculate military uniform, usually pressed so sharply it could cut glass, has been replaced by battered battle armor that's seen better decades.
The black plate is dented, scorched, and patched in a dozen places with mismatched metal.
Blood—some fresh and red, some dried to brown or black—covers the left side of his face in patterns that suggest he's been wounded, healed, and wounded again repeatedly.
His right arm hangs at an odd angle, clearly broken and splinted with what looks like a broken sword and torn cloth.
But it's his eyes that truly tell the story.
Emir's eyes, usually sharp with careful assessment and unwavering loyalty, are soulless. Exhausted beyond measure. Haunted by things I suspect have very little to do with physical battles and everything to do with losing people he couldn't save.
I know that look. I see it in the mirror every morning.
Zoran stands beside him, and if possible, he looks even worse than when we left him bleeding out on the healer's table.
He's upright—which is more than I expected—but leaning heavily on a cane, his golden Light Court beauty dimmed by what must have been weeks of brutal recovery.
A fresh scar cuts across his jaw, and his usually pristine posture has been replaced by the careful movements of someone whose body still remembers being torn apart.
But there's something different about him too. Something harder. The soft scholar who used to flinch at violence has been replaced by someone who's clearly seen—and dealt—his share of death in the past months.
Before I can speak, Banu makes a small, broken sound. But she doesn't rush to Emir—she freezes, her wings going completely still, her lavender eyes wide with something like fear mixed with longing and guilt.
Emir's gaze shifts past me, and the moment he sees her, his entire body goes rigid. For three heartbeats, he just stares, as if he can't quite process what he's seeing. Then his carefully maintained composure shatters completely.
He crosses the distance between them in three long strides despite his injuries, his good arm reaching for her while his broken one hangs useless at his side.
"You're alive," he breathes, his hands hovering over her face, her shoulders, as if he can't quite believe she's real. "Gods, you're alive. When you—when she—" His voice cracks. "I thought I'd lost you."
"I'm fine," Banu whispers, but her voice wavers with emotion I've rarely heard from her. "I'm fine, Emir. It wasn't—I didn't mean to—"
"Shh." His hand finally settles on her cheek, gentle despite the violence evident in his battered armor. "I know. I know it wasn't you." His thumb brushes away her tears. "Are you hurt? Did they—did anyone—"
"I'm okay," she says, her small hands coming up to grip his wrist as if anchoring herself. "I promise. Just... tired. And I'm so sorry. What happened to Nesilhan, I never meant—"
"Not your fault," he says firmly, his eyes searching her face with desperate intensity.
"None of it was your fault." He pulls her closer, carefully, as if she might shatter.
"When I heard what happened, that you'd been taken, replaced.
.." His jaw tightens. "I've been looking for you for months.
Three expeditions into the Grove, and every time—"
He doesn't finish. Doesn't need to. The exhaustion carved into every line of his face, the wounds, the desperate relief in his eyes—it all tells the story of a man who thought he'd failed to protect someone precious.
Banu's wings flutter once, weakly, before she lets herself lean into him. “You didn’t give up on me," she whispers. "You kept looking."
"Always," he murmurs into her silver hair.
I watch this reunion for a moment, seeing something in my general I've never witnessed before—raw, unguarded emotion. Whatever exists between them runs deeper than I realized.
Meanwhile, Nesilhan has moved past me, her attention fixed on her brother. Zoran meets her halfway, his cane clattering to the ground as she throws her arms around him.
"You're alive," she breathes into his shoulder. "The healers weren't sure—when we left, you were—"
"Takes more than a poisoned blade to kill me," Zoran says, but his voice is rough with emotion as he holds her tightly. "Though I'll admit, the first three weeks were touch and go. The healers threatened to tie me to the bed if I didn't stop trying to help coordinate the defenses."
"You should have rested.”