SEVEN
NINE YEARS
Last night I uncovered an old manuscript, its pages brittle with age, recounting a fairy tale passed down through generations.
It spoke of the “Old Ones” and their design for a “future peace.” According to the tale, they wove a grand spell, pouring into it not only their magics, but fragments of their very souls.
I cannot ignore how closely this legend mirrors the so-called “illness” afflicting Thane’s father.
The resemblance is too precise, too deliberate to dismiss.
Coincidence is a refuge for those unwilling to think. Deeper I delve.”
—VALEN’S JOURNAL
THANE
She’s asleep now. Her breath soft against my collarbone, her fingers still curled at my ribs like she doesn’t trust the world not to take me.
I haven’t moved. I don’t think I could. I feel like I’ve been hollowed out and filled with lead—too heavy to leave, too busy to rest.
Everything hurts.
Not physically or even magically. Just . . . inside. Like something broke open, and now every breath scrapes against what’s left.
I didn’t know.
Gods, I didn’t know.
My mother. My father.
I thought she was lost. I thought he abandoned us. But what if she was fighting? What if they both were?
Help him.
The words echo, sharper now. Clearer. There was no one else she would have meant.
My father—
The way he went still. The way he listened. The way he tried to speak.
Gods.
What if he wasn’t failing? What if he was holding it back?
What if he was the shield? The anchor?
The one holding it all back while I spent nine years hating him for not being strong enough to stay.
A sudden sharp feeling twists in my chest. My breath stutters, like my body doesn’t know how to hold the weight of being wrong about this. I press my palm against my chest, trying to soothe the ache.
Amara stirs, mumbling something, as her fingers uncurl, then curl again. I still, not wanting to wake her.
My Amara.
I turn my head to press a soft kiss to the top of her head, breathing in her scent. Wildflower and summer.
And the shadows . . .
They didn’t pull away . . . they stayed. They moved with her voice, her touch. The bond.
And in that moment—gods—they knew. They’ve always known.
The bond thrummed through me tonight like a second heartbeat. Memory. Grief trying to speak in a language I’ve never been taught.
But she understood it as if she was born knowing. Amara always understands. She held me, like I wasn’t broken or corrupt. As if I was something worth holding. Not a Warlord. Not a weapon. Just . . . me.
And maybe that’s the worst part. Because now I have to live with what I didn’t see. With what I said to him. What I thought. And with the truth pressing into my bones—he was never the failure.
I was.
And still, she stayed. Amara said nothing to pull me back together. She didn’t have to. I’m beginning to understand what strength really looks like beyond power.
But this doesn’t end here. I’ll have to tell Rowena.
Gods, Rowena.
She’ll act like she already knew. Like she’s not surprised. But I’ll see it—the way her jaw locks, the way her shoulders stiffen like she’s holding the world again. Because that’s what she does. She never breaks.
This might break her. And I’ll have to be the one to say it out loud: we were wrong about everything.
And then there’s him.
My father.
What will I say if we can pull him out of whatever has him? When he looks at me—what’s left of him after carrying this alone?
Will he remember? Will he speak? Or will he be a shadow of a man who made himself into a wall so I didn’t have to?
How do I look him in the eye, knowing I cursed his name for years while he was fighting for me with every breath he had left?
I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough. But I have to try. Because this isn’t just about my family anymore. This curse—this thing that has haunted us, unraveled us, broken us from the inside—isn’t done. I’ve felt it through the bond. Seen how close it came to claiming me . . .
I need to understand what it is. What it wants. Where it comes from.
We’ve been calling it a curse for generations. Amara said it felt gentle, but what if it’s trickery and actually something worse? Something sentient. Something tethered. Something waiting.
I need answers—about the symbols, the curse, what my mother did, what my father carried. What he carries still. I’ll find them. I’ll tear through every archive, every record the realm has tried to bury.
Because if we were wrong about them . . .
What else have we mistaken for truth?
“Mor’kaar?”
Xaroth’s voice moves through me, a deep current brushing the edges of my thoughts.
“Yes, Xaroth?”
“You close yourself off.” A pause. “That is not like you.”
“I needed space.” I drag a hand through my hair, breath leaving me in a rough exhale. “These shadows . . . I don’t understand them.”
They linger at the edge of my awareness. Watching.
Waiting.
“And I don’t trust them.”
A rumble answers me, deep enough I feel it in my bones.
“Shadow is not separate from the world,” Xaroth says. “The Guardians name it necessary to the balance of nature.”
“That’s not what I’ve seen,” I snap, the edge in my voice sharper than I expect. “It corrupts. It destroys. It ruins everything it touches.”
I close my eyes.
“They killed my mother and nearly ruined my father.”
“What you have seen is not the whole of it,” Xaroth says, his certainty only sharpening the frustration rising in my chest.
My eyes snap open.
Before I can respond, Amara murmurs in her sleep, her eyelids fluttering. I press my lips to the top of her head, the tight edge in my chest easing at the contact.
She settles, and I adjust my arm, careful not to disturb her.
“What’s the whole of it?”
“I don’t know, Mor’kaar. I know what the Guardians say. I know the history I’ve lived. I know what I’ve seen.”
“Why won’t the Guardians tell you? They must have the knowledge.” The words leave me sharper than I intend. “That information could save my father. It could release me from this curse. It could save the realm.”
“Some knowledge is guarded for a reason, Mor’kaar. Even dragons are not beyond its reach.”
“That’s bullshit.”
The rumble that answers rattles my bones. I’ve crossed a line. I know it. I don’t care. Not if it means lives spared.
I look down at the woman in my arms. At ease. Untouched by any of this.
Not if it means I get to keep her.
“You are my rider, but know your place, Mor’kaar.
The Guardians are unbonded. They are not beholden to any clan, kingdom, or person.
They serve only the realm and its balance.
Even bonded dragons respect and defer to those of Mythren Valley.
The Guardians do not guide us with answers. They guide us with moments.”
I’ve pushed Xaroth too far. He shares what he knows. But damn those bloody Guardian dragons. They claim to serve balance—how is corrupted shadow magics balance?
I swallow it down. “I’m sorry, Xaroth.”
A gentle rumble washes over me in response.
“You said they feel different when you wield. The Spiritborn has called them soothing.”
The memory on the balcony rises.
The shadows reaching. Holding. Listening.
“She said they felt . . . calm,” I admit. “Gentle.”
I still don’t understand it.
“That is not how it has ever felt to me,” Xaroth says.
The words land heavier than they should.
“I have known the same. Shadow magics felt cold. Like ice. Cutting.”
I recall fighting past Commanders who wielded the Shadow Element. The visceral urge in my muscles to flee. To survive. The way it felt like death had a grip on my shoulder.
“I have flown beside Shadow wielders,” he says. “I have seen what it does. What it leaves behind. I have only ever known it as it is now.”
Something tightens in my chest.
“Then something changed,” I say, thinking of my conversations with Valen and Amara since I first wielded it.
“It is possible.”
His words settle between us. Dragons do not speak without purpose. What Xaroth offers, he believes to be true.
“If it wasn’t always corruption . . . ” I drag a hand down my face. “Then what caused it?”
Xaroth’s presence changes, subtle but unmistakable.
“I do not know.”
The admission comes without hesitation.
“But power does not change its nature without cause.”
I stare into the dark beyond the window, my thoughts turning faster.
“Then something twisted it.”
A low rumble answers. “Or something entered it.”
The words settle cold in my bones.
“And my father . . . ” My voice catches. “You think he’s holding it back.”
“From what you’ve discovered, yes. I think your father is holding something back.”
A deep growl follows those words, but it rolls through me as if it were my own, the thought pressing in: my father is holding something back.
“Where do I go from here, Xaroth? What do I do? How can I free my father? How do I learn what has a hold of him?”
The questions build, one after another, relentless in their rise.
“Tonight, you sleep, Mor’kaar. Quiet your mind. Tomorrow, we start anew.”
The connection fades, a soft exhale against a candle flame.
I turn my head. She’s asleep beside me, her breath against my skin.
I can’t sleep. I don’t think I will tonight.
My eyes are open, fixed on the ceiling above us—dark, blurred, unmoving. But all I see is him.
Nine years of silence. Nine years of distance. Nine years of hating the man I thought abandoned us.
While I saw failure, he was becoming the shield.
I want to be sick with the guilt of it. Maybe I am. But guilt is too clean for this.
This is rot. Regret in the bones.
Rage turned inward so long it hardened into something I wear like armor. Every word I never said. Every visit I put off. Every time I turned away from him. From her. From all of it.
I thought I was moving forward. But I was running.
And I left him behind.
Amara stirs beside me, and her hand brushes against mine. Even unconscious, she reaches for me.
Gods. What did I do to deserve her?
She saw what I couldn’t. Felt what I refused to. Not just the bond, but the truth underneath.
I don’t know how she does it. How she stays open.
Carries so much without folding in on herself.
She watched me fall apart, and she held me through it.
Now I lie beside her in the aftermath, awake in the quiet, trying to piece together what’s left of me.
Trying to make sense of nine years of useless hatred. Nine years of foolish silence.
I don’t know what tomorrow looks like. But right now, in this breath, with her beside me and the bond still humming low and steady beneath my skin, I know one thing.
I was wrong.
Now I have to learn how to carry that.
Not alone. But with her. Because maybe the only way to survive this kind of truth is to stop carrying it alone.