62. Chapter 62
R en needed answers. Two names had risen in her mind. Veylan or Zakhar.
The first option would mean hours of poring over brittle parchment while avoiding Sir Pindlewhip’s prattling commentary, and Ren didn’t have patience for that. She needed the truth now .
So, Zakhar it was.
Even asking after him had earned her wary looks. Fae spoke of him with a strange reverence;; they knew he brewed the elixirs for the Witherblight, they knew he wielded magic older than memory itself. But beyond that? Nothing.
Zakhar was vital ; he was the one who had created the Verdant Elixir, the only known weapon against the plague that had ravaged the realm. Without him, the cure would die with its secret. So how was it that no one truly knew who he was?
No history.
No origin.
A fae noble had muttered that Zakhar slipped into the forest earlier, searching for some odd mushroom he needed for one of his brews.
That was enough for Ren to go searching for him. After grabbing lunch in the market, Ren sauntered past the outer gates with a careless smile thrown at the guard stationed there. He only sighed, the kind that said I don’t care what you do so long as it doesn’t get me killed.
The forest outside of Pyraelia’s gates swallowed her whole, and for a startling moment, she was reminded of the journey she made when she first came to the gates, with Talen and Elira.
Thick foliage reached greedy fingers across her path, thorns snagging at her sleeves as if to warn her back. She shoved them aside with a muttered curse. The light grew dim beneath the canopy. Her boots sank into damp earth, and the air grew cool, carrying the faint trickle of running water.
That sound pulled her forward.
And then, Ren caught a glimpse of a dark silhouette hunched by the riverbank. The figure’s long robes dragged like smoke against the mossy stonest. Even before he turned, she knew who it was.
Zakhar.
He didn’t look at her immediately. His wild gray curls were more unruly than ever, sticking out at angles as though the wind itself was caught in them. When at last he turned his head, his eyes caught the dying light—dark pools rimmed faintly with silver, ancient and strange.
Ren froze at the sight. Even now, after everything, she couldn’t decide if his gaze unsettled her or drew her in deeper.
“You wander far for someone so small,” Zakhar murmured at last. “Do the palace halls bore you already, Flameborne?”
“I came because I have some questions I thought you may know the answers to.”
Zakhar tilted his head as though considering her request, then turned back to the river, dipping his hand into its current. When he drew it out, water slipped through his fingers. “Answers,” he mused. “The sweetest poison of them all.”
Ren stepped closer. “Every time I lose control, I hear a voice. Right before it happens. Is that… normal for a Flameborne? Or is something wrong with me?”
“What you’re hearing may not be a flaw or a failing. It could be… a presence. One bound to your magic. One that has waited a very long time.”
“Whatever it is… can I control it? ”
Zakhar rose then. “Truth is a door, and once you open it, you do not choose what comes through.”
Ren’s skin prickled. But she held his gaze. “Then open it for me.”
They stared at each other for a few seconds. That was when Ren noticed the river.
The river should have run downhill, away from her, but as Ren studied the current, she realized it bent the other way. The current surged upstream, climbing stone and root as if it had forgotten the pull of the world.
Zakhar grinned like a child with a dangerous toy when he noticed Ren’s gaze.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he remarked, eyes flashing with a fever-bright light.
“How something so certain can be undone in a moment.” He watched the impossible current dance, delighted, as if the world bending wrong beneath his fingers was the only music he ever needed.
“ You did that?”
“Of course,” he replied, as if she’d asked if the sky was blue. “Rivers run down. People bow. But with the right pressure, the right spark, anything—” his gaze slid to her, sharp and unsettling, “—and anyone can change direction.”
A shiver chased down her spine.
Through gritted teeth, Ren asked, “And what are you saying, exactly? Just get to it.”
“I’m saying that nothing is fixed. Not rivers. Not crowns. Not even you .”
The river still clawed uphill, water climbing roots and stone as if the world had been turned inside out.
“Have you ever known any Flameborne who heard voices?”
Zakhar chuckled softly, the sound both mirth and menace. “Ah, the past,” he murmured, crouching low to trail a finger through the backward-flowing current.
“Stop beating around the bush and answer me,” Ren paused. “Please.”
Zakhar’s gaze softened. “Do you see why the river runs uphill now? Even what seems unchangeable can be undone. What was once cruelty can end . What was once a servant… can surely rise .” He shifted a sprig of dried herb between his fingers.
“Most Flameborne carry the blood of dragons. That alone is dangerous. But only a rare few can house a dragon’s soul. And those are very different things.”
“Zakhar, are you implying that the voice I’ve been hearing isn’t mine ?”
Ren looked again at the water crawling against its nature, relentless, impossible. She didn’t know if his display was meant to comfort her or to break her further.
“What am I supposed to do with that truth?” she whispered.
“Ah, that is the question only you can answer.”