Chapter 6
Rune
The shadows stirred in the cave as Rune summoned the Veil’s Eye.
It unfurled into a thin sheet of shadow peeling open like silk drawn from darkness. Its surface rippled like black water. Rune bent it to his will, searching for any pocket of darkness near the one who he wished to see.
Within the veil, shapes and color cleared until she appeared.
Alora.
Rune stilled at the sight of her. Of those honey brown eyes he had not seen for a hundred-and fifty- years. She stood at the edge of a forest as her voice spilled into the world.
The melody drifted through Karag D?r and into his prison with a softness that did not belong in stone.
It threaded through the threads of his being.
The shadows pooled and twitched across the cold ground, bending toward her.
They had woken the moment her song had reached him in a place no life dared tread.
Many had sung Rune’s song before. This was different.
She didn’t sing to call to him, but it reached him all the same.
The sound was a tether in the dark and the urge to go to her wrapped around his sanity with desperation. Rune’s strained against the chains, looking up at the open sky but the beam of sun hit cheek with a force that warned him back. The chains scorched against his skin to the bone.
The song abruptly ended.
The shadows surged toward the crevice in the ceiling, desperately searching for escape beyond the prison’s bounds, as if they could crawl out and search for her. Rune dragged them back with a snarl before the sun could take more of him than it already had.
He forced his gaze back into the Veil.
Alora strolled toward her small cottage. Her heartbeat tugged in his chest like gravity shifting. Like the pull of fate brushing against his soul.
Alora.
Alive.
How? Why?
For a heartbeat it was so impossible, Rune’s mind rejected it, tried to name it illusion, madness, punishment.
Then Alora opened a letter and dread made her hands tremble. Her dread sank in his bones as if it belonged to him.
Then he followed her shadow.
The Veil did not care for roads. It cared for darkness. Rune was a presence behind her steps. Lingering in the seams of her cloak. The underside of a lantern on the streets. Rune rode those small pockets like footholds, chasing her across the Midlands to the Thornbearer’s manor.
Then he was in the shade of a willow, watching Zinnia deliver news that made the wind rise and the shadows ripple through the Veil.
He stayed with her until the forest faded and stone and iron of Argyle rose around her like a dreary fortress of grief.
The cursed kingdom he had once sworn to reduce to ash.
And now Rune clung to the dark pleats of the heavy curtains framing the windows of Alora’s old bedchamber. He watched her reunion with a friend. He watched Laurent embrace her with a lie on his breath. He watched the quiet despair in her eyes when she learned of the engagement.
But none of it made sense.
Because Rune had seen this all before.
Alora returning. The empty welcome. The haunted garden. The plan for her hand in marriage, like a bargain struck with wolves. He remembered her voice in that very dining room, shaking with disbelief as her father told her what she would be traded for peace.
He knew exactly what came after.
So why was he watching this happen again?
Rune’s claws sank into the stone beneath him. His chains groaned as he heaved against them so hard the air hummed with his fracturing power. The symbols burned against his wrists, but he didn’t care. He was breathing too fast. Thinking too much.
Time did not bend for mortals.
It did not repeat.
There were no second chances. So what was this?
Unless… this was another divine retribution his father added to his eternal sentence. Would he now be forced to watch her die again?
A growl rumbled deep in Rune’s throat, his tail lashing against the wall with his fury. Dust and debris rained down, crackling on the ground.
His gaze returned to Alora. She was still seated at the dining table, her dress too fine, her shoulders too stiff. Her face pallid with horror.
Rune braced for the same quiet surrender he had witnessed before, that obedient collapse that had made him want to tear the world in half because she always bent and no one ever bled for it but her.
But Alora lifted her gaze.
“I won’t marry a prince I don’t know,” she said.
Rune froze.
The sound of her defiance echoed through the cave in Karag D?r as though the Veil had carried it straight into his marrow.
It didn’t happen this way…
“I refuse to marry a man I don’t love,” she continued, her face flushing with anger. “I don’t even know him!”
The candlelight flickered.
King Laurent’s eyes hardened, his reply cold and final. “You are a princess. You do not marry for love. You marry for duty.”
She shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. “No—”
Her father grabbed her shoulders, startling her.
Rune snarled.
“You will marry him, Alora!”
She recoiled at his shout.
The air shifted.
A sharp ray of wind-forged light tore through the hall, rattling the tall windows until the glass sang in its frames. Rune reared back. Candles flared, flames bending sideways as if fleeing an unseen force. The banners along the walls snapped violently like whips.
Laurent’s eyes widened and he yanked Alora against him as if to shield her from the sudden gale. The wind died at once.
Quiet fell, thick and stunned.
Gasping for air, Alora stared toward the windows. “Was that Calveron?” she whispered. “Their magic?”
The king stilled, then his anger and fear faded beneath weary resignation. “You must do this, Alora,” he said softly now. “Or our kingdom will fall.”
And that had been the end of it.
Alora’s brief defiance sank beneath the pool in her heart where she’d found it and Rune watched the acceptance dull her honey eyes.
Laurent stood back. “Without you, Argyle has no future.”
“Then I suppose,” Alora murmured. “Mine is of little consequence.”
She rose, dipped in a low curtsey, then excused herself with grace worn like armor.
Rune followed her shadow down the hall to her bedchamber, where she collapsed onto her bed and silently wept. In the cave, Rune paced as far as his chains allowed, the need to go to her sharpening into something feral.
This was the moment he had appeared before her and offered escape. This was the moment everything had begun.
But now he was trapped in stone while she cried alone.
Rune glanced at the mirror on her bureau. Reflective surfaces could carry whispers. Dreams could be doors. But his magic was strangled to mist by the manacles, and they burned more intensely the longer he pushed himself.
But Rune couldn’t help but make the Veil’s Eye stay.
Moonlight streamed in through the windows, falling over Alora’s still form where she had moved to the window seat. Tears glistened on her cheek like dewdrops of silver.
Rune sent a thin petal of shadow and caught one tear as it fell. He breathed it in. Salt and sweetness and her, the scent of her threading through his prison until his sanity tightened like a noose.
His breath left him as smoke. He had to go to her.
He clamped his jaws around the chain and pulled until divine metal scorched his teeth, until his throat tasted blood and holy fire. His shadows thrashed, and his teeth ached against the divine metal, but his prison did not give.
Yet he still came back to the same question. Is this real?
“It is,” said a voice like wind over glass.
Rune lurched back at the sudden and very familiar voice. He hit the cave wall, and his shadows scattered, losing sight of Alora. A surge of bright light burned his vision, and he shut his eyes with a hiss.
A soft laugh echoed around him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s naughty to spy? Then again, what could I expect from he who rules the dark?”
The clack of heels echoed in the cavern and Rune squinted toward the glowing figure standing before him and his eyes widened.
Sunneva…?
The Goddess of Death stood at the mouth of the cavern, cloaked in silver. Snowflakes hovered around her like motes of light. Her long golden hair was swept over one shoulder, looking at him with eyes like dawn over ice.
Old wounds cracked open at the sight of her, wounds he had thought buried when they parted ways in the ashes of another war.
Rune looked away, grimacing at the light burning his eyes. What do you want?
She stepped closer, smirking at the chains that wrapped around his arms and chest. “Oh? Is that how you greet an old friend?”
Rune bared his teeth a snarl. We ceased to hold to such sentiments the moment you drove a sword through my back.
Sunneva arched an eyebrow. “Oh, long before that, Rune.”
Came here to gloat? This was your plan, wasn’t it? These cursed chains.
It had been her idea that sparked the creation of Sunstone, leading to his first defeat.
How dare you interfere.
Light burst from Sunneva in a flash of fury, searing and holy. Rune staggered back with a hiss, shielding his eyes beneath a wing.
“How dare you touch my children again!” she thundered, her voice shaking the stone.
Wind lashed like whips through the cavern.
Her eyes burned an unearthly blue, radiant with her wrath.
“Still so arrogant. So blind. Had you killed my son, that lightning strike would not have spared you. And I would have unmade your soul myself.”
Rune said nothing at first, his chest hitching with a breath. Awed by the raw force of her full power now that she had ascended to divinity, and by the undisputable threat.
Death skimmed his nape, sharp and certain.
He smirked. Your temper hasn’t changed, sweetling.
She hissed at him, baring her fangs.
He chuckled low in his throat, savoring her fury. You are right, that strike should have been my end. So tell me, oh terrible Goddess of Death, why am I here? And why is my bride…?
“Alive?” Sunneva took a breath, and her divine light faded, calming the icy temperature that had briefly filled the cavern.
She looked toward the thin shaft of moonlight spilling from the cavern ceiling.
“Perhaps the gods are cruel and seek to torture you with your one desire,” she said idly, her blue eyes falling to his chains.
“Or perhaps… your father took pity on you.”
Rune stared at her, speechless a moment. Then it was his growl rumbling in the cave. The God of Life had never shown mercy.
Not towards him.
The dead cannot be brought back to life, he said flatly. A holy law of the Heavens your mate made very clear when I begged him for Alora’s life. Elyōn would never break his own decree.
“Do not trouble yourself over how it was done.” Sunneva mused, her voice softer now. “All you need to know is that this is your second chance… Rumiel.”
The sound of that name was living coal in his stomach. He had renounced it a long time ago and hearing it now fed his rage.
Second chance? He snarled. To do what?
“To make the right choices. Only then will Alora have a life.”
Rune stilled at that.
“Fail,” Sunneva said quietly, “and fate will follow the path it was always meant to.”
The pitch in her voice sent a shudder through his chest. Wrangling with hope and sudden dread.
He growled a demand, low and hoarse. “Explain.”
“There is but one end to this story, Rune.” Sunneva looked up and he followed her gaze to the opening in the ceiling with a view of the night sky.
“When the Blood Moon rises, if you cannot save your bride, she will be lost forever. No amount of blood you spill, no magic you steal, no ungodly power you claim will ever save her. For Alora’s soul will be erased from existence. ”
A tremor rippled through Rune’s scales, his wings pulling tight against his back, mirroring the cold shock that hollowed him out from within.
Sunneva met his gaze, her face carved in sorrow and finality. “And you will be cast to the darkest pit of the Abyss beneath the Netherworld for all eternity. Tortured with knowledge that she died because of you.”