Chapter 24 #2
Calla’s voice came cool and certain beside her, her softly glowing eyes on the spectacle. “Winning by mercy is no victory. And surviving defeat after a challenge…” Her lip curled faintly. “We would rather burn in the sun.”
The roar below rose again, and Alora understood their lesson with a sickening clarity. This was not chaos.
It was order.
Mercy was a kindness of the weak and weakness was a death sentence.
Here with the monsters, she could already feel herself changing, shedding softness day by day.
No, Alora refused to forget who she was.
The shadows at her feet recoiled, as if answering her irritation. Calla’s brow lifted but said nothing at all as Alora turned away and returned to her chambers.
Without access to books, Alora was left with her mother’s journal to read. Though the scribbles and ramblings became more difficult to decipher with each page.
Don’t look in the mirrors. He sees.
He follows. Even in dreams.
Hide in the notes. The song. In the seams. Sing and his shadow folds.
He searches for her. I feel him watching.
The candle guttered, flame bending sharply away from the page before steadying again. A chill crept over Alora. She quickly flipped the page and froze.
The next leaf had been torn out. Had her mother removed it to hide what even ink could not hold?
She frowned, running her finger along the torn edge. No, this was new…
But who—
Alora flinched when Deimos arrived in her chambers, motes of darkness in his wake.
Shades, he called them.
They followed him like motes, their outlines flickering like candle smoke.
They took the shapes of crows or bats, sometimes like the silhouettes of faces, but never enough to make them whole.
She had a feeling they were lost souls, and looking at them too long made her vision tilt, as if the mind tried to fill in the missing details and failed.
Alora straightened on her bed. “What news?”
Deimos had not been too pleased when she asked him to spy on Argyle. Yet he did so without much argument and reported to her every now and then. Perhaps it was born of boredom. Or perhaps she held more power as Rune’s queen than she wanted to acknowledge.
He sat in her chair, glowering at the thin path of sunlight that slipped through her drawn curtains. “Not much has changed since last week’s report. Your kingdom remains under heavy guard. Calveron’s banners fly above every gate, and no one enters or leaves without King Eldrik’s seal.”
She scoffed at the title.
“He has expanded his search to the Midlands.”
Alora’s chest tightened with worry, though she told herself Lady Zinnia could handle herself. “And my friends?”
Deimos lifted a clawed finger as a mote landed on it. “From what my Shades have heard, the captain managed to escape the same night you did.”
She smiled with relief. “So, Caelum is alive?”
“It would seem.” His tail flicked pensively. “Your other friend, however, has been brought out of confinement.”
Alora held her breath. In his last report, Deimos informed her that Eldrik had kept Theia imprisoned to force Duchess Alder’s cooperation in retaking Stormwatch Keep.
“Why? What’s changed?” Alora asked, her voice catching.
“She is the new Duchess of House Alder. Her mother has fallen to the curse.”
The words chilled Alora more than the air did, and her throat tightened.
“Good work, Deimos.
He nodded shortly, dissolving into mist.
The chamber fell quiet long after he left. Alora absentmindedly played with Nexus, letting him playfully bite and attack her hand as she fought tears.
Her friends were out there, battling to survive the loss of their home and family while she sat in a fortress, safe and protected.
The guilt pressed against her ribs until it hurt to breathe.
She thought of Theia’s face, the light in her eyes. Theia had always leaned on her mother for guidance, for strength. She had already lost her father, to lose her mother now…
Alora needed to be there, to hold her, to promise that she wasn’t alone. But she was trapped here, buried under a mountain that didn’t belong to her.
Only Rune could let her out.
Alora’s gaze drifted upward to the ceiling, where faint white veins of calcite shimmered.
“Karag D?r,” she whispered, unsure if she spoke to the stone or the shadows themselves. “Can I see him?”
The silence was heavy.
It had been three weeks since she last saw Rune.
Had her husband grown bored of her? Or was this some new punishment?
The thought unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.
Alora often dreamed of Rune.
The edge of his form standing in the sun, the whisper of his shadows curling through her sleep, calling her name.
The heat of his hands, his mouth against her skin, left her waking flustered and ashamed of the ache between her legs that followed.
Sometimes she woke certain he had been beside her, the sheets still warm where no one had lain.
Even in his absence, Alora still felt him.
Rune’s consciousness lived in the walls of Karag D?r, as though he were watching, listening, breathing with the mountain itself. At times, she swore he could hear her.
One afternoon, when loneliness and nostalgia gnawed deep, Alora spoke to Nexus aloud.
She told him of the Midlands, the rolling meadows and the fairies she used to sing to.
Bramble, the grumpy hedge goblin; her godmother and her stuffy lessons; the loneliness of her quiet cottage.
Her favorite reprieve in those days had been the little book shops she visited in town: the scent of parchment and rain, the peace of corners where no one demanded anything of her.
The next morning, a door appeared where there hadn’t been one before.
It waited at the edge of her garden cavern, carved from black stone veined with silver. She hesitated a moment before opening it.
Inside lay a room she had never seen. Velvet carpet, dark shelves heavy with leather-bound volumes, a single armchair before a tall window spilling sunlight across the floor.
Her breath caught.
It was a library.
Every detail was curated by unseen hands: the faint warmth of the fire, the ink-scented air, the soft hum of shadow magic holding the room together.
Alora sank into the velvet chair, the light haloing her in gold.
For the first time in weeks, she smiled.
But the warmth in her chest flickered with unease.
He was merely making the cage more comfortable.
Still, she wandered the library, tracing her fingertips along the spines until one caught her eye.
It was tucked in the corner on the bottom shelf, forgotten or hidden.
The cover was bound in black leather, its edges worn by time.
No title. When she opened it, the paper whispered beneath her touch, aged and yellowed by time.
Her fingers stilled when seeing the elegant black script inside.
She knew that handwriting.
The long, slanted strokes. The sharpness of the S, the flourish of the R. She had seen it once before.
The first time she had called on the dark.
Alora skimmed through the pages, reading Rune’s thoughts, and sometimes his sketches. Her eyes paused on a passage where the ink had spilled, splattered with wine stains, the letters careless as if written on a night he had too much to drink.
They clamor for eternity,
and bargain gold for time.
Blood for life. Souls for more.
But the endless know its true name.
Eternal quiet. Echoed screams.
A void of naught without end.
Alora stared at it for a long while. The stains, the faltering script, the weight between each line… it all whispered of a grief too vast to name.
For the first time, she pitied him.
And she hated herself for it.
Because she understood that loneliness, a thing so vast one could get lose in it. Yet at once she was confused to find Rune feeling something so…
Terribly human.
Alora closed the book slowly, holding it against her chest as she looked toward the window. Sunlight spilled across the ridge, and for a heartbeat, she almost imagined him standing in this spot.
Sometimes, Alora was grateful for his absence. Sometimes, she resented it. At others, guilt gnawed like a splinter for disparaging him. But even the mountain was indignant. It refused her nothing—except to see him.
She thought of Rune enough that his voice carried in the echoes of the wind. She saw wisps of his shape flickering in the dim halls. Alora would call out to the dark, but the shadows never answered.
And the god who ruled them did not come.
In the morning, Alora stopped waiting.
When the first pale light of dawn crept through the edges of her curtains, she rose quietly and dressed. It was the hour when most demons slept. Even the shadows were drowsy, stretching lazily along the walls as Alora slipped through the hidden tunnel in her hearth.
The mountain no longer barred her path. Perhaps it had grown used to her morning training, or perhaps it had simply stopped caring to stop her. Either way, she meant to use that freedom.
Alora took a detour that led away from the garden cavern, Nexus following on her heels.
The hall outside was cold. The torches lining the corridor sputtered with low flame, casting long, distorted shadows.
She must have entered the adjacent hallway to hers because when she peeked around the corner, she spotted Hadeon and Deimos standing guard outside her door.
Well, the large quiet demon had Deimos in a headlock as he squirmed and fought to break free, Hadeon muttering that he talked too much.
Nexus dashed into the shadows ahead. Alora followed, glancing over her shoulder with every step, but no one followed.
She relaxed, letting the kitten lead the way, his yellow iridescent eyes catching the torchlight. Alora wasn’t sure how to find Rune, but something was pulling her.
A part of her hoped it was a way out.