Chapter 34
Alora
Alora stormed down the corridor toward her chambers, ignoring Hadeon as he escorted her there. He didn’t need a prompt when they reached her door, he simply took his place beside it like a gargoyle carved from living night.
Alora went in, and she slammed the door behind them, leaning against it. Caelum, already sitting at her table, didn’t say a word. He simply remained still, silently waiting as she processed everything she had learned.
She sniffed and wiped at her face, furious at herself for crying. Her throat burned, tears stinging like something shameful. How could Rune make her feel so small? His cruelty found the softest parts of her and crush it.
He didn’t care. Not about Argyle. Not about her people.
Not about her.
But last night had been different. The way he touched her like she was something sacred, danced with her, kissed her. But now? His demeanor had returned to its sardonic, sarcastic self.
He wore that smirk like armor and gods, she hated it.
The shadows curled against the corners of her chambers. Even when he wasn’t here, she could feel him. That low hum in the air, like the pause before a thunderclap. His presence clung to her bones.
“Get. Out.”
Her magic flared white at the command, banishing all traces of darkness. The shadows fled like wisps of smoke, fleeing into the faults in the stone walls.
Her heart pounded as her thoughts spun.
Rune complied…because she forced him to.
Alora stared at the markings now spreading up her arms. They shimmered faintly under her skin like curling paths of white vines. Something was awakening in her, and that frightened her more than Rune ever could. Because part of her liked the way it felt.
The power.
The promise.
But where did it come from? She couldn’t have inherited it from her mother. Rune held pieces of this puzzle, she sensed it.
Let him toast to monsters then. She was done pretending he was anything else.
Alora yanked open the curtains wide, the sky turning pink with the sunrise. There, the light will keep him out.
“Princess…” Caelum cleared his throat. “When did your powers manifest?”
She halted in place and turned to him.
Caelum looked pale, his skin drawn tight over his cheekbones, the remnants of his injuries still shadowing him.
His armor had been cleaned, but the scent of iron clung to him.
Against the dark velvet of her chamber, he looked terribly out of place, like a memory dragged from a world she no longer belonged to. If she ever had.
His gaze lingered on the strange markings along her neck.
And he did not look surprised.
Her mouth parted with a soft inhale. “You knew?”
“I suspected…” Caelum said hesitantly. “I overheard the queen speaking. She said … you were dangerous.”
The word fell like a verdict.
“My mother said that?”
“Delphi.”
Alora exhaled faintly. “Of course she did.”
She sat on the bed, folding her knees against her chest.
“What else did she say?”
Caelum’s blue eyes held hers a moment. “That one day a great darkness would come for you.”
A darkness did come.
“Do you remember,” Alora murmured, “the summer my father sent us to visit the United Crown? It was beautiful. White walls on the edge of the sea. Golden spires on the coast, endless forest and snow in the north. There was no true night there. The sun never set.”
“The Kingdom of the Dawn,” Caelum said, though it sounded like a faraway memory even to him.
She still remembered that endless light, lingering on the horizon like a promise that never faded. A land of long summers, warm hearts, and steady peace.
The opposite of everything that had claimed her.
“We pledged to return,” Alora said, her smile trembling. “Can we go back?”
Caelum shook his head. “Perhaps one day. But… have you ever wondered why you were sent to live in the Midlands?”
Alora looked away. Her mother had died after that summer. “I was banished.”
His blue eyes didn’t waver. “You were hidden.”
She sat up straight. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” Caelum admitted, glancing warily at the door, as if he could feel the mountain listening. “Only that you are special and it puts you in danger.” His gaze dropped to her markings. “That kind of power draws eyes from every corner of the world… and from places beyond it.”
A shiver slid down her spine.
“The Midlands is the one place that could shield you,” Caelum continued, “and keep your magic dormant.”
Yes. She had suspected as much.
“I always thought it strange Calveron sailed across the seas to conquer Argyle,” Caelum said, brow furrowing. “But this conquest isn’t led by the Summer Queen. Eldrik came for power. And when you resisted, he took your father’s head.”
Alora flinched.
After everything, she’d nearly forgotten.
Eldrik’s laughter. The throne room. The wet sound of steel. The sickening thud.
Alora rubbed at her face, trying to tear free of the memory, but she could still smell the blood.
“What happened after I vanished at the altar?” Alora asked quietly. “Is Theia all right?”
“She’s safe,” Caelum said, but the pause that followed made her stomach tighten. “The night of your wedding, Eldrik sent his men to ransack the city searching for you. Many were lost in the bedlam.”
Her heart sank.
“Afterward, he left your people alone for the most part, so long as they comply. For now, finding you holds his attention. They are combing the kingdom. Last I heard, they sent an envoy to the Midlands, and they will eventually come to the mountain.” The hint of a smile rose to Caelum’s face.
“But Eldrik now has the curse to contend with. It’s beginning to affect his men. ”
At least that was something.
“May it keep him occupied,” Alora said. She turned to the window, staring toward Argyle, though all she could see where the clouds. “Did my father know the truth?” she murmured. “About me?”
“I suspect he did.”
Her eyes burned. “That’s why he sent me away, isn’t it?”
“He sent you away because his new queen convinced him to.”
Alora spun. “Convinced him of what?”
Caelum drew a breath. “That you are the source of the Sleeping Curse.”
The room tilted.
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. The words didn’t make sense, not at first, as if the air had grown too thick to swallow.
Alora tried to deny it, instinct screaming no. But there was one absolute truth about the fae.
They cannot lie.
Her knees buckled.
Caelum lurched forward and caught her before she hit the floor, easing her down until she sat on the stone, trembling. He knelt beside her.
Her mother had been the first to fall to the sleeping sickness. The healers claimed it was madness that took her, sickness drawn from living among mortals and iron.
But it had begun with her.
Alora’s vision blurred as she stared at the glowing marks on her hands. “Am I the source?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Did I kill my mother?”
Caelum hesitated. “The fae speak the truths they accept… even if their beliefs are wrong.”
A thin reassurance, but it let her draw breath again.
The relief was hollow and fleeting, because even if she hadn’t killed her mother, her father had still abandoned her.
Once, during a yearly visit to the Thornbearer, Alora had found a report from her father detailing a death toll. She hadn’t understood it then.
She did now.
The blight spreads. A soul lost every other year, now a score more. The exodus failed. This is a plague beyond our ability to impede.
Laurent must have believed Delphi’s claim.
For a heartbeat she was a child again, trapped in a carriage, staring back at a home that did not want her, powerless to stop a storm she hadn’t meant to summon.
“You said I was sent away to keep me hidden,” she whispered. “Hidden from what?”
Caelum’s brow furrowed. “I wish I knew.”
If her power was so dire… why summon her back to Argyle after fifteen years? It certainly wasn’t to make her heir. Her father could have sired more children.
The day Laurent died, the look in his eyes had held too many unspoken things.
She needed answers. And there was one place she would find them.
The Midlands had never been her home, but something in her called to it now.
Alora stood. “We’re leaving.”
A slow smile curved Caelum’s mouth. “I hoped you would say that.”
He went to his pack, slinging it over one shoulder as he gathered his shield and slid his sword into its scabbard.
Alora snatched up her satchel, slipping in the spindle she had stolen back from Rune. She shoved in clothing and fruit. Pausing, she glanced down at her dragon bracelet before removing it, placing it gently on the table. There was no need for it anymore.
Nexus crawled out from beneath the bed with a sleepy meow, stretching.
Caelum shifted back instinctively.
“You must stay here,” Alora murmured, scratching the Vareth behind the ears. “I have to go.”
Those bright yellow eyes, glittering like galaxies, blinked lazily.
“Demons rarely walk the halls during the day,” she told Caelum. “Slipping out now is our best chance to go unnoticed…” She trailed off with a grim sigh. “I speak as though escaping will be easy. Even if we can escape without being caught, we won’t get far on foot.”
“I have horses waiting at the foothills of the mountain,” Caelum said. “The last of my men have a ship in Gloam’s Watch, ready to take us wherever you wish.”
Gloam’s Watch lay farther west, beyond Argyle’s city limits, tucked into sheer cliffs by the sea. The waters there were treacherous.
Would she be safe from Rune if she fled?
Unease buzzed beneath her ribs. There was no telling whether she would succeed… or what he would do if he caught her.
But she would not be caged any longer.
Alora slipped into the bathing chamber and changed into riding trousers, fastening a leather corset over a white blouse. The castle dropped a cloak gently onto her shoulders.
She smiled faintly, taking it as Karag D?r’s blessing. It may have been threaded through Rune’s will, but it was its own creature too, in its way.
She sheathed the Sunstone dagger in her hip holster, stowing the others in her satchel. Last, she tucked the spindle into the boning of her corset, hidden from sight.
She would be long gone before Rune noticed it missing.
Alora returned to the bedchamber where Caelum waited. Taking a breath, she reached for the sconce above the hearth and pulled it.
It clicked.
A thin hiss of air slipped through a seam in the wall. Stone shifted, revealing a narrow opening wide enough for one person to squeeze through.
Caelum gaped. “How did you know that was there?”
“Nexus is smarter than he looks,” Alora whispered, and the kitten purred.
Torch in hand, she slipped inside. Caelum followed. Nexus led the way, wings fluttering every few steps.
The passage sloped steeply downward. The air was cold, but the walls glimmered with strings of iridescent worms, their light pulsing in soft waves like breathing.
Alora moved forward without hesitation.
At the sound of water, her pace quickened. She entered her garden cavern. The shrubbery was well kept, a thin cascade spilling from the opening above into a shallow pool. Her sapling stood at the center, its leaves bathed in golden morning light.
It reminded her of her mother’s workroom. The days they’d spent together, laughing, dancing, magic as simple as breath.
The air smelled of moss and honey-water. Light scattered across the pool, gilding the mist like molten gold. It was so achingly familiar that for a heartbeat she was a child again, hiding behind her mother’s skirts, listening to her hum while flowers bloomed from sound.
“My mother,” Alora whispered. “Used to make the flowers dance. They would come to life with her magic and grow whenever she would sing…”
“You are her daughter,” Caelum murmured. “I imagine your magic is much like hers, too.”
Alora reached out hesitantly, and her fingertips touched the leaves.
Nothing happened.
Magic may live in her veins, but she hadn’t learned how to weave spells.
Alora closed her eyes, going back to the time she was happy. To when magic used to mean hope instead of fear.
Her mother hummed as flowers unfurled beneath her fingertips and Alora watched with awe.
When you are lost, our song will always lead the way, my sweet bloom. The spirits call you home.
A gust of wind swept through the cavern, filling Alora’s lungs.
And she began to sing.
The first note trembled out of her like a breath she’d been holding for years. It was fragile at first, but the cave carried it gently, shaping it into something ancient and whole.
It wasn’t merely a song, it was a melody of the wilds. A thread woven from memory and blood and something older than language. As her voice rose through the cavern, the sapling shuddered beneath her hand.
And she remembered, this was the song of the Midlands.
A soft groan echoed from deep within the earth, low and ancient, as if the mountain itself were holding its breath.
She touched the sapling again and a faint glow vibrated beneath her palm.
The roots split stone with a slow crack, the stem enlarging into a trunk, rising inch by inch, unfurling into a spiral of gleaming bark and golden leaves.
Behind her, Caelum stood frozen, staring at the blooming tree as though he had stumbled upon a miracle.
As the melody poured from her, the air thickened. The light from the sapling vibrated as it grew into a majestic tree, golden veins threading through its bark.
Then, deep inside her chest, the bond shivered awake. A spark whooshed down the thread that tied her to Rune. His alarm and ripple of fury and alarm crashed against her ribs.
He knew.
Alora’s voice faltered for half a breath, but she kept singing, her magic rising with each note. The wind brushed her cheek with a whisper she hadn’t heard in fifteen years.
It was Salvia’s voice, warm and familiar.
But it wasn’t her mother singing.
It was her.
And the lullaby was calling her to the forest.