Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I told Ryot I wasn’t bothered by ghosts, but this … Sweet Serephelle this . Selencian or Faraengardian, it doesn’t matter. All I can think is—may Lako have mercy on their souls.
Someone clears their throat and I drag my gaze from the dead to stare in open-mouthed shock at the living.
The Elder is here. His expression is as serene as I’ve ever seen it, but there’s something beneath the calm, something ragged, like he’s seen a thousand of these souls burn to ash and he will see another thousand perish before he’s done.
All four archons are present. Archon Lyathin stands with his hands clasped behind his back.
He’s the image of control, every hair in place.
Archon Robias—the head of my vanguard—stands beside him.
His good eye meets mine, and he gives me a faint nod.
Archon Hilian is the most put together I’ve ever seen him, but he still carries a fresh slash across his cheek with dried blood smeared down the side of his face.
Archon Nile stands slightly apart from the others. He wears his scorn openly.
Behind the archons are the men who will be mine after this. Thalric, Nyrica, Caius, Faelon, Leif, and Kiernan.
And Ryot. He’s kneeling in the center of the room, before the Elder, his head bowed.
His long blond hair is gathered into a perfect ponytail, not a strand falling loose.
He doesn’t acknowledge me, doesn’t turn to look at me.
But he shifts as I take that step over the threshold, his body pulled toward me, as if something invisible connects us.
The Elder holds a blade. It’s small, elegant even, but wickedly sharp, gleaming black and amber under the flicker of the candlelight. In his other hand is a new, unlit candle.
“Leina Haverlyn,” the Elder says. The name echoes through the chamber. It’s foreign, as if it already doesn’t belong to me. Leina Haverlyn was someone I knew once, long ago. It’s enough to cause tears to pool in my eyes.
The Elder gestures to the right of Ryot with the dagger of adamas. “Kneel.”
I fall to my knees, lowering my head. I squeeze my eyes closed, where no one can see, and a single tear escapes, traitorous and silent.
It’s the only one that I dare risk as I grieve—not only for my family, but for a version of myself that will never come to be.
For Leina Haverlyn, a girl who wanted to grow old beside Alden, her best friend and her love.
Who would have planted herbs in the garden and woven days together with laughter and the smell of rising bread.
Whose children would have known the comfort of their grandmother’s soft hands and ancient lullabies.
That life—simple, beautiful, heartbreakingly human—is gone.
Instead, I’m this. This woman that fights.
A deep cold creeps in, and there’s no Alden to wrap his warm arms around me.
The stone is frigid and unforgiving. I press my fingers against it anyway—not for comfort, as there is none to be found here—but to anchor myself in my new reality.
I curl my fingertips over it, holding on with desperation. I don’t want to drift away entirely.
Then a hand moves across the stone—deliberate and maddeningly slow. Ryot, kneeling next to me, bracing his hands on the ground. He brushes his pinky against mine, just a whisper of a touch. But it might as well have been lightning for the way my heart races.
I peek up at him, but he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t acknowledge me in any other way, keeping his head bowed. Still, his hand lingers there, touching mine. Close enough to unravel something in me I didn’t give him permission to touch.
It shouldn’t mean anything. He’s not Alden. He’s not safety or sweetness or soft promises whispered in the meadow. He’s flint and friction; the scrape of something real, something that doesn’t pretend to be gentle.
But for one reckless second, I let my finger stay where it is, touching his.
Maybe I should pull away.
But I don’t want to.
The Elder steps forward, until his boots are next to my fingers. I pull my pinky back. “Do you come before us with full understanding of what you forsake?”
I swallow hard. My name. My past. My family. Seb and Leo.
But I gain something here, too, and I can’t let myself forget that. Here, I gain leverage and power for those very same people.
“I do.”
“Do you swear your loyalty to the purpose of the Synod, forsaking all others?”
My mind races, parsing the words. “Can you state the purpose of the Synod, Elder?”
A silence follows, heavy and weighted. It’s enough that I raise my eyes a fraction, to find the Elder’s gaze on me with approval glinting in his eyes.
“You ask for the purpose of the Synod? Then know it, Leina Haverlyn—while you still have the name to give. The Synod exists to hold the line between this world and oblivion,” he says.
“We protect mortals and the divine alike from the chaos that stalks at the edge of creation. From the Kher’zenn—the death demons and harbingers of ruin, the spawns of Kheris, goddess of chaos, who seeks to unmake all that exists and return it to void. ”
He raises the dagger slightly, and the flickering candlelight dances along its edge. I can’t look away. His words are both myth and the naked truth.
“We are weapons in the hands of the divine. The Synod was not made to rule, but to resist. We are the watchers, the warriors, and the sacrifice.”
In a nearly silent murmur, he finishes, “We give up everything so the world may go on.”
That last breath holds everything he’s lost. Men and boys, friends and commanders, pieces of himself, his family. A life beyond war, with laughter and pleasure and love.
“Will you swear now, Leina Haverlyn?”
“I swear,” I manage.
The Elder nods, once. “Repeat after me, Leina Haverlyn:
“I vow to stand against ruin.
“I will shield the sacred realms from chaos,
“guard the thrones of gods and the hearths of men,
“until the stars fall from the heavens and the seas swallow the earth.
“My blade is not for power, but protection.
“My life is the barrier; my will, the flame.
“I will abide no distractions.
“I will hold against the ruin until my dying breath.
“Even if the gods should falter, I will not."
I repeat the vow, though my voice is weak. Fragile. A thread fraying at the edges.
But it’s enough. The candle the Elder holds in his right hand flares to life with fire birthed from my vow alone. My eyes widen in shock, and the Elder nods, satisfied. He turns, placing a candle—my candle—on a shelf with others, the flame dancing brightly.
Faelon grins, giving me two thumbs up from behind the archons.
Caius smacks him—silently—on the back of the head.
I want to laugh; I want to shake my head at him.
But I don’t dare. Because the Elder has come back to me, and the dagger’s edges gleam black and molten amber under the candlelight.
He kneels between Ryot and me, taking Ryot’s right hand and my left hand to cradle together, our palms facing up.
Mine is smooth, save for callouses. But Ryot’s …
His palm is already marked by four jagged, deep cuts that crisscross the full span. His other wards, the ones who died.
His other palm is marked by a single line—when he was made a ward himself.
“Ryot of Stormriven, do you accept Leina as your ward?” The Elder continues.
“I do,” he answers, his voice strong and unwavering. You’d never know that I coerced him into it this morning.
“Do you pledge your blade and your honor to Ward Leina of Stormriven? Vowing to guide and protect her, to teach her the ways of the Altor?”
“I so pledge,” he answers.
“Do you vow to stay by her side, to accept her strength as your boon, her weaknesses as your burden, and her fight as yours? To stand as her sword and shield her from the darkness that will come, until the day she rises beside you, your equal in all things? A warrior born not of privilege, but of blood, tears, and unyielding will?”
He raises his head, and I can’t help but lift my own to stare into his eyes.
“I so vow,” he answers, never breaking eye contact with me, and the utter sincerity of his vow surrounds me like an embrace.
The Elder slashes Ryot’s palm first, making a new scar to cross the others. Then the blade bites into my hand, clean and sharp.
Our blood spills bright red onto the clean stone floor, separate only for that instant, before the Elder presses our palms together.
We’re skin to skin, blood to blood. Something takes root in my palm before it unfurls like venom through my veins.
My heart stutters, as if it paused to beat in time with Ryot’s.
The breath is ripped from my lungs, and I inhale it back in a jagged gasp.
Ryot does, too, like our breaths are shared, steeped in each other.
“Rise, Leina of Stormriven,” the Elder says.
I stand on wobbly legs and am dumbfounded to feel unsteadiness from Ryot, too.
His grip on my hand lingers as we stand—long enough for me to feel the warmth of it, the hesitation, the ache.
When I glance at him, he’s already watching me with a quietly devastated look.
It’s gone in an instant—shuttered behind the familiar, guarded calm—but I saw it.
I just don’t know what to do with it.
Archon Robias walks over to us and clasps me on the shoulder, like I’ve seen the men do as they walk the hallways and greet those coming in from missions. My hand falls from Ryot’s.
“Welcome to the Stormriven Vanguard, Leina,” he says, extending his arm around my shoulder and walking me out of the Hall of Vanishing Light.
Footsteps approach from behind me, and I turn as massive arms envelope me in a bear hug that lifts me off the ground. Nyrica flashes me his dimpled grin. “You didn’t pass out! That’s a good omen.” He’s laughing as he sets me down, and then Thalric is there, sharp-eyed.
“Welcome, Leina,” my new commander tells me. “We’ll take good care of you.” He’s more focused on Ryot than me, though.
They surround me—this strange, wild, weirdly loyal group.
I should feel overwhelmed. I should . But I don’t.
Kiernan is blushing, but he gives me an awkward side-hug as he mumbles a “welcome, sister.” Faelon grabs me by the other shoulder, pulling me into his side.
“She’s too pretty to be our sister,” he says with a wicked grin.
“At least you didn’t scream,” Caius says with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “That’s more than Faelon can say from his unnaming.”
“I screamed for the drama ,” Faelon says, sweeping a theatrical hand over his heart. Then he winks at me and starts dragging me down the hall. “If you wanted an excuse to hold Ryot’s hand, Leina, you could’ve asked.”
I trip a little on my own feet, sputtering. “What? I—no?—”
Ryot glares at Faelon but then turns to me. “It’s time to train.”
“Training? Now?” Faelon halts suddenly. I stand under his arm, my head spinning, heart pounding, hand bleeding.
“What are you talking about? She’s a ward now. First, we cut her hair and shave her—” Faelon stops and stares awkwardly at my smooth, hairless face and my already short hair. Ryot quirks an eyebrow at him.
“Ok, so no shaving or cutting hair,” Faelon says.
“But still, we celebrate after an unnaming. We go to the Crimson Feather as a cast. All of us. We have drinks. We eat cake. Leif gets drunk and sings his stupid folk songs from the coast too loud, and we all laugh at him. Nyrica and Thalric sit in a corner and whisper. You sit in a corner and brood.” Faelon’s voice gets louder and more desperate with each word and his arm tightens around my shoulder.
I don’t know what he’s talking about with the Crimson Feather, but a celebration sounds much better than training.
Ryot’s hard eyes flick to Faelon for a brief second before he focuses on me. Faelon drops his arm. “Not this time,” he says. “Leina’s already behind, which means the whole cast is behind.”
The festive atmosphere dies out, like someone snuffed out a candle. Nyrica is watching Ryot carefully now, too. “Ryot, she’s not?—”
But it’s Thalric who cuts him off, holding up a hand. “Ryot’s right,” he says. “We’re only as strong as our weakest, and we can’t afford weakness. Not now, not with Kheris turning her gaze toward us.”
Toward me, he means.
No one’s laughing now. Faelon mutters something under his breath and leans back against the wall, arms crossed, visibly sulking but not arguing.
My palm is still bleeding, and I’m exhausted down to my bones, but I meet his eyes anyway.
“Then let’s train,” I say.
Ryot nods once. Behind me, the cast— my cast—says nothing, but I can feel their presence like a wall at my back. Solid.
We turn, as a unit, and head for the training grounds.