Chapter 28 Kaelen
Kaelen
Her eyes are closed as I stare down at her. There’s faint bruising beneath her eyes that reminds me of Darian. She’s not getting enough sleep here.
Keep hold of me, wielder.
Silent, I settle onto the top of my bed, my back resting against the carved headboard as I hold her against me as she asked. “Like this?”
“Yes.” Her eyes open. She doesn’t look up, her eyes staring straight ahead. “Just for a minute. If you don’t mind.”
“For as long as you need me to.” I’m acutely aware of how carefully I’m touching her, like any wrong pressure might break her entirely. But she’s far, far stronger than she looks.
The knowledge hits me like a physical blow. Whatever it cost her, whatever she burned out of herself to make it happen, she healed Sera completely. My lips find her hair. It’s finer than mine. Infinitely softer.
She’s asking me for comfort. I’m not the best to give it. Eres would be better, but he’s not here. “You shouldn’t have pushed yourself that far,” I say quietly.
It’s not a reprimand. I don’t think I’m capable of sounding angry at her right now. All I feel is a tight, aching fear coiled in my chest.
“She needed it,” Lyra whispers. Her voice is barely there.
“I know.” I adjust my grip without thinking, pulling her a fraction closer, my chin resting lightly against the crown of her head. “But not at the cost of your own life."
She goes very still. Several minutes pass before she speaks again, and I wait to see what’s causing the tension in her body. “Kaelen?”
I brace myself. “I’m here.”
“There’s… more.” The words settle between us, heavy and inevitable. I hold her and wait, listening to her breathing. A faint tremor runs through her body. She looks up as I reach for a crumpled woven blanket, pulling it over her. “What are you doing?”
“You looked cold. More than what?” The words are gentle. Gentler than I thought I had in me, truth be told.
A Lightbringer. Vaelion’s daughter. The possibilities are endless.
“More than what I’ve told you.” She looks at me without fear. “I thought I could keep it to myself. That it didn’t even matter, but I don’t want to lie anymore.”
My grip tightens before I can stop it. “And now?”
“Things are different now,” she whispers.
“Because of what happened with Sera?”
She shakes her head. And then nods. “Maybe. When I came here…I thought it would be like Solvandyr.”
Every part of me revolts at that thought. “I’m glad that we’re not.”
“I am, too.” She sighs. “I like it here.”
Frowning, I rest my head back. “We haven’t been particularly kind to you.”
There’s almost a smile. But it’s fleeting. “I wouldn’t be too harsh on yourself. You could multiply what has happened to me here by thousands, Duskbane. It still wouldn’t come close to what I experienced before.”
I despise knowing that. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“No.” Her silence extends as seconds pass. “I think I know that now.”
When she shifts, I keep my hands on her, steadying her. Lyra curls herself into me, putting her back to the room so she can see my face. “I need to share something with you. There are things that you don’t know.”
Something in my chest twists painfully. I tilt my head, lowering my voice further. “Witch. You don’t owe me anything. If it doesn’t affect Solvandyr, I don’t want you to tell me things you’re not ready to share.”
“I know.” She lifts her head, and I meet her gaze. Her eyes are glassy with exhaustion, luminous even in their dimness. “But I think it does.”
I nod slowly. Unease stirs in my gut at what she might be about to share. “Then talk to me.”
Perhaps I’m finally ready to listen, in a way I wouldn’t have before.
“I was born for a prophecy.” She clears her throat. “Twenty-six years ago, the High Solar of Solvandyr predicted that my birth would eventually end the war. My father… he arranged for it. I was born nine months after you, and my mother gave me over to him.”
Their High Solar is the representative of Aedryn, brother to Erevan. I can’t help the stiffness that enters my body. The curiosity. “Go on.”
“I grew up in the Sunspire tower, which overlooks the temple and the military encampment. He kept me separated from everyone else. Only a few people knew I existed, really.” Her voice grows distant, like she’s looking back there instead of at me.
“I was allowed outside for training, but I had a private area. My instructors visited me.”
My jaw tightens.
“Endless training.” She shakes her head. “Luminth control. Combat. Pain tolerance. Obedience. When I did well, he still corrected me, and if I failed—”
She doesn’t need to finish that sentence for me to understand. Not when all the little pieces of her are starting to click together like a puzzle.
“Torture,” I say quietly.
She nods once. “He didn’t call it that. It was… discipline. I wouldn't have either until I came here.”
I can feel my heartbeat in my ears now, a slow, furious drum.
I don’t interrupt. If I do, I won’t be able to stop myself.
“They told me I was chosen,” Lyra continues, her voice tight.
“That everything they did was necessary. That I was meant to bring peace, and everything was planned to lead me to where I needed to be to make sure the prophecy would come true at the right place, and the right time. The High Solar was most insistent, and my father… he went along with it.”
I swallow. “What did the prophecy actually say?”
Lyra looks me directly in the eyes. “That I would kill you, and it would end the war.”
The world narrows to a single point. For a moment, all I can hear is her breathing and my own blood roaring through my veins. This… this is the moment, I realize distantly. The truth that redefines everything that came before it.
“My mission was to come here.” Her words speed up, tumbling as if she expects me to stop her.
“To find you. And I was to do whatever was needed to attract your attention, and find a way. They trained me for it my entire life. They told me you were… a brute. Cruel. So their training methods made sense, because I had to be prepared.”
They told her I would hurt her. Made her believe she needed to go through pain to keep her wits about her so she could assassinate me. “When Eres found you in the Veilspire?"
“Truth,” she whispers. “But I was on my way here. The village was burned, and they staked me.”
I search her face.
“I don’t want to do it anymore, Kaelen.” Lyra closes her eyes. “I never did.”
The words hit harder than the prophecy itself.
“I knew from the first day,” she continues, voice breaking. “The first day I saw you. I knew I wouldn’t be able to. I tried to hate you, to hate all of you but I just… I couldn’t.”
She swallows. “He… I have a sister. And Vaelion told me that if I didn’t finish it, he would kill her.
I was to kill you, and then myself. I brought poison with me.
Eres found it, but he threw it away. My father made me carry that poison with me every day from the age of ten.
Eres took it, and he refused to let me have it back. ”
Fuck. My thumb brushes over her face. “Lyra.”
Her head is shaking. “Reena is his heir. And I don’t… I don’t think I mean that much to him, in the end. I don’t think he’d hurt her just to punish me. I have to believe that.”
I could snap her neck right now. When she’s tired, and vulnerable, and I have her here, in my arms. And she knows it. Something in my chest cracks open, raw and aching. “Why are you telling me this?”
That suddenly feels like the most important thing.
She exhales shakily. “Because I don’t want there to be lies between us, Kaelen. You… There's so much happening here. I don’t want this hanging over my head, nor yours. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t have anything that could help. But if I could, I would."
She was born because of me. Thrust into that world because of me. “You must have hated me.”
“My father made me hate an idea of you that doesn’t exist.” She glances up. “Though you were a prick when I first arrived.”
“I was… on edge, I’ll admit.” I bite my cheek to hide my smile. “And I’d just found you in Eres’s bed. He’s never had much regard for his own safety.”
“No.” Lyra frowns. “I agree with you. No sense of self-preservation.”
The look we share is complete agreement. She sucks in a breath when I lift my hand, hesitating before I set it against her cheek. “I’m very glad he brought you here.”
That he found her, and saved her, and bound her.
I study her face. “And is that everything?”
“No more secrets.” She sighs, and it feels like a release. As if all remaining tension in her body just… seeps away. “And I’m glad he brought me here, too.”
I let out a long, slow breath. Then I pull her closer. “I’m sorry that you went through all of that.”
For me. The consequences of that feel like a knife between my ribs. My voice lowers. “Every time they hurt you, it was in my name.”
I don’t know how to live with that. But that’s not her problem to shoulder, not when she’s shouldered so many already. “Thank you for telling me.”
Lyra sags against me. “What happens now? Do I go back to the cell?”
“No,” I say quietly. My hand runs over her hair. “No more cells, witch. And since we're being truthful, there is something that I need to share with you.”
This one, final, painful truth.
Lyra twists at the shift in my voice. I let her sit up, although my arms feel empty. She focuses on my face with a frown. “What is it?”
“Likely nothing you don’t know already.” I reach out and push her braid back, over her shoulder. “But I need it to be clear. We are… this is the end for us, Lyra. Umbraxis has reached its final days.”
She stares at me. “But—the war—”
“The war is over.” It hurts to say it. “Truthfully, it’s been over for a long time. We’ve made do as best we can, used our lowering numbers strategically, used our soldiers to create an illusion that there were more of us by patrolling the Veilspire to keep the Lightbringers back.”
I spread my hands. “But what you've seen here is all that's left. Barely several hundred. The Lightbringers are advancing on the Veilspire, Lyra. In full. Vaelion is preparing for a final attack. And we can't possibly match that. We don’t have the numbers.”
Her breathing deepens, her brows drawing down. “So… we evacuate.”
“There is nowhere to go,” I say softly. “We sent as many as we could spare to scout for a new territory years ago, and again more recently.
To try to find somewhere, a new place where the land was fertile, and where the water supply was steady.
But they rode for weeks, months, and they found nothing.
The Barren Lands are just that. The land isn't fertile outside of Umbraxis, and the Gloam is the only water supply we could find. Vaelion will dam it if they take control on this side.”
And even so, we’re going to try. But that’s not a conversation for today.
She says nothing, and I lean forward. I slip my hand around her cheek, holding it. “I'd give you sanctuary, Lyra. For a lifetime, if I could. But I don’t have a lifetime to give you.”
Her hand covers mine. “What does this mean?”
“We’re waiting,” I say heavily. “That’s all we can do. They’re getting closer every day. We may have a week, or two, or a day, but Vaelion is coming. We’re ready to fight for as long as we can. But we can't win.”
And the Darkwielders will cease to exist. At least in this way, in this time and this place. “Umbraxis will be gone.”
Her eyes are wet. “Then you could use an additional soldier.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to tie you to a cause that isn’t yours. You can try to go back. One person is easier to hide in the Veilspire than a community. Find another life, Lyra. One where you can live.”
Her lips press together, eyes shifting as if she’s thinking. “And if I want to fight?”
Appreciation warms my chest, warring with dread. “I’m grateful for the offer, but I don’t want you out there. When we walk out onto that field, it will be the last time.”
None of us will be coming back.