Chapter 21
REALM AND REVELATION
The others were gone. The clearing had emptied, and in the hush that followed, there was only him, her, and the truth she had flung into the air where it hovered and refused to fall.
Fury rolled through her in tight, burning waves. How could he guard her like a zealot one breath, then hand her most guarded secret to his inner circle the next, leaving her exposed in the very place where vulnerability could end her?
Yes, she had reached for power in front of them all. Yes, if her flame had answered, they would have known what kingdom claimed her the instant her fire burned, but that was not the fucking point. The choice should have been hers.
“Fuck, Jakobav. I trusted you.”
She shoved him hard.
His boots scraped against the dirt as he caught himself, muscles tensing, irritation flashing across his features before he locked it behind that infuriating calm.
As if I’m the one being unreasonable.
Ella’s rage surged. She stepped toward him again, fists clenched, ready to do far more than shove him this time. She wanted him to feel every ounce of the betrayal burning through her. His eyes cut to the glow kindling at her collarbone, and all the breath seemed to leave the world.
Her sigil had woken.
The ink that lay quiet and invisible flared from nothing to black and then to molten gold and crimson, the symbol of Orchid so bright it was as if it were being etched anew from the inside out.
Heat raced outward as the light refused to stop at her heart.
It leapt like a spark to dry tinder and crossed the fragile bridge of bone to the other side of her chest, unfurling in mirrored strokes across her collarbone, then down the angle of her right arm, where it curled toward her wrist like living fire seeking a path, as if fury itself was bleeding through her skin in streams of ink.
Ella yanked the cloak closed, but the reveal had already happened.
The ink kept moving beneath her palm, expanding, the lines multiplying into elegant constellations, a map written in black with threads of red and gold glinting through as if the stars themselves had taken root beneath her skin.
In all the years she had borne the mark, she had never seen the tattoo change, had never even heard of such a thing.
“Fuck,” she breathed, staggering back. “No—no, no—”
Jakobav took a step forward, eyes locked on the mark. “How?” he said, voice low. “That breach has been closed for hours now, Ella. Tell me what is happening. The truth this time. Your mark is changing, and you should have no magic here.”
“Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know.”
“Ellandria—” he began.
“Do not call me that.” Her voice cracked on the last syllable, like the first fracture in a dam.
But the knowledge was already in his eyes, and could not be unknown. She was not merely Orchid-born and not merely the heir who had slipped a crown for anonymity. She was more dangerous than either title accounted for, and even she did not understand it.
The thought tore her resolve loose. She turned and ran.
She didn’t pick a direction so much as fling herself into motion, vaulting onto the nearest horse with a grace born of habit and long hours in the saddle. The stirrup caught, her boot drove down, and the animal surged forward under the command of a heel and a need to be anywhere else but here.
Branches clawed at her hair and stung her cheeks.
The wind dragged at her cloak and pride alike until both snapped behind her in a single dark stream.
It didn’t matter where she was going, only that she was away from his stare and his questions and the strange patience in his voice that made her want to scream.
The world tilted.
A pulse ran through the air as if some invisible string had been plucked too hard and too deep, and the note it made kept ringing, shivering through her bones.
The ground quivered under the horse’s hooves.
The temperature dropped. The wind, which had been at her back, shifted to meet her head-on, and ahead of her, the line of trees did not sway so much as wave, bending as though reality itself were a curtain caught by a draft from a door that should not have been opened.
She blinked, and the sky darkened between one breath and the next.
Clouds turned in tight spirals against the wind.
Lightning crawled in the wrong direction, streaking down and then sideways, like a thought changing its mind.
The leaves on the trees shuddered not with breeze but with recognition, as though something old had brushed the world and they remembered, fluttering their hello.
Her mark answered, brightening like coals.
Heat coursed through her veins until the lines already carved across her chest and arm began to writhe.
The ink itself undulated beneath her skin, each stroke shifting like a serpent testing its cage, black filigree stitched with threads of gold and ember-red that twisted and reformed as though alive.
Her stomach lurched, bile rising as she realized it wasn’t just growing, it was moving.
“This is a godsdamned nightmare,” she rasped, the words shaking out of her as the air thickened with the taste of rain and metal and something she was never meant to see. As if she were walking the edge of a revelation.
Rain fell upward.
Droplets rose to meet her, soaking into her cloak, hot against her skin, proof that whatever she had stepped into was no illusion.
And then it hit her. This wasn’t merely her magic flaring and not any storm the sky should make. A seam had opened; a ripple in the Veil had loosened and widened like a mouth learning hunger. For a sliver of time she was between, not wholly in Dravaryn and not wholly anywhere anymore.
Her pulse thundered in her ears as she looked down, and her mind stalled.
The creature beneath her still bore the outline of a horse, but the shape fractured, as though the world could not decide what it was.
Too many joints bent where the legs should have ended, its eyes burned yellow, glimmering like language, and its hide was no longer hair but a shifting surface of scales that caught the dim light with a sheen suggesting depth rather than texture, as if a creature far older and more dangerous wore the skin of a steed only long enough to carry her through.
“Shit,” she whispered, the word slipping soft and low, terrified that speaking too loudly might startle the thing beneath her. The creature did not exist anywhere in the mortal realm, further proving what she already feared. She had slipped the threads and crossed into another realm entirely.
She had Threadwalked.
The word landed on her tongue as if it had been waiting for centuries to be spoken again, myth and curse and truth braided into a single sound.
The ability had not existed since the Fae vanished, not since the realms were sealed and the Veil raised to keep creatures like her from moving between places that should remain apart.
Creatures like her.
The realization chilled her more thoroughly than the storm that wasn’t.
This was too much. She needed to return.
Desperation clawed through her, and she found herself pleading for Dravaryn soil in a way she would have mocked mere moments ago.
She closed her eyes, gripping the reins not with her hands, but with her mind.
She gathered the loose threads of place and pulled, picturing the real trees and the black seam of the obsidian cliffs, calling up the shape of the trail they had ridden that morning and the exact tone of his voice when he had said her name, Ella, flinging herself toward that sound as if it were a rope thrown across a chasm.
Something snapped, though there was no sound.
The creature beneath her was only a horse again.
The storm vanished as if a curtain had been torn down.
The air returned to its ordinary chill, the kind that bit but did not dream of devouring.
Her skin was merely skin, and yet she did not trust the word merely anymore, not when her hair was still damp at the temples and not when her fingertips still sang with a bright, thin tremble like the echo of lightning that could not find ground.
Her breathing slowed, each inhale steadier than the last, and she forced her heart to match it.
She lifted her gaze, scanning the world around her.
The trees stood quiet and ordinary, their branches swaying gently in a breeze that carried no threat.
The ground was solid beneath her horse’s hooves, damp earth and fallen leaves exactly as they should be.
Above, the sky was a stretch of clean blue, bright with sunlight, a slight chill in the air but not a cloud in sight.
The world looked unchanged, untouched, as if nothing unnatural had bled through its seams.
“Going somewhere, Princess?”
Jakobav stepped directly into her path, blocking the horse with infuriating ease. She yanked the reins, and the animal rocked back before settling.
“You were behind me,” she said, voice rough, accusation cutting through the tremor in her breath.
“I was,” he answered, stepping closer. “I saw you. And then you were gone.” His gaze locked onto hers, unblinking. “You disappeared, Ella.”
Her pulse spiked. “For how long?”
“Long enough,” he said, his voice even and too calm, “for me to know it wasn’t a trick of my eyes. You slipped the Veil.” He studied her like he could pin her in place by will alone. “That should not be possible.”
Fear and fury tangled in her chest, spilling into her words. “And what, you think hovering over me is going to stop it?”
His reply came low and certain, a growl shaped into language. “Not hovering. Not guarding. I want the truth, and I think I know where we can find it. Come with me.”
Her retort caught in her throat. There was fire in his eyes, but not the blaze of anger. It was steadier, darker, as though he’d been bracing for this all along.
She slid from the saddle, folding her arms as if she could hide her fear beneath her skin. “Then where the hell are we going?”
He held her stare in silence long enough for it to bite. “East of the pass,” he said finally. “A seer lives there. Never met her, but my family has known of her for generations.”
“And why the fuck would I trust that?”
He removed his cloak before answering.
“Because I need to know what you are.” He stepped closer, the last light burning in his eyes. “And I think,” his voice dropped lower, brushing against her like a touch, “you do too.”
Her throat tightened.
“Is that a demand? Chains and all if I say no?” A drop of water slid down her arm, and she wiped it away, her fingers unsteady.
“Here.”
He held the cloak out, not quite touching her.
“You’re shaking.”
She drew a breath and unfastened her own cloak, the fabric heavy and dripping as she slipped it from her shoulders. The cold hit her instantly.
She let her wet cloak fall to the ground.
Dramatic, maybe, but right now she didn’t care.
Only then did she reach for his and take it, her fingers brushing his in a fleeting spark of warmth.
She wrapped the dry fabric around herself and dragged the hem across her arms, wiping away the last raindrops clinging to her skin.
His jaw set while he waited, but when he spoke, the words came rougher, almost reluctant. “No. I’m not forcing you to come with me. It’s your choice. But if you come, you follow my lead. It will be dangerous.”
Ella stepped close enough to feel his breath. “I’ll follow what keeps us alive,” she murmured, “not orders for the sake of orders.”
His mouth curved, less than a smile, but more than a challenge. “I can work with alive.”
Alive.
It sounded pleasant enough, and yet in his mouth it was both a promise and a threat.