Chapter 26 Fate and Vows
FATE AND VOWS
Ella couldn’t sleep, not after what the seer had said and not after what she learned.
The ride back to the castle unspooled beneath a sky the color of ash, hoofbeats striking a steady cadence like a distant drum.
When the guards lifted their lanterns, they asked nothing, and she was grateful.
She had no strength left for ceremony, only the need to reach a door and be done with the night.
She lay sprawled across the gigantic bed that belonged to the equally massive, infuriating warlord she had just shared a horse with for days.
Her hand traced the edge of the luxe furs, the fire crackled low in the hearth, and a smell that was now familiar wrapped around her, grounding and comforting her even as her thoughts spiraled.
She lay very still and let the truth assemble itself piece by piece, as if naming it too quickly might shatter her.
Turning her face into the pillow, Ella let the seer’s words echo again, softer now but no less potent, hating that a part of her wanted to argue with a woman who could peel truth from blood and bone.
The relic she'd been searching for, chasing across rumors and ruins, through treason and prophecy, wasn’t some buried artifact or enchanted object.
It was Jakobav.
It had always been Jakobav.
The revelation moved through her like a tide building beneath the surface for months, not loud or triumphant but vast and undeniable, and with it came the memory of a dozen small moments that now made sense in the wake of the seer’s gaze.
The pull in the corridors when she first stepped within these walls, the strange certainty that the castle breathed with her, the way the air seemed to lean when he entered a room and the floor steadied when he spoke, all of it had been him.
She’d told herself it was instinct and hunger and stubbornness, a compass fashioned out of will, but it had never been that at all.
And gods help her, she hadn’t even questioned it. She had followed him. Trusted him. Stopped searching for the relic the moment he stood at her side and barely questioned why that felt like enough.
She’d mocked him, fought him, baited him…and somewhere between all of that, she’d started to enjoy it.
Not just with Jakobav and his maddening scowls, but with the ones who bled beside him. Thane’s irreverent grin came to mind, followed by Maeren’s steady hands, Soren’s watchful quiet, Savina’s blade-bright rage, and Bryn who laughed at death like an old acquaintance and still had a healer’s touch.
Somewhere along this path, she’d begun to care about the people who cared about him, and if that was not a confession, then it was at least a change of weather inside her chest.
A part of her longed to go to them, to see with her own eyes that they were safe, but there was something else she needed first.
She pushed herself upright, the room seeming to press closer, pulsing with the quiet shock of change. It was subtle but undeniable. Somehow this place had started to feel suspiciously like home.
But beneath that warmth, a harder truth existed. If Jakobav was the relic, everything she believed about the prophecy had changed. Whatever object she’d imagined finding in ruins or archives was now a breathing, stubborn, very much alive, and infuriatingly large man.
And if she had any hope of preventing the Veil from shattering, she would need to figure out what it meant to wield a living relic. How his blood, his magic, and his fate fit into the old lines of the prophecy she’d studied most of her life.
Threadshifting was accelerating. The world was changing faster than she could track, and she needed to decipher the rest before it was too late.
The solstice was in two days. Jakobav would walk straight into a magical firestorm, one that might split him open and demand he remain standing, and who knows how he might fare. Especially with the Veil fraying.
The gods, if they listened at all, were not known for mercy. It might kill him, and she hadn’t even asked if she’d be allowed to go, to help.
Fuck, she had to fix this.
Her boots waited by the bed. She pulled them on with unsteady hands, tied the straps tight, and told herself that fear was useful when it pointed you in the right direction.
Jakobav was where Kalenya had told her he would be, in the small office overlooking the training grounds.
It smelled faintly of smoke and cedar, the kind of clean, controlled order that felt unmistakably like him.
Shelves lined the stone walls, holding maps weighted with knives and worn tomes with broken spines.
The mahogany grain of his desk caught the firelight in deep, rippling lines, polished smooth in the places his hands touched most. The hearth was kept to a thoughtful flame, and the desk pared to little more than a few unread pages and a half-empty mug.
He was still holding one of the pages when she stepped inside, and though he didn’t startle, he set it down slowly and leaned back in his chair, a long exhale escaping him as if bracing for a fight.
His brow lifted in silent question.
“I’m not here to argue,” she said quickly, and it felt like an opening she had to make with care, the first cut in a knot.
His mouth tipped in the smallest warning of a smile. “Then I’m terrified.”
She ignored him, moving to sit opposite. Her fingers traced along the grain of the table instead, restless, unwilling to be still. “I want to know everything about the Claiming.”
He set his mug aside with careful hands, as if the table might startle if he moved too fast. “Ella.”
“No games,” she said, her voice steadier now. “I get that it’s dangerous. But I need to know more. And no half-truths this time. Please.”
His eyes narrowed, and his silence smoldered deeper than the fire’s crackle. “Ella.” His voice roughened. “You’re relentless. Always pushing. Always prying. And you think you’re ready for every truth you demand.”
“I can handle it. Tell me.” She slammed her palms on the desk, the sound cracking through the room.
A slow breath left him, unbothered by her fury.
“I saw what happened when the seer gave you too much. She peeled you open, word by word.”
His expression darkened, his gaze dragging over her like a touch.
“You looked…unsettled by her words. Stripped bare.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping lower still. “I would know. I’ve seen you naked. It did not unsettle me in the slightest. It settled in all the right places.”
Heat struck her cheeks, but she didn’t let him deter her. “You’re not going to deflect by flirting. Tell me about the Claiming ceremony.”
His jaw worked once, resisting, and then his shoulders eased in something close to resignation. “Fine. It begins at dusk,” he said at last.
Ella waited, ready to curse his ancestors if he stopped there.
“The day after tomorrow. You’ll walk into the arena through the High Cathedral.
I’ll be there long before the bells toll, preparing.
You’ll arrive with Maeren and Savina, along with Kalenya and some of the other female attendants.
The walk is part of it, meant for the people of Dravaryn, and for the realm itself, to see who stands with me, to measure every soul chosen to witness. ”
She caught it immediately, the way his words placed her not in the crowd behind him but beside his inner circle, displayed before the entire realm.
Ella leaned back in her chair, arms dropping to her sides in a stunned, disbelieving huff.
“I’m walking in with your inner circle? Do I get to sit by Maeren and Savina during the ceremony? ”
His mouth curved faintly, though his eyes stayed unreadable. “You won’t be sitting. But yes. Something like that.”
Relief loosened her chest before she could stop it. She’d been worried he’d keep her hidden away, that she’d be set apart as an outsider. The thought of being beside them, of not being alone, settled her more than she wanted to admit. She chose not to press him on “something like that.”
Her pulse quickened, but she kept her face steady. “And then?”
“Then I give myself to the ritual,” he said, voice low but unflinching. “Every piece of me. If the realm wants me, it answers. If it doesn’t, it will take my life instead.”
Her throat caught. “Has anyone of royal blood ever died during their Claiming?”
His voice was quiet now. “Yes.”
Ella’s chest constricted. “Even heirs?”
His eyes did not leave hers. “None recently, but I’m sure at some point, yes.”
She swallowed, the sound loud in her throat. “I have to ask…before you heard the words of the seer, before you discovered the role I might play in the fate of our kingdoms…were you just going to vanish into the ceremony and leave me behind?”
His answer came without a blink, dark as the hearthstone.
“It may not be for the reasons you think, but even before what I learned yesterday, I would not have let you slip away while I faced the gods. If you tried, I would have dragged you back myself.” He narrowed his eyes a bit, the words settling like iron.
“So no. If the Claiming takes me, you will be there to witness. And stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” she asked while bracing for his answer, changing her face into a neutral expression.
“Like I need saving,” he said, voice clipped, almost cruel. “Like you’re planning to throw yourself between me and the High Vexari, just because you don’t like the odds.”
Heat flared behind her eyes. She crossed her arms, covering the ache with more spine than sense. “Maybe I just don’t like being kept in the dark.”
That landed like a strike. He stilled, his jaw working once before his gaze broke from hers and fell to the firelight, and when he finally spoke again, the fight had left his voice.
“I know you want to protect your kingdom as much as I do mine, and I’m sure you want to put a stop to Threadshifting.
But trust is earned with time. It was never my intention to keep you in the dark. ”
“Speaking of being kept in the dark, who is the High Vexari?”
His mouth pulled tight, a faint crack in his composure. “She’s the spiritual head of Dravaryn. The kingdom listens to her… sometimes a little too much.”
“That sounds inconvenient for you,” Ella said.
A humorless breath left him. “For my father it was a war. They hated each other openly. The High Cathedral and the Dravaryn Court barely spoke for years.” His gaze shifted to the firelight, jaw tightening.
“So I took over the ties between the High Vexari and the castle. Someone had to keep the Crown and the Cathedral from tearing the kingdom apart.”
“So you trust her?” Ella asked.
“I trust her power. I respect her position.”
Ella’s fingers tightened around the arm of her chair. “And what about me? Isn’t she going to question why I’m walking in with your inner circle? If she realizes I’m an outsider, will that put everything at risk?”
He pinned her with a look of determination. “That’s enough questions. I don’t need saving, Ella. I need focus. Control. And the last few days haven’t exactly consisted of training or preparation for the ceremony.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t ask to go on your mission. I can’t control the Veil unraveling,” she said defensively.
He studied her, and his expression softened. “I’m not,” he said. “You’re the reason I haven’t drowned in it.”
“Then let me help,” she said at last, the words stripped of all her armor. “I went from your prisoner to your shadow to your guest, apparently. You’ve just started to let me in, probably more than most, if I had to guess. Don’t shut me out.”
Doubt shifted in his gaze, and maybe even acceptance, buried so it wouldn’t draw notice.
“You weren’t all that surprised by the seer’s words. I saw it on your face, Jakobav. You’ve felt the pull too,” she pressed. “Don’t deny it.”
His gaze slid toward the hearth, as if the answer were written in the slow collapse of the charred wood into coal and ash.
“I wouldn’t get too attached to that pull. The rite is meant to test what stands before it. Threadshifting fractures that ground. There’s no way to know what it will demand of me.”
It wasn’t everything, but it was enough to reveal he was already planning for a battle inside the Claiming arena that no seer could predict.
A strange sense of calm opened in her chest at the honesty of it.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, the air tightening with unspoken thoughts. “You haven’t let me out of your sight for more than a few hours, and yet I think you were planning on leaving me behind for the ritual. What if I had decided to run, and you never heard from me again?”
A muscle in his hand twitched.
“Well,” she said with a smirk she knew he would taste for what it was, “I suppose I wouldn’t have to run. If you’d gone to the ritual and left me behind, then I would have been free to come and go as I please.”
He rose then, as if stillness could no longer hold him, and when he looked down at her, his face was composed in that particular way he wore when a choice cost him something.
He stepped close enough that the fire highlighted his cheekbone. “You wouldn’t get far,” he said, quiet and sure. “Not from me.” His gaze held hers. “But if you’re truly a guest now, then you deserve a proper tour. And you will take it with me.”
She arched her brow. “Is that a royal decree, Commander?”
“If I let you wander alone, you’ll cause a riot. Or you’ll almost get yourself killed. Again. And I’ll have to step in. Again.”
“I’d say the risk is mutual. And you’re the one who took so long to decide if I was a prisoner or not.”
“Your incessant questions have me still on the fence,” he said as his mouth curved into that dangerous half-smile that seemed to know too much. “Though no prisoner has ever ended up in my bed.”
“Neither should guests who weren’t invited.”
“Then what are you?”
“A problem. Your favorite one, apparently.”
He let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, quiet and rough-edged. “Gods help me.”
She turned before her smile gave too much away. “Lead the way, host.”
Outside, the castle had begun to wake, floors whispering with servants’ steps and the far clang of practice steel, the corridors still cool with night and the torches along the inner walk just catching.
The day would come, whether either of them were ready, but for a length of time, in a room gone quiet, they let the morning wait, a new and unspoken agreement forming between them.