Chapter 27 History That Burned
HISTORY THAT BURNED
The castle by day felt different than it had beneath night and chaos. Sunlight poured through the narrow arched windows and laid long bars across the stone floors, illuminating banners stitched with old magic so that their threads glittered.
As they walked, Jakobav pointed out training halls and war rooms, hidden stairwells and ancestral chambers steeped in history, the tour unfolding like a map of his life and of the kingdom that had made him.
One place remained conspicuously absent, and she felt the omission like a pebble in her shoe.
He had not taken her to a throne room. In Orchid, the throne room stood at the center of daily life, a place where business was conducted and pleas were heard, and her childhood had been spent there far more often than she had liked.
She would’ve preferred more time in the dense tropical forest south of the palace, but duty had kept her mostly inside under the weight of a hundred eyes.
Here, in a stronghold that seemed to contain everything else, perhaps they didn’t keep a throne at all.
Ella tried not to linger when they passed the courtyard where she’d first fought his soldiers, or the corridor where his fingers had brushed her cheek and threatened to break her, only to find an unwelcome realization tugging at her subconscious.
The castle wasn’t supposed to claim space inside her, yet the memories clung anyway, unsettling her softly. Traitorously.
“Is this where you drag all your prisoners?” she asked, light on the surface, trying to smooth the flutter in her chest.
He glanced at her with an almost smirk. “Only the pretty ones.”
“Oh good. I was worried I was special.”
“You are,” he said, without an attempt at denial. “Unfortunately.”
She pretended not to notice his shoulder brushing hers as he led her onward. A smile formed; she swallowed it down.
“Admit it. You like having me here.”
He did not answer at once. “You ruin my plans. Antagonize my people. And you ask far too many questions.”
“That’s not a no.”
His eyes cut to hers, dark and unamused. “It’s not a yes.”
Her smile sharpened. “Then you’re lying to one of us.”
For a moment, he said nothing, then exhaled through his teeth. “Maybe I like having you here.”
He glanced away, muttering like it tasted bitter. “I should’ve locked you in the dungeons instead. There. Are you pleased?”
“Almost,” she said, sweet as Fae wine disguising the punch beneath. “Now say I am a guest.”
“You are a distraction.”
“Say it.”
He sighed like a man accepting defeat. “Fine. You’re a guest.”
“And?”
“And I am showing you around like a proper host,” he said. “Which brings us to a place no guest ever gets to see.”
Her gaze lifted as they entered, and wonder rose like a tide that could not be stopped.
The Dravaryn library was vast and reverent in its quiet. Rows of towering shelves climbed toward a high ceiling, ladders suspended between them like narrow bridges. The scent of old paper lay in the air, threaded with the same cedar scent from his office and a dust that was almost sacred.
She slowed, awe moving through her chest as she took in spines bound in rich hues and worn leather, gilded titles and hand-inked marks from long-dead scribes.
These were not only archives on war and history.
She saw tomes of ancient magic and of modern, earthbound craft, volumes on soil-derived powers, the land itself a source of strength.
A shelf of romances surprised a laugh from her, quickly swallowed when she noticed an entire section given over to volumes long forbidden, their titles speaking plainly of the Fae.
Only a few weeks ago she would have doubted this.
She would have sworn Dravaryn-hoarded weapons and erased anything that didn’t serve the blade.
And yet, here stood a library that refused to forget.
Where paintings hung between shelves, and spectacular pieces of art watched the aisles with oil-bright eyes.
The system, if there was one, eluded her.
Subjects bled into each other, histories slept beside poems, maps wedged themselves between books.
A ridiculous part of her longed to rearrange everything by color and gradient until the stacks glowed like a tapestry.
She pushed the thought away with a faint huff and kept walking.
Jakobav moved at her side with his hands clasped behind his back. “Most of this was written before the sealing of the realms. We’ve tried to preserve it all. Dravaryn does not erase what it has been, no matter how dangerous it becomes.”
She turned sharply. “You think Orchid does?”
“Your kingdom doesn’t acknowledge the Claiming.”
“There are reasons,” she said, her temper rising.
Jakobav’s brow lifted, unimpressed. “Then tell me. What reasons?”
Ella opened her mouth—and felt her cheeks warm when nothing arrived.
“It was decided long ago. And we do not erase history. We are a kingdom of fire magic. Sometimes history burns. A spark in a schoolroom, a lesson that flares too high, a careless moment in training, and shelves can become cinder. We try to avoid it. Most libraries now are fully fireproofed, the same way our garments have to be.”
He tipped his head. “It still sounds convenient.”
“It’s a miracle I haven’t set you on fire yet.”
“Only because you cannot,” he said, a taunt softened by the awareness in his eyes.
“But please, feel free to try. I’ll even stop and hold still…let you burn me however you like.”
She glared and rounded the corner of the upper gallery. The glare dissolved as the air thinned around her. There, framed in carved obsidian and gilded bronze, hung a portrait unlike any other in the room.
The man within the painting stood tall and poised between light and shadow, as if the painter had trapped a storm at rest. His skin held a pale gold like sun caught on water.
His hair was the sheen of a raven wing. Beauty gathered itself in his features until it became something beyond mortal measure, and yet the chill of it came not from perfection but from the way his gaze seemed to know too much.
High cheekbones and a strong jaw, eyes slightly slanted and bright even in oil, and an expression that sat calm and calculating, amused without warmth.
Her breath stalled when she saw the chain at his throat.
The pendant had a center stone wrapped in dark metal vines and set on a gleaming length of links that looked almost thorn-spun.
It was the same shape she had seen in her vision, the same stone that had pulsed violet when he moved close, the same light that had called fire into her sigil like a strike of flint.
She stumbled nearer, heart pounding. “This is him,” she whispered. “The man from my dream.”
Fuck. She really hadn’t meant to say the words out loud.
Jakobav appeared beside her, his posture straightening. “You’ve seen him before?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t look away. “I thought it was a fever. He looked exactly like this, only alive, speaking as if he knew me.”
Jakobav’s voice cooled, each word precise. “That painting predates the Veil. His name is not known. He’s Fae.”
“Fae portraits are banned. Why is this painting here at all?”
“Because we don’t erase what shaped us,” he said.
Ella watched his hand close behind his back, fingers curling into a fist so tight his knuckles cracked. He did not look at the painting again. He only looked at her. But she glanced back at the picture, unable to stop looking at the raven-haired man.
“You sure you spoke with him?” His words fell like iron, quiet but scathing. “Tell me exactly what was said.”
She barely heard him and didn’t answer, entranced by the painting.
Up close, the details multiplied. A high-collared coat tailored with ruthless precision.
Midnight trousers pressed into perfect lines.
A belt with a silver buckle. Rings on each finger like quiet commands.
Nothing about him was accidental. Not like Jakobav, whose power was all fury and scars and strength carved into living muscle.
This man didn’t need to prove anything; he pulled at her like a different realm’s gravity, unfamiliar and impossible to ignore.
Gods, he frightened her.
He felt like a secret her soul already knew.
“I argued with him,” she said, voice thin with disbelief. “He told me I was never meant to kneel. He said I move between veins.”
A low snarl broke from Jakobav behind her, snapping through the air and sending her pulse stumbling.
She tore her gaze from the portrait, but the image stayed lodged behind her ribs like a blade she couldn’t pull free.
Heat stirred where her sigil lay hidden beneath her skin.
She didn’t dare look down to see if the ink had surfaced.
The pendant, the words, the certainty in his voice when the Fae man had spoken to her—all of it gathered into a single echo that would not quiet.
Not all roots are buried.
Even now, his words thrummed through her, quiet and relentless, as if something ancient had opened its eyes and was watching her remember.
Jakobav was still looking at her, unyielding. Yet she still sensed the Fae man’s gaze following her from the wall, eternal and knowing. Ella felt the weight of both, certain that whichever one she turned from, the other would still be watching.