Chapter 53
Lore
The pool waited, as patient as a predator.
Each breath came harder than the last. Sweat beaded on my neck despite the stone's chill. The cavern's echoes reverberated in my chest.
Reyla stayed with me, watching. Waiting to make sure I didn't need her.
I always would. She was a hand stretched out in the dark, the warmth of a soul on a frigid night. There would never be a time when I wouldn't need her by my side.
The surface rippled, and I braced myself for what was coming. Kneeling made my legs ache, but I didn’t flinch. This was mine to face. My heart pounded too loud in my ears.
The second my fingers hovered over the water, the surface shifted.
My throat clenched, and I leaned closer.
Two figures stared back.
Panic jolted through me, and I remembered being split. Torn in half. We’d healed. I knew that. Reyla had done it with all the love she so willingly gave me. She’d said she loved all of me.
But doubt clawed through my mind.
One side of me was arrogant and cruel, yet equally conniving. The other part of this man had stood strong, accepting that this was the way it had to be until we found her.
At dawn and dusk, we stared at each other in a mirror, spoke together, but we could not fully reach across the divide.
As I watched the arrogance and cruelty of that part of me, I remembered those I'd let down, how unkind I'd been when someone asked me for even a simple thing.
My arrogance resulted in pain for those I claimed to care about.
The ache inside my chest deepened. Even now, reunited, I wondered if the fracture had ever healed.
What if the pieces of me she’d loved most didn’t exist anymore? I may have lost the best parts of Lorant and Merrick.
The figures in the water wavered and another image appeared. I knew that corridor. I knew that ten-year-old child.
I stood in the corridor. Alone.
My mother’s voice echoed, whipping me even now. “You shame this family.”
My chest clenched. I’d forgotten her icy disappointment and how her words had wrapped around me like chains. I'd loved her, but what I’d loved most had been stolen when my father died.
The boy flinched and straightened his spine. As he'd quickly learned to do, he bit down his fear.
Prager stepped from the dark behind him. Pressing close, she whispered into his ear. “She will never love you.”
The boy froze. And for one moment, he believed her.
I jerked back from the water, gasping. The vision held me captive, forcing me to relive moments I'd buried deep.
The corridor faded, and the vision warped, snapping into a new place.
More. My feral smile grew. Come for me, then.
I appeared as I was at seventeen. My face stared back at me in a cracked mirror. Two of me. One with a sneer, his eyes cold and calculating. The other stiff, his face still full of hope.
Previous generations had been bitter enemies, but Lorant and Merrick chose unity. Perhaps that's why fate had brought me this far.
Watching them now made me burn hot.
I remembered every wrong choice I'd made, how I’d turned my mouth and body into a weapon while another part of me had honed his wits to an equally sharp edge but tempered himself with a softness some said made him weak.
“What if I was never meant to be whole?” The words slipped out, hitting the air like rocks.
The two faces watched me.
Lorant’s smirked, but Merrick’s eyes didn’t judge. They held a plea. He wanted to believe I still carried him, that I hadn’t let him die when Reyla healed us.
Both of them hurt.
Reyla knelt beside me, taking my hand and linking our fingers.
So alive. So loving. The stone under my knees felt cruel in contrast.
“You are whole,” she said. “Every choice you’ve made belongs to you.
All of you. You’re the men I fell in love with.
Lorant’s fire, Merrick’s calm. More than both, actually because each side of you enhances the other.
It was never about losing any part of you but fusing them together to create the wonderful, amazing person you were always meant to be. ”
I found no doubt in her eyes.
“Prager was harmed,” she said. “No one would deny that. But she stole more than she should when she sought revenge. Aricor deserved her rage, her destruction; never those who came after him. But she didn’t break you, Lore.
You made something better out of what you were handed. You built a man worth following.”
The ache in my throat would not release. Air burned when I pulled it in. I stared at where her hand gripped mine and tried to keep it from shaking. “What if I lose you the way I was lost for so long?”
Rising, she wrapped her arms around me. “I'll search for you forever, Lore, and I'll find you.”
I cracked wide open, but it wasn't a breaking. She was healing me again.
The pool smoothed, finished with yanking me through a tiny hole with spiked sides.
Standing, I tugged my wildfire up and held her, my chin resting on the top of her head while her soft breath fanned my throat. The pain eased.
“There’s no escaping this test, it seems.” Dorion moved forward with Laphira, their hands meshed together.
I stepped back, taking Reyla with me.
Dorion knelt in front of the water, staring as the swirling images stabbed him deep inside.
“Ah, there it is. Somehow, I knew I’d see the look in my father’s eyes when I told him we should make peace with the other courts.
I'd spoken with Lore. With Laphira. We could make it work; things would be better.
He laughed. Said unity was weakness. Said that he didn't recognize me as his son any longer.”
His gaze remained on the pool, and his lips thinned. Pain flashed across his face.
Because we’d both love our parents, their cruelty struck true.
“There he is,” he whispered. “Binding me with magic. Before I could blink, he threw me into the labyrinth. Never himself. The labyrinth only asked for devotion. Such a simple thing to give. Not for Tallin, however. I don't believe he even knew what devotion to others meant, only to himself.”
Kneeling beside him, Laphira unclenched her hands by her sides. She stared into the water, her breathing coming in jagged gasps.
“My mother told me I was a mistake,” she said. “She said she would turn me into something useful. She praised me only when I did exactly what she asked. I learned how to do whatever she wanted better than I learned what little magic I can wield.”
Dorion wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“Rebellion got me caged. Worse.” Her bark of a laugh ripped out.
“The first time I said no, she twisted the word into a beast and said I’d let it loose.
Said I was ungrateful. She used a spell to make me obedient.
It didn’t last long. She had to keep renewing it, and she’d forget until I messed up again.
That only made it worse, because then she said I’d failed her twice.
Once for fighting. Once for failing to stay broken. ”
Dorion's chin dropped to rest on the top of her head.
“I don’t like who I was then,” she whispered.
None of us moved. Even Farris remained quiet, watching.
We'd all been reshaped by the ones who were meant to care for us.
We stood in heavy silence, each processing what we'd witnessed. The pool had stripped us bare, exposing wounds we'd thought healed. But somehow, sharing them made the burden lighter.
Light skimmed across the pool and the images faded. Laphira and Dorion stood, her softly crying in his arms. When she stepped back, she gave him a nod and a watery smile.
Reyla and I joined them, Farris trotting at her side.
“It’s time to heal our bond,” I said, glancing at each of them. “Will Irridain and Halendor stand with the Evergorne king as they did so long ago?”
“Fuck, yeah,” Dorion said before anyone else could open their mouths.
The laugh that slipped out of me wasn't much, but it was real.
Laphira nodded. “I sense it must be now.”
Reyla handed me the tiny dagger.
Staring down at the blade, I sucked in a breath and sliced the sharp edge across my palm. When my blood hit the surface of the pool, it vanished, sucked it down.
I passed the small knife to Reyla.
A quick gouge, and her blood joined mine in the pool. The same ripple spread outward as if the pool drank it. It swirled, searching for more.
Dorion was next. “Don’t give me that look,” he muttered, shooting me a smirk. “That pity thing? It doesn't belong here today.”
I dipped my head forward to show him I heard.
His blood fell, joined by Laphira's, and the pool churned.
As a gust of wind jettisoned through the enormous cave, the pool lit up, dawn cracking open the sky.
The talismans rose from where Reyla had placed them within the golden circles.
Light exploded from their fusion, so bright I had to close my eyes. When I opened them, the three separate pieces had become something entirely new. Ancient power hummed through the air, making my teeth ache.
Essence.
Devotion.
Dominion.
They hovered above the surface, spinning slowly. Light stretched from one to the next, weaving between them, threads pulled taut. Energy lifted the hairs on my arms.
The scales embedded in the walls began to glow, one by one. A low sound echoed from every corner, a steady thrum, like a heart starting to beat after a very long time. Farris's ears swiveled to track the sound.
The talismans spun faster. Light poured from the water, rising in streams that bent and curled, reaching, searching for something to bind.
Then the spinning slowed, and the scales’ light dimmed. With a snap, the threads between the talismans wrenched apart, and they dropped back down to rest on the stones, each within its golden circle.
“Something's missing,” Reyla said, Farris's whine following like agreement.
“We offered pain and regret,” I said as it dawned on me. “But the Iskar Cor wasn't created from suffering. It was meant to enhance love, not force it. Aricor corrupted its purpose.”
Laphira crouched in front of the pool. “It took our blood. Took everything we offered. Raked its claws across our souls. Why didn’t it work?”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” I said. “We only gave what hurt.” Crouching, I traced my fingers above the water.
Reyla dropped down beside me, wrapping her arm around my back. “Only when touched by what first broke it will they remember what they were.”
“What we need does not begin with fire,” I said, staring into the pool. “It begins with the wound. Pour yourself into it. Bind not them, but what they represent.”
“The blood was just the beginning,” Reyla said. “It opened the connection, but the talismans need to remember their original purpose. They need to feel what love actually is, not what Aricor twisted it into.”
“Um…how do you know all that?” Dorion asked from nearby.
I dragged up a brief smile. “We learned it from a very wise elder. What was broken, was not meant to break. What was sealed, cannot hold forever.”
“Blood keeps it intact.” Reyla finished what Isodine had written in her diary.
I recalled Isodine's words more clearly now. The wound she wrote about wasn't just Prager's heartbreak, it was the damage done to love itself. And healing required more than acknowledging pain.
“Prager’s wrath didn’t only shatter love,” I said.
“She shattered something older. Something that should never have been touched. My ancestor tried to force Prager to love him. He sought something forbidden, a device capable of altering will, of binding someone else’s fate.
Iskar Cor. Before the talismans were scattered, they were one.
A single artifact forged from magic far older than even Prager’s bloodline. ”
“Three fragments, scattered like stars, await their reckoning.” Reyla repeated what Justifar had said after our wedding. “None will yield to force. None will answer a hand that doubts.”
“I think it wants more,” I said. “A promise. Not something broken or something remembered. It took what we offered and gave us nothing in return because it already knew those parts. It didn’t need them again.”
Dorion pressed his lips together. “Then what do we do now?”
Laphira leaned against Dorion’s side, resting her head on his shoulder.
My wildfire looked up at me with those gold-flecked brown eyes that had seen every broken piece of me and still chose to stay.
“Show love,” I said. “Not blood or pain or sacrifice. Love.”
The pool rippled. Deep below the surface, the thing stirred as if it had been waiting for us to finally understand.
“The talismans weren't meant to be bound by force or sorrow,” Reyla breathed. “They were meant to be united by the one thing Aricor tried to corrupt.”
Love.