Chapter 30 #3
I wished Aeliana was here like a sword in my hand. Like fire in my lungs. Like ice in my blood.
And then I thought about the silence inside my mind, the blankness, the way I couldn’t feel her at all.
I opened my eyes slowly.
“Evadne,” I whispered. “I need that Hushcrafter gone.”
Evadne froze. “Elara…”
“I can defend myself,” I said, voice fierce even through the weakness. “If I can access my power.”
And inside my chest, quieter, truer, I added without saying it out loud…
If I can access Aeliana.
Evadne’s face tightened. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You can,” I said, and it came out too desperate. I forced myself to soften. “Just… try.”
Evadne swallowed. “Rhydian guards her,” she admitted. “They keep the Hushcrafter on the floor above you. He listens for everything. He uses echoweaving, he… channels sound down into the dungeon. He can hear your chains shift. But he is sleeping right now.”
Rhydian.
Just the name made my stomach pitch, sudden and violent.
The weight of his arm around my waist in the cave.
The heat of his mouth on my throat. The way he’d whispered like I was something worth keeping.
And then the morning after, the cold in his eyes, the silence that had been debilitating.
He hadn’t dragged me into chains with his hands, but he might as well have.
He’d stepped aside while they took me. He’d watched me become cargo.
He’d watched me disappear. And the worst part, the part that made bile crawl up my throat, was that he’d done it with the same steadiness he’d used to hold me.
Like betrayal was just another duty. Like I was just another thing he could set down when the queen called.
I hated him for it. Hated the memory of him.
Hated that some stupid part of me still remembered his touch as safe, because it made my rage feel contaminated, like even my fury wasn’t fully mine anymore.
I forced my anger down.
“If we get rid of the Hushcrafter,” I whispered, “then I’m not helpless. I’m not just… this.”
I flexed my shaking fingers, as if I could prove I was more than a girl chained to a wall.
Evadne’s eyes dropped to my bruised hands. “I have no magic,” she said quietly. “You know that.”
“I know,” I said, and I meant it. “But even without magic, you’re capable. You’re strong.”
Evadne stared at me like she didn’t believe it.
So I leaned closer, voice low and urgent.
“We’re only as weak as they allow us,” I whispered. “And as weak as we allow them to make us.”
Something changed in Evadne’s eyes.
Not confidence.
Not yet.
But something harder.
Resolve.
She nodded once.
“I’ll do my best,” she whispered. “I’ll try.”
“Bertha,” I said, the name scraping out of me like I hadn’t used it in a lifetime. “Bertha was a woman that traveled with me to Emberfall. I… I don’t know how she is now or where they put her, but if she’s still here… maybe she can help.”
The moment the words left my mouth, guilt hit hard enough to make my throat close.
Because Bertha had been there in the beginning, hadn’t she?
Fussing and muttering and shoving food into my hands like it was her personal mission to keep me breathing.
Making the palace feel slightly less like a trap with teeth.
She’d been the closest thing I’d had to safety that didn’t come with a crown attached to it.
And I’d still let her become a footnote in my mind.
Not because she mattered less, but because my life had turned into nothing but survival and damage control, one disaster bleeding into the next until the people who helped me stopped feeling real and started feeling like pieces of another life I didn’t have time to hold onto.
I swallowed, shame and desperation mixing bitter on my tongue.
“If she’s alive,” I whispered, more to myself than Evadne, “she will help you.”
A sound echoed faintly down the corridor.
Not loud.
Just enough.
A footstep. A shift of armor. The dungeon breathing.
Evadne stiffened instantly.
Her head snapped toward the cell door.
“I should go,” she whispered.
My pulse kicked. Panic rose. “Evadne, wait.”
She grabbed the remaining food quickly, shoving most of it back into her pack, then hesitated and tucked a bundle beneath the loose stone near the back corner of my cell. Bread. A small flask. Bandages.
A lifeline hidden in the cracks of a world built to starve me.
She rose fast, eyes shining.
She looked down at me one last time.
Her voice shook. “Please stay alive, Elara.”
I swallowed, throat tight.
She reached out, hesitated, then cupped my face gently, careful of the bruises. Her thumb brushed my cheek like she was trying to memorize that I was real.
“You’re our only hope,” she whispered.
And then she was gone.
The cell door clicked shut behind her.
The light disappeared.
The dungeon swallowed me again.
But the food was hidden.
The bandages were fresh.
And for the first time in days, I wasn’t crying because I was alone.
I was crying because someone had come back for me.