Chapter 11 Rhea
Rhea
Flames snap along the wood, washing Vaylen’s face in warm light. His eyes cut toward me, steady, measuring, questions brewing there that he keeps leashed behind his calm. He doesn’t speak them. Instead, his gaze drops to the hollows beneath my eyes, the way my shoulders sag.
“You need rest,” his voice is firm, holding no room for debate. “Take my tent. I’ll keep watch until Phoebe relieves me.”
My lips part with some flaring instinct to contradict him, but the weight pressing down on my body smothers it. He isn’t wrong. My bones feel heavy, as though they carry stone rather than flesh.
I give a single nod and force my body upright, crossing the camp toward the tent without a word.
Inside, the air carries the faint scent of leather and oil. His scent. His presence lingers even here, orderly, disciplined. I sink onto the furs, bones creaking in protest following relief.
Through the small gap of the flap, firelight ripples over Vaylen as he stands with Phoebe closer to the flames. His shoulders remain squared like a man made of granite. Phoebe leans in, her expression bright and restless, her hands carving shapes into the air.
Vaylen listens, unmoving. His jaw lifts when he finally speaks, lips shaping words I can’t hear. Duty coats his bearing even now, every syllable weighted like he carries the sky itself. I close my eyes before I catch more.
Sleep pulls me down fast, no gentle drift. One blink and the fire’s gone, the camp’s gone.
Everything turns to damp stone and black walls pressing in.
My body jerks, weightless, except there are arms locked around me, hauling me deeper into this choking dark.
Wind hisses over my skin, snapping tight around my wrists and ankles, binding me as if the air itself approves of my capture.
I thrash, but the current holds fast, slicing into me like icy rope.
“Coward,” I spit, my voice cracking in the suffocating tunnel. “Let me go and see what happens when I land on my own two feet.”
The man—if he’s a man—keeps walking. His arms don’t even shift under my weight. Shadows coil thick around his face, sealing his features away. Only his shape is burned into my sight: broad, tall, and unyielding.
My fury knots tighter than the air around my limbs. Every swallow tastes like iron. “I don’t belong to you. Do you hear me? Let me the fuck go!”
Without warning his grip vanishes. I drop, skull smashing the stone floor with a crack that explodes stars over my vision. My ears ring. The air leaves me in a rush, and every breath that follows feels like drowning on dry land.
Blurriness swallows the corners, and when I manage to lift my head, she’s crouched there.
A little girl, knees bent, thin frame covered with grime.
Mud cakes her face in streaks, and her hair is clumped in greasy tangles.
She drags the back of her wrist under her nose, smearing snot across the dirt.
Her eyes, dark and sharp as chipped flint, rake over me with the sort of disdain older women reserve for spoiled bread at market.
“This is her?” she asks, voice flat, unimpressed.
I blink through the haze, my wrists still buzzing with phantom restraints. My skull roars from the fall, but some ember inside me still spits sparks.
“Depends,” I rasp, bracing on my elbows even though my body wants to crumple back onto the stone. “Who exactly were you expecting? Because if you’re waiting for someone to say you smell good, guess again. You reek.”
The girl’s lip curls, and her mouth parts, ready to fire back at me, but a voice cuts through the cavern.
“Don’t waste your breath,” the man says.
It rumbles low, a sound that rolls like thunder off stone peaks. The shadows shift at the edges, clinging to his broad frame, concealing everything but the strength in the command. My skin prickles, and my throat tightens against the weight of that tone.
“Just do your job, Fern.”
Fern. So the wraith-child has a name. She huffs, a sharp little flare of irritation that doesn’t match the tremble in her skinny limbs. Lips pursed, she digs into the pocket of her shabby, rope-held trousers. The legs swallow her feet, hems folded awkwardly, each cuff stiff with dirt.
Her hand comes out clutching a vial.
The glass catches the dim light, a faint shimmer swirling inside like liquid fog. She bites the cork free and spits it to the side, never breaking her stare.
My fingers twitch against stone. Every bone in my body screams to move, so I do.
My shoulder knocks into the jagged wall as I twist and claw at the floor to push myself backward.
Stone scrapes my spine raw, blocking me in with its cold indifference.
I grit my teeth and breathe hard through my nose, shoving past the sting in my elbows and knees.
“Stay away from me,” I snap, bucking in open defiance. “You bring that closer, and I swear you’ll regret it.”
Fern doesn’t even flinch. Her filthy little hand hovers steady, the vial tilting beneath my nose.
A sharp, acrid tang stings the back of my throat before it even touches me. My eyes water instantly. It burns like the first breath of life. I thrash harder, slamming my shoulder against the rock until pain shoots down my arm.
“I said no!” My voice cracks deep, raw, but it doesn’t matter. She waves the vial again, her expression caught between boredom and contempt.
The fumes invade my body, crushing the air out of my lungs. Each breath drags me closer to blackness, no matter how tight I clamp my mouth shut.
Zephyros. Vaylen! Their names claw up my chest, a rising scream trapped in silence, swallowed before I can push it free.
“Why?” I manage in an intelligible croak.
The shadows peel from the cavern wall as if dragged by unseen hands.
They coil around Fern’s thin body before slipping back toward the one standing behind her.
My chest tenses. The living dark releases its hold in slow slivers, each unveiling another shard of his face until I can no longer look away.
Hair, white as chalkstone cliffs, cascades to his shoulders, strands captured in braids so exact they appear spun from glass filaments.
The contours of his face cut sharply, the kind of beauty that wounds rather than comforts, young in form yet etched with ancient burden.
Those eyes—amber, blazing like flame—impale me like a lance through the heart.
He doesn’t step closer. He doesn’t have to. Flame burns there, too steady to be natural. His gaze sinks into me until I forget to breathe. My lungs seize against the smoke Fern forced down my throat.
“All in good time, Omneira. All in good time.”
The name scrapes across my skin. Omneira. Not Rhealyn. Not me. My blood churns hot with rage sparked from terror.
“My name is Rhealyn,” I croak, bucking, kicking by bound feet against the wall as if I could crack it by denial alone. “You’ve… got… the wrong person, you… idiots.” I cough.
His expression doesn’t change, but the fire in his eyes flickers brighter, a flare of sun caught in molten glass. I should look away, but the light drags me forward, burning through me, and I wade deeper than I should.
“Let me—” My voice falters, words tearing like cloth as the brilliance swallows everything else. Heat sears beneath my ribs, spreads up through my throat. I choke, but he only watches with those blazing eyes that promise nothing, demand everything.
Brilliance bursts behind my lids like the crack of lightning too close to dodge. It blinds until there’s nothing left but white. My body thrashes against it and finds only air, my limbs entangled with emptiness.
Then darkness drops.
RHEA
I jolt upright, lungs screaming for breath that doesn’t come fast enough. Cold air strikes wet against my cheeks. My body shakes. Sweat soaks my collar.
The tent walls flicker. Shadows bow beneath the campfire beyond. My chest heaves hard as I rake in air, knuckles braced into the furs.
Not a dream. Too sharp, too close. His fire still burns in my vision.
The tent flap snaps open, dragging firelight in with it. Vaylen fills the space, wide shoulders brushing both sides as he squats. His eyes lock on me, sharp, searching, blue cut with golden specks.
“Rhealyn?” My name comes rough, but it bends into a question.
I swipe the sweat from my brow with the heel of my palm, heat still dragging down my neck.
He crawls closer, knees sinking into the furs, gaze sweeping from head to heel like he expects to find an arrow sticking out of me. “What’s the matter?”
“Nightmare. That’s all.” The words spill before I can think, because admitting what really just clawed its way through my skull would sound like madness.
“You’re ill.”
I snort at that. “I’m not—”
His hand lifts, brushing my forehead before I can turn away. His palm is cooler than the sweat soaking me. I catch the tick of his jaw when he realizes how hot my skin runs.
Dragon’s breath. He actually looks worried. A year, and he still feels this way?
“I told you, it’s nothing.” I swat at his wrist, but his arm doesn’t move. He stays there, reading me like I’m some battle map.
Without a word, he pushes toward the flap and ducks back out.
Crisp air rushes in before the closure falls again.
Silence. Only the thud of my heart against my ribs.
I try to breathe past it, hands splaying open on the furs.
The fever glow clings behind my eyes, and the name he spit at me—Omneira—crawls along my bones like a spider. I lie back down with a whimper.
The flap stirs again, and Vaylen’s there, crouching, canteen in one hand and the small leather satchel every rider knows too well in the other. A first aid kit. Of course he’d grab it like he can stitch and salve away demons.
“Drink.” He presses the canteen toward me.
I glare up at him, lips set tight. “You’re not my nursemaid.”
“And you’re not fine.” His voice lacks punch, but the truth in it slices me anyway.