Chapter 28 Rhea
Rhea
Ican barely swallow without pain blooming down my throat, a raw reminder of Cragmere’s chokehold. The bruises will be spectacular tomorrow. Purple and black, a necklace of hatred.
The Commander hovers nearby, her eyes occasionally flicking to my neck. She never asked why I didn’t defend myself. Does she take my passivity as admission of guilt?
I don’t really care.
Each inhalation is a negotiation with the pain.
Vaylen’s accusation still rings in my ears, cutting deeper than Cragmere’s assault ever could.
One year of my life gone, stolen, and he thinks I spent it betraying him?
As if I’d chosen to vanish into that mountain, to endure whatever horrors left these gaps in my memory.
I blocked Zephyros from my mind when Cragmere attacked.
My beautiful silver dragon would have blown this fort apart if he’d felt my pain.
So I let the little man do his worst, felt a strange relief in the punishment.
For a moment, I wondered if it might be better if I’d died in Hearthdale, saved everyone the trouble of dealing with me.
My fingers trace the tender skin at my throat. “When do we leave for Emberton?” I croak.
“Within the hour,” Commander Voltguard replies. “I’ll make arrangements and be right back. We don’t need to take much. The King will provide what we need.”
I laugh, the sound like broken glass. “Of course he will. How thoughtful.”
The Commander’s expression doesn’t change. “You need to stop acting as if this is a joke.”
“Of course, it isn’t,” I agree, rising from my chair despite the room’s slight spin. “Nothing about this is funny. Not the trial, not the King’s summons, not the missing year of my life. But at least I know where I stand now.”
Alone. As always.
The Commander looks at me strangely, head tilting slightly like I’m a puzzle with missing pieces.
Her gray hair is pulled back so tightly it must hurt, but Voltguard isn’t a woman who acknowledges pain…
or nonsense. Cold calculation lives behind those brown eyes.
She’s seen too much war to waste time on emotional outbursts.
“I’ll return shortly. Stay put.” She leaves without waiting for confirmation.
The door clicks shut. I press my palms against my eyes until colors bloom in the darkness. What am I doing? Playing the victim? The wronged lover? Pathetic.
Commander Voltguard is the kind of woman I always thought I was.
Unflinching, disciplined, focused. But I’ve let my passions drag me into this mess.
Fallen for a man who condemns me at the slightest blow to his insecurities.
Made friends who could be destroyed by association if my true nature is revealed.
Maybe it’s time for a change. To sever what little attachments I have. Cut Vaylen out like a diseased limb. Distance myself from Phoebe and the others before they get hurt. I already cut my father from my life, though that wound still bleeds if I prod it. I can do the same with the rest.
No more softness. No more vulnerability. If I survive whatever the King wants, I’ll be steel all the way through. No heart to break. No fears to exploit.
Zephyros my only companion.
A flash of amber eyes burns through my thoughts... Tahranis looking at me with that unsettling devotion. “Omneira,” he calls me, voice reverberating with something between worship and possession. “I would burn this world to ash for you. I would tear down mountains. Anything you desire.”
I shove the new vision away, hands trembling. It feels too real to be a delusion, too intimate to be a nightmare. Each vision carries the weight of truth, yet remains maddeningly incomplete.
What impossible events hide in my lost time? Did I become someone else before I forgot everything? Whatever the case, I refuse to be anyone’s puppet. Not Tahranis’s. Not Vaylen’s. Not the King’s.
The door reopens, and I expect Voltguard’s stern face. Maybe she forgot to tell me something. Instead, Vaylen steps in, his blue-and-gold eyes turbulent as a summer storm. My treacherous pulse quickens despite what I just decided.
“What do you want?” I ask, coating each word with ice. “Come to accuse me of more wrongdoings I don’t remember?”
Vaylen says nothing. His gaze holds mine, searching for something I can’t give him. The silence stretches between us, charged with everything we’ve left unsaid. My throat tightens, not from Cragmere’s assault but from the weight of what I feel for this man.
How could I ever truly harden my heart against him? The thought of Vaylen’s regard, his love, gave me hope since my return. But I must. For his sake more than mine.
Because what if I did choose Tahranis willingly? What if, when all my memories return, I discover my heart directed toward someone else? I can’t bear the thought of that betrayal, of giving Vaylen hope only to shatter it all over again.
Or worse… what if the King has me hanged this very day? I couldn’t put Vaylen through that pain again, knowing me truly dead after just finding me alive. Better if he thinks I wasn’t worth it. Better if my loss means nothing to him.
“You should go,” I say, drawing strength from the air around me, feeling it respond to my silent call.
I pull it into my lungs, into my blood, letting it fortify the walls I’m building around my heart.
I know just how. I blocked my father out years ago.
“The Commander and I leave for Emberton soon. I’m sure you have important High Prime duties waiting. ”
His jaw tightens. “Rhealyn—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off, my voice sharp as intended. “Just don’t. We both know this was never going to work. You have your duty. I have whatever this is.” I gesture vaguely at myself, at the mess I’ve become. “Let’s stop pretending.”
Each utterance feels like swallowing hot coals, but I force them out anyway. It’s the kindest cruelty I can offer him.
Vaylen steps closer, his eyes shifting from storm to fire. “Duty doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
The words hang between us, impossible and dangerous. I stare at him, certain I’ve misheard. “What?”
“You heard me.” His voice drops lower, intense and certain in a way that makes my skin prickle. He comes closer. “I spent a year thinking you were dead, Rhealyn. A year believing I’d lost you forever. I won’t lose you again. Not to the King, not to duty, not to anything.”
I shake my head, backing away to relieve the terrible closeness. “You’re not thinking clearly—”
“I’ve never thought more clearly in my life.” He crosses the distance between us in two strides, grabs my shoulders. “We can leave. Right now. Take Zephyros and go. If Fragor won’t come with us, I’ll leave him behind.”
The words knock the breath from my lungs. “Leave Fragor? Are you insane?”
“For you? Yes.” His hands come up to frame my face, and I hate how my body responds, leaning into his touch before I can stop myself. “I’d go to the end of the realm to keep you safe. I’d throw everything away. My rank, my dragon bond. All of it.”
For a heartbeat, I let myself imagine it. Running away together, finding some remote place where no one knows us, where there would be no king, no trial, no Screechclaws. Just us.
The fantasy burns bright and tempting.
Then reality crashes back. Vaylen without his honor? Without Fragor? He’d wither like a plant torn from the ground. The man I care for would slowly disappear, leaving a hollow shell eaten by regret.
Besides, the wrong sort of memory might still return, the one that confirms I willingly betrayed him, exchanged the blue of his gaze for the heat of embers.
“You’d hate me,” I whisper, pulling his hands from my face. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually. You’d resent me for taking you from everything that makes you who you are. I won’t be the cause of your destruction.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” I step sideways, away from him, away from temptation. “Besides, Fragor would never come. He’d never abandon his oath to Heratrix to protect Embernia.”
His expression falters, the first crack in his certainty.
“And neither would you,” I continue, pressing my advantage. “Not truly. Not without destroying yourself in the process.”
“Rhealyn, I—”
“No, Vaylen. We both know you’re offering the impossible. And I won’t be the cause of your destruction. Besides,” I add, cold sharpness in each syllable, “we don’t even know if I’ve given myself to another man during that missing year. Perhaps I’ve been someone else’s lover all this time.”
The words land exactly as I hope. He flinches as if I’ve slapped him, his jaw tightening until I hear his teeth grinding. Pain flashes across his face before hardening into something close to fury. Good. Let him hate me. It’s cleaner that way.
“You don’t believe that,” he says, but doubt clouds his eyes.
“Don’t I?” I let the question hang between us like toxic fumes. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I forgot all about you.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides. “Stop this.”
“Things will be much easier for you this way,” I continue, relentless in my cruelty.
“No more worrying about me, about what I am, about what I’ve done.
You’ll be free to focus on your important role.
Maybe even give Eleonora the attention she’s so desperate for, at least she’s not a murderess and a Weaver.
In the end, you’ll thank me for ending this before it destroyed us both. ”
“Don’t do this.” His voice drops to a ragged whisper. “Please, Rhealyn.”
My heart splinters at the sound of my name on his lips, but I keep my face expressionless. “It’s done.”
“This is because I hurt you with what I said.” He steps closer, desperate now. “I was wrong. I was jealous and afraid and... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I remain unmoved, though it costs me everything to maintain this facade.
Inside, I’m screaming, begging him to see through this performance, to fight harder, to refuse to let me go.
But I can’t risk him doing something stupid like following me to Emberton, throwing away everything for a woman who might not even be worthy of his sacrifice.
“Your apology changes nothing,” I say flatly. “We’re done, Vaylen. My mind is made up. Accept it.”
For a long, strained moment, he doesn’t move. Tears line his eyes, but they don’t fall. His gaze holds mine, unblinking, pleading silently for me to stop this madness, to see that he’s truly sorry, that he loves me.
I know he does. Of course I know. He waited for me for a year, for Heratrix’s sake. Searching that cursed mountain for me. Protecting my secret even when he thought I was dead. A man like Vaylen doesn’t love halfway. He once warned me he didn’t do things half heartedly.
That’s precisely why I have to end this.
“Goodbye,” I say, the word carrying all the finality I intend. My voice doesn’t break, though my heart shatters with each blow.
I turn my back to him, unable to bear the raw hurt in his expression a moment longer.
For a heartbeat, I think he might grab me, spin me around, force me to face what I’m throwing away.
Part of me wants him to. The reckless, selfish part that doesn’t care about consequences or duty or the greater good.
But Vaylen is proud, and I’ve struck too deep, aimed my words at his most vulnerable places. He won’t grovel. Not again. I’m counting on it.
He exhales, a sound so soft it’s barely there. Then footsteps—measured, controlled—moving away from me. The door opens and closes with a quiet click. The sound echoes in my chest like thunder.
“There,” I whisper to the empty room. “You’ve done it. You’ve pushed him away, the one man who—“ My voice catches, and I press my fist against my mouth. No. I won’t cry. Not now, not until I’m alone with Zephyros where no one can see.
My dragon’s voice slips into my mind, gentle but reproachful.
—Are you sure?
—It’s the right thing to do. He’ll forget me soon enough.
—You lie to yourself as skillfully as you lie to him.
I ignore Zephyros, straightening my shoulders and swallowing back the grief threatening to choke me.
This is the path I’ve chosen. The only path that keeps Vaylen safe from whatever darkness pursues me, whatever I’ve become during that missing year, because I have a feeling it’s nothing good.
I have a feeling this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Better he hates me now than loves me and suffers more later.