Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
DORIAN
The spiral stairs feel longer on the way down.
I keep my steps light, magic flickering at my heels as if it’s trying to chase away the chill Kael left behind. But the shadow prince is already waiting at the bottom, arms crossed, shadows writhing around his boots like they’re personally offended by daylight.
He doesn’t speak. Just turns and starts walking toward the eastern wards, cloak snapping behind him like a living thing.
I fall into step beside him. Old habit. Muscle memory from a hundred nights we used to do exactly this—sneak out, chase trouble, pretend the world couldn’t touch us.
The silence stretches for three full corridors before I can’t stand it anymore.
“So,” I say, keeping my tone light, “you still shadow-step everywhere like a dramatic bat, or have you finally learned how to walk like a normal person?”
Kael doesn’t slow. “Some of us don’t need to sparkle our way through life.”
I grin, even though it feels a little forced. “Sparkle keeps things interesting. You used to like interesting.”
He cuts me a sideways look—sharp and cold, the same one he’s been giving me for six years now. “I used to like a lot of things.”
There it is. The knife. Same one he’s been twisting since the night everything between us snapped. I let the silence sit for another dozen steps before I speak again, quieter this time.
“You still think I sold you out to your father.” Not a question.
Kael’s jaw ticks. Shadows flare along the corridor walls, swallowing the torchlight for half a heartbeat.
“You did,” he says flatly. “You told him where I was hiding the night I tried to break the blood oath. You knew what he’d do. You knew what it would cost me.”
I stop walking.
He keeps going three more steps before he realizes I’m not beside him anymore. When he turns, his eyes are pure silver ice.
I spread my hands, palms up.
“I told him where you were because you were bleeding out in a gutter in the lower city, and I couldn’t carry you through a portal alone.
I told him because if I hadn’t, you would have died.
And yeah—” I laugh once, bitter, “—I knew he’d drag you back and tighten the leash.
But I also knew you’d live. That was the choice I made.
You. Alive. Even if you hated me for it. ”
Kael’s shadows lash once, hard enough to crack a stone flag.
“You had no right.”
“I had every right,” I snap, the easy mask cracking for once.
“You were my best friend. The only person in this Godforsaken place who ever saw me as more than the pretty fae prince. And I watched you try to kill yourself trying to run from him. So yeah, I chose the version of you that could still breathe. Sue me.”
The corridor is deathly quiet.
Kael stares at me for a long moment. Something flickers behind the ice—something that almost looks like the kid who used to sneak me into the restricted archives just so we could read forbidden texts and laugh until dawn.
Then it’s gone.
“You chose my cage,” he says quietly. “Don’t dress it up as mercy.”
I step closer. Close enough that his shadows brush my boots, and my magic pushes back against them.
“I chose you,” I say. “Every single time. Even when you decided I was the enemy.”
His gaze drops to my mouth for half a heartbeat—the same way it did upstairs when he saw me kissing Lindsay—then jerks away.
“We’re wasting time,” he mutters, turning on his heel again.
But he doesn’t shadow-step ahead this time. He waits for me to catch up. We walk in silence the rest of the way, two old ghosts carrying the same wound between us.
When the eastern wards finally come into view—cracked stone glowing with failing runes, air shimmering like heat above a forge—I feel the rift before I see it. A hungry, living thing pressing against the Veil like a mouth trying to open.
Kael stops at the edge of the circle. His shadows spread out automatically, reinforcing the failing wards. I roll my sleeves up, light already gathering at my fingertips.
“For what it’s worth,” I say without looking at him, “I missed this. Us. Even when you were hating me.”
Kael doesn’t answer right away. His shadows keep spreading, thin black ribbons threading into the failing runes along the circle, stitching cracks closed with deliberate, practiced precision.
The air hums with the low vibration of our combined power—his darkness feeding the wards’ anchors, my magic pulsing in counterpoint to keep the structure from buckling entirely.
I wait. I’ve learned—over six long, silent years—that pushing him when he’s like this only makes the ice thicker. Finally, he speaks, voice so low it almost gets lost in the wind whipping across the eastern perimeter.
“I still hate you.” The words land flat. No venom or heat, just fact.
I feel the old scar pull tight under my ribs anyway.
“Good to know,” I say lightly, even though my throat feels raw. I flick a fresh seal of blue light across a widening fracture in the Veil barrier; it flares bright, then steadies. “Hate’s honest. Better than pretending we’re strangers.”
He doesn’t look at me. Just keeps working—shadows curling around a particularly vicious distortion that’s trying to claw through like fingers scraping at glass. The thing hisses when his darkness touches it, recoiling.
“You think this—” he jerks his chin toward the rift, toward the two of us moving in perfect, bitter synchronicity, “—changes anything?”
“No.” I roll my shoulders, magic flaring brighter along my forearms as I reinforce the next section. “It changes nothing about the past. Doesn’t undo the night your father dragged you back in chains because of what I told him. Doesn’t give you back the freedom you almost died for.”
Kael’s hands still for half a second. The shadows around us flicker.
“But it does mean we’re still the only two people who can do this without killing each other,” I finish quietly.
A distortion lashes out—thicker this time, hungry, aiming straight for the weak spot between two ward stones.
Kael’s shadows snap forward like whips; mine follow a heartbeat later, blue and white vines wrapping the black tendrils and turning the counterstrike into something unbreakable.
The rift screeches—high and furious—and retreats.
For a moment, the only sound is our breathing and the low, angry pulse of the barrier.
Then Kael speaks again. Still not looking at me. “You could have let me die.”
The admission is so quiet I almost miss it over the wind.
I swallow. Hard.
“Yeah,” I say. “I could have.”
He finally turns his head—just enough for his eyes to meet mine. No warmth. No forgiveness. But something raw flickers there anyway.
“I would have,” he says. Flat. Certain. “If our places were reversed. I would have let you bleed out rather than give him the satisfaction of dragging you back.”
The truth of it stings more than any lie ever could.
“I know,” I reply softly. “That’s why I didn’t give you the choice.”
Another distortion tries to push through. We both move at the same time—shadow and light slamming into it together, sealing it shut with a sound like breaking glass.
Kael exhales through his nose. Almost a laugh, but too bitter. “You always did think you knew better.”
“Only about the things that mattered.” I flash him a small, crooked smile—the one I used to use when we were kids and I’d just talked us out of getting expelled. “Like whether my best friend lived long enough to hate me properly.”
He doesn’t smile back.
We work in silence after that—methodical, efficient, the way we always were when it counted. Shadows and white magic weaving together like they never forgot the pattern. The rift snarls and retreats inch by inch, the circle strengthening under our combined hands.
When the last major fracture finally seals—glowing briefly before settling into a dull, stable shimmer—Kael lets his arms drop. Sweat beads along his temple. His breathing is rough. He looks at me then. Really looks.
“I really do still hate you,” he repeats. But the words sound tired this time. Worn thin.
I nod once.
“I know.”
A beat.
Then, quieter: “But I don’t want you dead anymore.”
It’s not forgiveness. Not even close. But it’s the closest thing to truce we’ve had in six years.
I let out a breath I was holding.
“Progress,” I say dryly.
He snorts—barely audible. “Don’t push it, fae.”