Chapter Thirty-Seven
Blood may shape the path we tread
Choice decides the road ahead
Light spills through the window in a blinding shaft, forcing Elyssara’s eyes to groan open. Her head pounds, heartbeat thumping through her mind like a war drum. A whimper croaks from her throat involuntarily.
She feels like she’s been trampled by a herd of horses—bones bruised, skin lacerated, nails bloody. Sweat drenches her skin like she’s fighting a fever. Or perhaps it’s just the oppressive heat of Azhareth.
Her hands search her body. She’s naked save for the undergarments she had on under her gown. Her hands find wet, cold leaves packed into the wound at her side.
She hisses in pain, and her eyes find mottled bruises blooming across her skin from underneath the leaves.
Where in the fucking Stars is she?
She tries to push herself to sit, her hand pressing into the blankets atop a soft cot. Her eyes drift around the room. Not large. Humble. Kitchen, table, and this single cot make up the space. Definitely not on the Inside.
This is a quaint, personal home. A home filled with jars of tea and herbs. Bread wrapped in a cloth on the bench. The home of someone living a life here on the Outside.
That’s when she remembers—the wall. The fall. The figure who carried her.
Footsteps approach from behind the only door in the space. The knob turns slowly, and a woman’s face peeks out from behind the door.
“You’re awake,” she whispers, voice tentative and shy.
“Where am I?” Elyssara croaks. “Who are you?”
The woman steps out, closing the door softly behind her as if careful not to disturb something fragile in the room. She is… unexpected. Both gentle and certain. Tender and steady.
Her skin is deep and luminous, like the night sky has made a home there—rich and endless, holding light rather than reflecting it. Textured dark curls frame her face in untamed spirals, catching the sunlight in quiet glints of gold.
Simple clothes. Practical. Rust sleeves pushed to her elbows, revealing forearms dusted with faint scars and the remnants of old burns. A healer’s hands.
She carries a shallow bowl, steam curling lazily from its surface, and sets it carefully on the table before approaching the cot.
“You shouldn’t be moving,” the woman says, voice low and even now, the earlier shyness dissipating. “You’ve lost more blood than your body can afford to spare.”
Elyssara’s gaze sharpens despite the fog pressing in at the edges of her vision.
“Where am I?” she demands again, forcing strength into the words. “And who are you?”
The woman pauses at the edge of the cot, meeting her gaze without flinching.
“Safe,” she answers first, as if that is the most important thing. “For now.”
Not an answer.
Elyssara’s fingers curl into the blanket.
“And you?” she presses.
A beat.
Then…
The same door bursts open, another body striding through it with confidence that fills the room.
“That would be my wife.”
Elyssara’s vision sharpens. Her eyes narrow.
Her hand flies to her thigh, searching for the blade that was never there. It’s lodged in Rhaema’s torso. The thought reopens the wound she forgot existed while she laid here.
She bounds to her feet, shoving down the pain that flares through her ribs. Her legs. Everywhere.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she hisses, dropping low into a crouch, fists raised and ready to fight her way out.
Marin strides forward, mouth lifting in that same wicked smile she flashed while standing over the bodies of Kael’s family.
Her hair is unpinned now—smooth and straight and endlessly black.
Almost soft. Almost… serene. And perhaps that’s what Elyssara would think if she didn’t already know the woman is fucking demonic.
She laughs, the sound wicked and loaded. “Are you scared, Elyssara? So much for being the all-powerful Lightborne from the prophecy,” she mocks, closing the gap between them.
Elyssara stills, mind reeling, trying to figure out exactly where she is and who the fuck these women really are.
The woman with the night sky skin and curly hair steps toward Marin, at ease and comfortable in her presence. Her arm drags lazily down Marin’s back. “Stop, love. Your mother is not watching. Be reasonable,” she requests, her voice silky and unaffected by the presence of the Princess of Caeloria.
Marin’s words flood back in.
That would be my wife.
Elyssara’s eyes dart between the two women.
The healer in rust.
The kingdom’s princess still in the dress from her mother’s masked ball.
A woman from the Inside. A woman from the Outside.
She doesn’t know what it means, exactly, but the question comes out of its own accord. “How?”
Marin huffs a laugh, and for the first time, Elyssara sees the real mask drop. Not the lacquered fox from the ball, but the one she slips on and off depending on where she is.
Her face softens—scowl dissolving, eyes no longer narrowed and suspicious.
“I fell in love with a woman from the Outside, Elyssara,” she admits, and she reaches for the healer’s hand, a gentility that contrasts her brutality.
They lock eyes, a thousand words passing between them in the silence. Fondness and choice and gravity. Elyssara hates that the sight feels real. Hates that tenderness survives even inside monsters.
Elyssara’s heart aches, and she can think of only one thing: Kael.
Her Starbound. Her lover. Her mind whirrs and whips with the thought of him—chained, captured, taken from her.
The tether between them feels wrong now.
Distant. Muted. Like reaching for a hand through water and finding only endless cold.
She bares her teeth. “So what does this mean? Why are you helping me?” she grits out, wiping the tears that have already formed in her eyes.
“Take a seat, Dravara. We have a lot to discuss,” Marin says, pulling out a chair at the table that sits on such a lean it may topple at any moment.
Elyssara eyes them both warily, never turning her back.
“I won’t hurt you—you’re valuable to me. I need you alive,” Marin says, voice practical.
Elyssara scoffs. “Forgive me, but killing my Starbound’s family, capturing him, and that fucking empty promise doesn’t really fill me with trust,” she snaps.
Marin’s wife places day-old bread on the table, a small stick of butter on the side. “I’m Saana, a healer for the Outside. I took an oath to heal, not harm. I will not hurt you.”
Elyssara barks a humorless laugh, and her side feels like it splits in two. “Yeah, well the only healer I know likes to drink upon waking and cut people with a sickle blade, so I believe trust will have to be earned with more than pretty words and a cheap oath.”
Saana can’t suppress the smile that pulls at her mouth. “Marin said you were clever,” she giggles. “Please, at least eat.”
Elyssara doesn’t move. There’s no fucking way she trusts Marin not to poison the entire loaf.
“Well… explain,” Elyssara demands. “What use am I to you?”
Marin’s eyes dart to her wife’s, and Saana offers a small but very real nod. Encouragement.
Marin’s eyes find Elyssara’s, intent and unflinching. For a moment, no one moves. Or speaks. The room fills with a kind of pause that signals only one thing: gravity.
Marin sucks in a sharp breath, and her face turns serious.
“My mother needs to die,” Marin announces, not an ounce of shame in her voice. Just cold, honest indifference.
Saana does not react to the statement. Like she’s heard it enough times for the horror to become familiar.
Elyssara stares.
But then a cruel snarl twists her face.
She scoffs.
“... Because she’s running a dictatorship with absolutely no concern for human life?
Or for your own personal reasons?” Elyssara snaps, finger wagging between the women from different worlds.
“Or perhaps it’s the crown and riches you chase?
As long as the end justifies the means, right? ” she croons sarcastically.
Marin quirks a vicious smile. “Can’t a woman have it all?”
Saana swats at her wife’s arm. “Stop being so rude, love,” she murmurs.
Marin audibly exhales. “Just so we’re clear, it is not you I need. It is… what you can offer me.”
Of course. Useful again. Valuable again. Never simply human.
Elyssara barks a humorless laugh. “How surprising. A power-hungry royal wanting something from me and offering absolutely nothing in return. The entitlement of the privileged never ceases to amaze me.”
Marin lets out a frustrated sigh.
“Would you just fucking listen?” she snaps.
Saana leans in, her voice smooth and stable. “We are all from different worlds. We will never understand each other if we don’t try. We must… open our minds.”
Marin and Elyssara both huff aggrieved exhales.
“Fine,” Elyssara mutters.
Marin nods.
“I need you on Dravara’s throne, Elyssara. To rise against my mother. I need Zerynthia and Dravara to come together to face her army. The Dravari Melders. The Starborn army. We’ll need every single one of you.”
Elyssara stills for a heartbeat.
Another.
Then…
She laughs.
Loud and free, her ribs screaming in protest.
“Oh okay then. I’ll just take on Thalmyr for my throne with absolutely no support, just to march my newly acquired army straight to their deaths. Why didn’t I think of that?” she snaps, sarcasm dripping from her tongue.
Marin scoffs in frustration, pushing from her chair.
Saana stands, closing the gap between them. “If you would stop being such an impatient asshole for a moment, perhaps you could explain how this is mutually beneficial, love. You are not at war here. She is not your enemy.”
The words linger.
She is not your enemy.
Elyssara’s senses sharpen. Isn’t she?
Marin runs a frustrated hand through her hair, sucking in a forced breath to calm herself. She strides back to the table, trying to leash her ego, her mask, herself.