Chapter Forty-Five #3
“You think conscription was about power?” he asks. “About control? About taking children from their families?” A humorless breath leaves him. “It was about building something that could stand against her.”
The room stills.
Elyssara’s eyes narrow. “Nyrielle.”
Something shifts. There. A crack.
Thalmyr’s expression darkens, something old and bitter surfacing beneath the control.
“She is not Nyrielle anymore,” he says.
“Then what is she?” Elyssara presses.
His answer is quiet.
“Something that should never have existed.”
Silence.
“I loved her,” he breathes. “And I was not enough to save her from what she became. She was everything the history books told you—she was light and wonder. She was magnetic and beautiful. That was until…” he trails off, dragging his hand down his lined face.
The silence swells.
“Until Rhex,” he admits.
“God of Deceit and Envy?” Ronyn asks. “What does he have to do with it?”
Thalmyr sits on the throne steps, elbows resting on wide knees.
“He forced himself on her,” he says, and for the first time, his voice fractures. “Not once. Not in some moment of weakness he could regret and bury.” His jaw tightens. “Repeatedly. Deliberately. Like he believed she was something to take.”
He shakes his head, jaw set. “The rest of the pantheon said they didn’t know.
And maybe they didn’t,” he continues, shrugging.
“But they didn’t look closely enough to stop it either.
Regardless, she never believed them. Believed that they did what everyone else in power does—turned a blind eye.
Pleaded ignorance. Until one day… she snapped,” he says, shrugging like this story has spun in his mind for years.
No one speaks.
They just wait.
“She would come here to escape the pantheon. Remind herself of the light that still existed in the realms—amongst the people. We fell in love, but… she was obsessed with revenge. Began to sabotage the domains of the other gods, until carnage ensued. Sentient forests, new species of predators in our forests and mountains, turbulent oceans and weather. The realm began to turn on itself. Warring between the pantheon took root. So I made a plan…”
Holy fucking Stars.
The story begins to fall into place.
Seren gasps.
Ronyn murmurs something under his breath.
“You made a plan to exile the gods,” Elyssara breathes.
He sighs. “Yes. I chose the balance of the realms over the woman I loved, and I’ve not stopped paying for it since. But Nyrielle was always clever. She found out about my plan. Paid the witches to sabotage it. Now, she’s here. But not as the woman I knew.”
His gaze lifts, hollow.
“As a beast with no morality. And she wants to take down everyone who possesses power that could rise up against her own.”
Fuck.
Dread pools in Elyssara’s belly, low and cold and absolute. Godless. Lawless. Powerless. That’s what these realms are.
“This doesn’t absolve you from what you’ve done,” Ronyn snarls, his teeth bared.
Thalmyr just nods, eyes closed, lips pursed.
“I know,” he breathes.
“Why hunt Elyssara if you need her?” Seren asks, her voice quiet and sharp.
He shakes his head. “I didn’t hunt her. I pursued her.
I know what those beyond The Barrier think of me.
I know there is no trust, nor allegiance.
There is hatred. So we tried to apprehend her.
If it took force, then so be it,” he admits, not an ounce of shame in his tone. “Whatever it took to bring her here.”
Elyssara holds his gaze, confliction twisting through her chest. Not forgiveness—definitely fucking not. Not acceptance, either.
Understanding.
And she hates it.
Because understanding does not undo what was done. It does not feed the starving or raise the dead. It simply makes the weight of it harder to carry. Because it would be so much easier if he were a monster. So much easier if she could tear him down without hesitation. But he is not.
At least, not entirely.
He is a man who made impossible choices and called them necessary. A man who carved survival out of sacrifice and expected the world to accept the cost. A man who took everything from her—and still stands here believing it was worth it.
Her jaw tightens.
“That doesn’t make it right,” she says, her voice low, controlled.
“No,” Thalmyr agrees.
And again, it lands harder than any defense could.
Silence settles over the room, thick and suffocating, pressing in on every side.
Ronyn exhales a sharp, disbelieving breath, dragging a hand through his hair.
“You know what I remember?” he says, his voice cutting clean through the tension.
No one answers.
His gaze fixes on Thalmyr, unflinching.
“I remember my baby brother crying because he was hungry,” he murmurs, each word steady, deliberate. “I remember my parents stealing an apple to feed him.”
A beat passes.
“And I remember you hanging them all for it.”
His voice does not break. That is what makes it unbearable. The words drop into the space like a blade. Cold. Precise. Final.
No one moves. No one breathes.
Thalmyr does not look away. Does not deny the casualties of his choices.
Elyssara’s eyes drift to Calira, and for a fraction of a heartbeat, she thinks she sees a crack in her control. But it’s gone as quickly as it arrived. She does not fight for the memory of her mother. Does not fight for the family she lost to this wreckage too.
So Elyssara does. She fights for the man that raised her and loved her as his own.
Her voice follows, quieter, but no less devastating.
“You took Revryn’s wife from him,” she says, her tone stripped of everything but truth. “You built an army of savages that took from her how Rhex took from Nyrielle. So she sent her soul back to the Stars. You did that.”
Calira does not flinch, does not speak, but somehow, Elyssara feels like the words land. Maybe not consciously, but somewhere deep, she knows they cut.
Her gaze hardens, old anger flickering beneath the surface.
“And you called it duty.”
The silence that follows is unbearable. Elyssara feels it in her bones, in the marrow of everything she has been forced to become. She steps forward. Not with fury now. With certainty.
“You took everything from me,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. And somehow, it is the loudest thing in the room.
Thalmyr closes his eyes. Just for a moment. When he opens them again, there is no defense left in them. No justification. Only acceptance.
“I know,” he says.
The words do not fix anything. They do not undo what has been done. But they land.
Elyssara inhales slowly, her chest tight, her pulse loud in her ears as something shifts beneath her anger.
Not softening. Never that. But sharpening. Refining. Because now the truth is clear. There is no more guessing. No more half-understood history or fractured memory. Everything is on the table. Everything is known.
“What now?” she asks, her voice cutting through the silence.
Thalmyr studies her for a long moment, calculation flickering behind his gaze. Then he exhales. “There is one thing weakening her,” he says.
Elyssara’s attention sharpens instantly.
“What?” she demands.
“The blood ritual,” he replies. “It was created as a connection between us, so I could siphon magic from her after I’d exiled the gods into the echo-plane. Of course, Daphinia disrupted the spell, bound her to this plane. But… a portion of her power still flows to me.”
The room stills. Elyssara’s pulse stutters.
“And you need it,” he continues, his gaze locking onto hers with unwavering certainty.
The weight of that settles quickly. Too quickly.
“Why?” she asks, skepticism thick in her tone.
Thalmyr does not hesitate.
“Because whilst I may siphon from her… she siphons from the other eight exiled gods. You need to weaken her in any way you can,” he presses.
That’s when Elyssara realizes—he’s not including himself in this plan. There is no we. No us.
“How?” she demands.
“You bind yourself to me with the blood spell,” he says. “You siphon from Nyrielle… and me.”
A heartbeat passes.
The silence swells.
“Then you kill me.”
The room does not erupt. It implodes—every breath held, every instinct screaming at what has just been offered.
The words do not echo. They do not need to. They settle into the room like something inevitable. Something that has always been coming, whether any of them were ready for it or not.
Seren’s breath catches behind her.
Ronyn goes still.
Jax’s jaw tightens, something unreadable flickering across her face.
Teddy nods, as if he recognizes his own sacrifice and duty in another.
Elyssara does not move. Does not speak. She simply stares at him. At the man who destroyed her life. At the king who sacrificed her people. At the man who is now offering himself as the final piece she needs to end what he helped create.
“Convenient,” Jax scoffs. “How do we know you’re not just going to bind to Elyssara and siphon from her? Because this all sounds very beneficial for you.”
She’s not wrong—it could be a trap.
“What assurances do we have that this is not some ploy?” Teddy growls. “Perhaps you and Nyrielle are still lovers and you’re simply following in your family’s footsteps.”
Also not wrong.
Fuck.
Thalmyr sighs in exasperation. “My family raised me for greed and power. You have every right to question my motives. But I’ve seen unchecked power in Nyrielle.
I will not become that. Not again. I will not damn all of Aevryn,” he asserts, voice firmer this time, his words booming through the throne room.
He’s always known how to sell lies—so how does one discern the truth?
“You expect me to believe this is redemption?” Elyssara asks, her voice sharp, dangerous.