Chapter Twenty-Eight
Adrian
The cracks of light in the valley didn’t recede. They dimmed, but only the way embers dim after a wildfire. Heat still curled beneath them, waiting for a spark. Waiting for him.
Adrian felt it every time he blinked. A tug.
A thread tightening. He sat slumped in the cushioned armchair in Connor’s private study, arms wrapped around his ribs, his breath shallow as he tried to ease the grinding pressure inside his chest. The fire flared.
The castle hummed softly. But sound dulled around him, swallowed by a distant roar he could not escape.
Connor paced behind him. Adrian didn’t need to turn around to know it. His awareness stretched out too wide, and too sensitive, until Connor’s presence was heat in the air, and its own gravity that tugged at every breath Adrian took.
“Adrian?” Connor asked, his voice tight. “Tell me what’s happening.”
Adrian forced his eyes open. The room swayed. “It’s worsening,” he said. “The mark is still spreading.”
Connor stopped his restless movement. In the silence that followed, Adrian could hear something else. He swallowed hard. “I feel the anchors. All of them. Everyone they placed last night. It’s as if,” he shuddered, “as if the valley is trying to breathe through me.”
“That’s impossible,” Connor said sharply.
Adrian looked up, giving him a hollow smile. “Mon ami, we’re living in impossibility.”
His mark pulsed under his skin with a rhythm that wasn’t his. Something in the air shifted. A faint echo of a whisper only Adrian could hear: Valour.
Adrian’s breath caught and Connor stiffened. “What did they say?”
Adrian rubbed a shaking hand across his forehead. “Nothing. And everything. It’s like hearing a storm in a tunnel.”
Connor’s grip tightened. “You need rest.”
“No.” Adrian jerked away from the touch so suddenly Connor took in a sharp breath. “If I sleep, the mark grows. You saw it yourself.”
Connor’s jaw ticked. “You’ll collapse.”
“Perhaps,” Adrian murmured. “But it’s safer than…” He broke off with a gasp.
The room twisted. The fire popped. The floor lurched up as though the earth itself had spasmed.
Connor grabbed him. “Adrian.”
He didn’t hear the next words. The mark flared white, violent, burning so bright it erased the room. And then, he fell.
***
Connor
Connor caught Adrian as his body went limp, his eyes rolling back, his muscles spasming. Panic slammed into Connor’s chest so hard it stole his breath. He gathered Adrian in his arms, cradling him against his chest.
“Adrian,” he whispered fiercely, shaking him gently. “Wake up. Stay with me.”
Adrian didn’t respond.
Connor lifted him, carried him to the bed, and laid him down, his hands trembling as he brushed curls from Adrian’s forehead. The mark glowed through the thin cotton of Adrian’s shirt, spreading like frost across glass.
“No,” Connor whispered. “No, no, stay with me. Don’t let them pull you—”
Adrian’s body arched. A thin cry tore from his throat soundless, agonised.
Connor grabbed his hand. “Adrian. Adrian. Listen to my voice.”
Connor felt Adrian leaving. An awful, invisible shift, as though something had snagged Adrian’s soul and was dragging him somewhere else.
“Damn it,” Connor growled. “You’re not going alone.” He pressed his palm to the mark without hesitation. A blast of heat surged into him, along with a thousand whispering screams. Connor sucked in a breath, and then the world vanished.
***
Adrian
Adrian didn’t know if he was dreaming. He didn’t know if he was alive.
He stood on a flat plane of stone, water shimmering on all sides, reflecting a sky that wasn’t a sky at all but a moving tapestry of impossible colours. Sound was warped here. He shivered. The air tasted like metal and something familiar, but off and ancient.
“Hello?” he whispered into the void.
Nothing answered.
The stone beneath his feet pulsed with faint lines of blue. Veins of light, not unlike the valley’s but older, deeper. He stepped forward, and the veins brightened.
Adrian.
He spun. Behind him stood a silhouette, tall, robed in midnight, its edges rippling like smoke. No face. No shape. Only a void.
Adrian stepped forward. “Why don’t you leave me alone? Why do you want me so badly?”
You can’t flee what you are.
“I’m not yours,” Adrian hissed. “I’m not marked to serve you.”
You are the Marked One. And a Valour. And you belong to us.
The voice echoed across light and water, shaking his bones. Adrian fell to his knees, clutching his chest as the mark burned like fire.
The void creature leaned in. Your Veilwarden cannot follow you here.
Adrian’s laugh was strangled, pained. “Clearly you don’t know the man.”
The air behind him shattered, and another voice, rough and furious, tore the dream open.
“Adrian.”
Connor hit the ground beside him, his body skidding across stone, his hands slamming down to catch Adrian before he toppled sideways.
Adrian stared at him, breathless, disbelieving. “Connor. How did you—?”
“I held on,” Connor growled. “You think I’d let you go wandering through nightmare realms without me?”
Adrian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The void-creature tilted its head. You should not be here.
Connor rose slowly, shielding Adrian with his body. “Tough shit.”
The creature rippled. Your presence violates the Rift.
Connor’s growl rumbled through the plane. “Your existence violates my patience.”
Adrian, even half out of it, managed a strangled laugh. “Connor, that may not be wise.”
“I’m not here to be wise,” Connor said. “I’m here to take you home.”
The void-creature moved without moving. Sudden and towering, it expanded like a shadow cast by a growing fire.
Balance needs redress.
Connor stepped forward. “No,” he said softly. “Like I said before, balance can go to hell.”
The ground shook. The veins of light throbbed. The creature struck. A wave of shadow aimed straight for Adrian. Connor lunged, his arms locking around Adrian’s waist, pulling him into his chest as the darkness slammed into them.
Adrian cried out and Connor roared, his body pushing out an aura of purple light .
And the bond snapped.
Suddenly, the plane dissolved into pure white light.
***
Connor
Connor hit the bed so hard he nearly rolled off.
He gasped, dragging air into lungs that felt scorched.
Adrian lay against him, his fingers clawed into Connor’s shirt.
The mark on Adrian’s chest pulsed once, twice, then became a faint glow.
Connor’s chest burned with unholy fire, then dimmed to a throb.
They were back. And alive. Connor pressed his forehead against Adrian’s, breathing hard.
“I told you,” Connor murmured. “You’re not doing any of this alone.”
“They won’t stop,” Adrian murmured, “until they take me.”
Connor wrapped both arms around him, pulling him close as though shielding him from the world itself. “Let them try,” he said softly, fiercely. “Let them try to take what’s mine.”
Adrian gasped. A sharp, involuntary sound that wasn’t fear.
Connor stiffened slightly. “I didn’t mean—”
“Yes,” Adrian whispered, his voice raw, “you did.”
Connor swallowed hard. He didn’t correct Adrian’s assertion. Instead, he lifted a hand and ran his thumb gently across Adrian’s cheek. Then he placed a gentle kiss on Adrian’s waiting lips.
“You’re back,” Connor murmured. “You’re safe.”
Adrian closed his eyes. “No,” he said. “But I’m not alone.”
Connor’s hold tightened. The kiss turned into something deeper, primal, and soon his hunger and passion for Adrian solidified their bond physically, as their bodies became one. Something else ignited between them. Something that could never be broken.
Somewhere deep in the valley, the fractures pulsed. Listening, waiting, learning the shape of this new bond. And the Council felt the shift.
***
Connor
By morning, the fractures beneath Heatherfell had dimmed, their glow withdrawn into the earth like heat retreating from a wound. The frost returned. Birds ventured back to hedgerows. From a distance, the land almost looked normal. Almost.
Connor stood on the battlements long after the sun crested the hills, his elbows braced against the stone. Beneath the fields, faint lines still pulsed, slow now, deliberate. Not dying. Waiting. Predators didn’t vanish because you wounded them. They learned.
Below, the castle yard stirred with a fractured semblance of normality. Clan members spoke in clusters too tight to be casual. Someone calmed a shaking horse. The deerhounds paced with their heads low, their ears pinned, refusing to lie down.
Connor curled his fingers against the stone until his knuckles scraped cold. The Council had touched his valley because he’d refused to give them Adrian.
Am I being selfish, putting everyone at risk?
His pack had assured him they were with him to the end. Fraser and Moira’s words from last night echoed in his ears.
“Connor, the only way our clan will be safe is when we beat these bastards. So whatever you and Adrian have to do, you do it. We’ll be fine here, we have people on guard watching for strange things and we’ll deal with it if and when anything happens.
But we can’t hole up here in our home like prisoners in a jail. ”
“Connor.”
He turned. Adrian stood in the archway leading to the wall walk, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He looked steadier than he had for hours. The mark beneath his shirt still glimmered faintly. A low star trapped under skin.
“You should still be in bed,” Connor said.
Adrian’s mouth tilted up. “And miss you glowering at the landscape like it personally offended you?”
Connor huffed. “I am absolutely offended.”
“No surprise there.” Adrian stepped closer, careful with his footing. His gaze followed Connor’s back to the valley. “Xiathen says the fractures are receding.”
“Aye,” Connor said. “Means they’re setting something else in motion.”
The light in the valley didn’t change. It vanished. Shadow moved up from the rend’s scar, first thin as smoke, then thickening, coiling, stacking, taking form.
The ground vibrated lightly beneath their boots. A flock of crows scattered screaming into the clouds.
Lines of blue light, clean and intentional, shot from the rend, faster than before. As the projection formed, it turned fully toward the castle, and frost crept across the stone at his feet.
You have one day.
Sound returned to the air all at once, then silence fell once more. The fractures dimmed but didn’t close.
Adrian stared at Connor. “One day,” he murmured. “They’re going to tear the Veil wide and pull everything through.”
“No,” Connor said.
Adrian looked up, his eyes glass-bright. “You can’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I do.”
Another shout echoed from the courtyard. “Connor. The river.”
They reached the wall as water lifted from its bed, rising into the air in a slow, terrible spiral. It twisted upward, held by nothing Connor could see.
Adrian went still. “That’s an anchor. They’re mapping a collapse.”
The river groaned as if stretched.
“I think,” Adrian whispered, “they’re trying to fold Heatherfell into Utharia.”
“Then they’d better prepare,” Connor said, his voice low and feral, “for a fight they won’t walk away from.”
The river bent toward Glengáill. A spine pulled out of alignment.
“I can feel it,” Adrian said grimly. “Every anchor is awake.”
“We should go talk to Xiathen and the Triarc,” Connor said. “See if they have anything new to tell us.”
Adrian nodded grimly. “The only way we’re going to defeat them is with knowledge. We need everything we can get about how this all could turn out.”
They reached the village square without incident in time to see a crystal emerge from the ground—gnarled, luminous, pulsing like a heart set into stone.
Adrian took one step forward and gasped. “That’s not wood. That’s hardened magic.”
The moment Adrian got within ten paces, the crystal brightened sharply. A gasp rippled through the crowd.
“Step back,” Connor growled, automatically moving in front of Adrian.
But Adrian shook his head. “I need to understand it.”
“You need to be alive,” Connor snarled. “Which requires listening to me for once.”
Despite the situation, a flicker of humour warmed Adrian’s expression. “I heard you quite well last night, mon Valour.”
Connor’s ears burned, but before he could respond, the crystal pulsed again.
“It’s already locked on,” Adrian said. “They’re testing stress points.”
The ground bucked. Connor went down as a wave of pain smashed through him like a freight train. The pain was instant, white, searing, invasive. Voices crowded his skull.
You are not welcome.
As quickly as the pain arrived, it was gone. Connor drew a deep breath as Adrian tapped his arm. “Are you okay? You went a little pale.”
Connor nodded. “I’m good. Just wondering what the hell’s going to happen next.”
The river split. Blue light slashed through its bed before sealing again, exhaling steam, carrying an aura of panic.
Xiathen arrived, flustered and ashen. “We need to destroy that.” He pointed at the rend and the crystal.
Before he could say more, the oldest oak in Glengáill cracked open, its roots disappearing into a violet fissure.
“That fault line and the magic,” Adrian muttered, “it opens through me. It’s the Heartline.”
“Then we must close it,” Xiathen muttered.
“Use your stone, Adrian. When I direct the power from my staff into the crystal, focus your energy into your totem and unleash it as well. Perhaps that will be enough to close it for now.” He looked at Connor.
“You too, aim your magic into its depths. We can use all the help we can get.”
Connor nodded, flexing his fingers. Since when did I get superpowers? But he was grateful for them, no matter their provenance.
Adrian raised Irial’s stone as Xiathen lifted his staff and slammed it into the ground. A wave of energy rippled around it, and Xiathen aimed it toward the opening.
“Now, Adrian. Connor,” he shouted, and they all directed their efforts toward the Heartline.
“This mark is not yours,” Adrian shouted into the rend. “Go back.”
Connor was less eloquent. “Fuck the hell off,” he yelled as he blasted the rend with everything he could summon from his fingers. He saw the giant ball of energy, power, whatever, hit its target, coalescing into one colourful sphere, slamming into the opening. A fist through glass.
There was a resounding clap, and slowly, the Heartline sealed inch by inch. The crystal shattered into pieces, falling into the rend’s depths.
The rend was sealed.