Chapter 18 #2
Whatever I expected from him—fury, disbelief, some princely demand for explanation—it isn’t this. For one raw second, all the edges vanish from him. He looks younger. Not in the face, but in the soul. Like some long-buried part of him has just been dragged into daylight against its will.
“Father?”
The word drops into the clearing like a stone into water, and the silence that follows seems to ripple outward through everyone standing here.
King Ithius.
Alive.
I feel the impact of the name in the people around me before I fully process it myself.
Shanae goes rigid. Kael’s hand shifts fractionally towards the blade at his hip, not drawing it, just checking it’s still there.
Varek doesn’t move at all, which is somehow more telling than if he had.
Through the bond I feel his attention arrow to a lethal point.
Not with fear, but calculation and assessment.
The kind of stillness that means he’s already thinking three moves ahead.
Aelith, on the other hand, looks like the ground has ceased to be a reliable thing.
“How?” The word tears out of him, low and rough. “You’re dead.”
The king’s expression doesn’t change. “No,” he says in perfect English. “I was absent.”
Aelith’s laugh is short and ugly. “How convenient.”
Varek steps forward then, not enough to crowd the space, but enough to make the balance of authority in the clearing shift from old monarchy to present command. “If you wish to stand within Dathanor,” he says, his voice carrying low and clear, “you will explain your presence.”
The king turns his head towards him. It’s a small movement. It shouldn’t feel like a challenge. It does anyway.
“You are Varek Zathrian,” he says.
Not a question.
Varek doesn’t answer.
Good.
The king studies him for a heartbeat longer, then inclines his head once, the gesture too measured to count as respect and too deliberate to be ignored. “I have heard of you.”
“Explain,” Varek says again.
The king’s gaze flicks briefly towards the sentries on the perimeter, then back to us. “Not here.”
“That depends on what you intend,” Shanae says, her tone dry as old bone.
“Survival,” he replies.
That almost makes me laugh because it’s the kind of answer that says everything and absolutely nothing. Judging by Sonny’s expression when he appears at my shoulder a second later, he’s thinking the same thing.
“Wow,” Sonny mutters under his breath. “He really is related to Aelith.”
Aelith hears him. Under any other circumstances, he’d probably snap back. Now he barely seems to register it. His entire focus is fixed on the male in front of us, and there’s something deeply unsettling about seeing the prince—vain, reckless, impossible Aelith—look uncertain.
Varek doesn’t relax. “You enter my settlement unannounced,” he says. “You arrive after an attack by the Queen’s forces while your son’s mate remains her captive. You claim survival and ask for privacy.”
The king’s face hardens by a degree. “I claim necessity.”
Kael speaks for the first time, his voice clipped and cold. “We have no reason to trust you.”
The king looks at him fully then, and some recognition sparks there too. “Kaelor.”
Kael goes still in a way I don’t like. “Do not call me that.”
Aelith’s head turns quickly towards him, like the old name means something larger than offence.
The king’s expression shifts, not in apology, exactly, but recalibration. “No,” he says. “I suppose I do not deserve that.”
For the first time since he arrived, something close to emotion flickers through him. Regret, maybe. It vanishes almost as quickly as it came.
Varek doesn’t let the moment soften anything. “You will speak now,” he says, “or you will be removed.”
The clearing tightens.
The king’s gaze returns to Varek, and for a second, I honestly think he might refuse on principle alone. Then his shoulders settle by a fraction, the kind of adjustment that looks small until you realise it’s the first concession he’s made.
A deeper fracture shifts through the king’s expression, not fresh, not sudden, but old and worn thin from being carried too long.
“I was searching,” he says, voice quieter now, but no less controlled. “For something beyond what we understood. Not power. Not conquest. More.”
That earns him an intense look from Aelith, but the king doesn’t pause.
“I felt it first,” he continues. “A pull. It was faint and inconsistent. Like something brushing against the edges of perception.” His gaze flicks briefly upward, towards the strange green sky. “I didn’t understand it. But I followed it.”
Sonny mutters under his breath, “Of course you did.”
“I began experimenting,” the king says, ignoring him. “Pressure points in the air. Instability in the fabric between worlds. At first, there was nothing. Then—storms.”
We’ve all seen them… felt them.
“The lightning was not random,” he continues. “It revealed… glimpses. Brief fractures in reality. Through those flashes, I saw other lands. Other skies. Other… worlds.”
My stomach twists.
“So I pushed,” he says simply. “Harder. Further. Until those flashes became tears.”
Silence pulls taut around us.
“My adviser assisted me,” he adds.
Aelith’s head snaps up. “Who?”
The king’s gaze meets his directly. “Theryn Valis.”
Aelith goes still, his recognition obvious. “Theryn,” he repeats, softer now, like the name means something deeper than rank or title. “He was—”
“My closest adviser,” the king confirms. “And the only one who understood the scope of what we were attempting. One day,” the king continues, “we succeeded beyond intention.”
The air feels heavier now.
“The largest tear we had ever created opened.”
No one moves. No one breathes.
“And it didn’t remain stable.” His gaze goes distant again, not soft, but fixed on something only he can see. “It pulled.”
The word is simple, but the weight of it isn’t.
“I was taken through.”
The clearing feels colder as surprise ripples through the group. I assumed Jamie had been the only one to travel out of Terrafeara. Hell, before Jamie, none of us thought it was really possible.
“Transported into another world.” He pauses for a beat. “Human.”
My brain stutters for half a second. Because—Yeah. That’s not something you just gloss over.
“How the hell did you not get locked up?” I mutter before I can stop myself.
Sonny huffs out a laugh. “Mate, have you not seen the stuff on Earth? Area 51, little green men—”
“He’s blue,” Shanae says dryly.
“Right, well, that would’ve really thrown them off.”
Despite everything, Sonny’s words almost get a reaction out of me.
Almost.
The king ignores us entirely.
“I should have died there,” he says. “The environment was incompatible. The transition… violent.”
But he didn’t. We all know that now.
“I didn’t,” he continues. “Because someone found me.”
Aelith’s voice drops, rough around the edges. “Your fated mate.”
“Yes.”
Something shifts in the bond beside me—Varek’s attention locks onto every word.
“I remained there,” the king says, “far longer than I intended. Long enough to understand that what I had created was not merely unstable. It was incomplete.”
Shanae folds her arms. “Incomplete how?”
“The tears were not random,” he replies. “They were… drawn. Pulled along lines I had not yet learned to control. The system had begun to select, but without precision.”
That lines up. Everything we’ve seen. Everything Sonny’s pieced together.
Aelith’s face has gone dangerously still. “If you had a mate,” he says, each word clipped, “why did you not return?”
The king closes his eyes briefly, like the answer isn’t simple. “It was not possible,” he says.
Aelith’s jaw sets. “That is not an answer.”
“It is the truth,” the king replies. “The tears did not open on command. They didn’t remain. And when they did—” He pauses. “For many years, they did not reach me.”
Heavy silence stretches.
“And then,” he continues, “weeks ago, something changed.”
That gets everyone’s attention.
“The rift behaviour altered. A surge…. It was unstable and violent.”
My stomach drops again, as we know that moment.
That was—
Dawson.
Jack.
Jamie.
“I was pulled again in the next anomaly,” the king says. “Not alone.”
Aelith’s breath catches. “Your mate?”
“Yes.”
“She is here?” Kael asks, surprise evident.
The king doesn’t answer. “Theryn,” he says instead. “He found a way to reach me. To stabilise the tear long enough to pull me back.”
Aelith’s eyes narrow. “He’s alive?”
“Yes.”
“And where is he now?”
“In hiding,” the king replies. “Because your mother discovered what had happened.”
There it is. The Queen.
“She does not yet understand the rifts,” he continues. “But she understands enough to want control. She searches for her fated mate through them.”
Ice floods my veins. Jamie. The thought hits hard and fast, but just as quickly, relief follows.
He’s gone. He’s safe back on Earth.
Thank fuck.
Voices start up all around us.
Questions.
Too many.
Too loud.
Varek doesn’t raise his voice, but when he speaks, everything stops. “You will answer them,” he says. “All of them.”
The king inclines his head slightly. “I will.” He tilts his head, gaze assessing. “But first, I require entry.”
That stills everything again.
Varek’s gaze narrows. “Entry?”
“My mate is with me,” the king says. “I will not leave her unprotected beyond your boundary.”
His words land like a stone dropped into still water.
“She’s here?” I ask, because apparently my mouth is just doing whatever it wants today.
The king’s gaze flicks to me briefly, then back to Varek. “I will not bring harm to your people… your mate,” he says.
Varek steps forward, just enough. “And if you did?”
“I would not,” the king replies.
There’s no hesitation, no doubt. Nothing in the bond shifts or twists.
Nothing lies. My eyes widen at the thought.
Holy shit. Do I now have Varek’s truth-telling mojo?
Varek holds his gaze for a long second, reading him in that way he does that cuts through everything. Finally, he nods. “You have safe passage,” he says.
The king turns slightly, just enough to look back towards the tree line. “You may come forward,” he says.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Another figure steps out from the forest.
I blink and blink again. She’s human.
Fully, unmistakably human.
She doesn’t look older than thirty, maybe a bit younger, but there’s something in her that feels…
older. Not aged—settled. Like she’s lived more than her face should show.
Her hair is loose, threaded with small flowers that definitely shouldn’t survive in this world but somehow do anyway.
She’s barefoot, which seems like a terrible life choice given literally everything about this place, and her clothes look like they belong at a music festival in the ’70s rather than the middle of a war-torn rebel settlement.
And she’s smiling.
Warmth practically flows off her like she’s stepped into a new place and decided she’s going to like it.
“Hi,” she says, lifting a hand in a small wave. “This is… wow. This place is a lot greener than I expected. And people. Humans.” She scans us all, her smile brightening even more when it turns to me and Sonny.
I blink, and Sonny lets out a quiet, disbelieving breath beside me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The king watches her for a second, and for the first time since he arrived, he softens. Only slightly and only for her. Then he lifts his gaze back to us. “This is my mate, Chelsea May,” he says.
And just like that, everything changes.