Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
ELLIE
“Some magics are born from joy. Others from the refusal to surrender.”
Writings of the Flamevein Oracles
After dinner, we end up on my couch. Sacha picks up the magazine Kate discarded earlier and flips through it, examining photographs of places he's never seen—skyscrapers, cars, celebrities in designer clothes. His questions are full of curiosity.
“What is this building?” He points to the Willis Tower on a city skyline spread.
“It's called the Willis Tower. People work there, in offices.” I go on to explain how thousands of people could be in one building at the same time. His eyebrows rise at that.
“And this?” He holds up a fashion magazine, studying a model in an elaborate gown made of what looks like plastic and feathers.
“Fashion. Art, I guess.” I shrug. “Most people don't actually wear things like that.”
“Then why create it?”
How do you explain haute couture to someone from a world where clothing serves the practical purpose of protection and warmth?
“Beauty, maybe. Or to show what's possible.”
He considers this, turning more pages. “Your world values appearance over function.”
“Sometimes.” I watch him study advertisements for cars he'll never drive, foods he won’t ever taste, computers that clearly make no sense to him. “Does it seem strange to you?”
“Everything about your world seems strange,” he says quietly. “Except you.”
When we finally go to bed, he tugs me close, until I’m lying on my side, my back to his chest, wrapped in his arms. Maybe it’s being in my space, or maybe it’s just that we’re truly safe for once—from interruption, from emergencies, from Sereven. Whatever it is, he falls asleep.
When I wake the next morning, that same arm lies heavy across my waist, his body radiating warmth beside me.
I don’t want to move. I’m afraid to even breathe too loudly and shatter this moment.
The sight of him sleeping so deeply feels forbidden.
Like I’m witnessing something sacred and private that no one else has ever seen.
Christmas morning with the Shadowvein Lord unconscious beside me.
The absurdity of that sentence should make me laugh, but instead it makes my throat tight.
If someone had told me six months ago that I’d become involved with a man from another world, I’d have laughed them out of the room.
If they'd told me I'd develop magical abilities, fight in a war, and rescue the man I love after being tortured nearly to death, I'd have suggested therapy.
If they'd told me I'd be lying here on Christmas morning, feeling like my heart might burst from the simple miracle of having him beside me, I'd have asked if they'd lost their mind.
But here I am. Here we are. Two people who should never have met, from worlds that should never have touched.
The few nights we have managed to spend together—in Stonehaven, briefly in Ashenvale before his capture, journeying to various places—he’s never really fully relaxed in sleep.
Even when he seemed to be resting, it felt like he was ready to wake up at the slightest sound. Always alert. Always prepared.
Not now, though. His face shows something I’ve never seen before—complete peace.
The hard lines around his mouth have relaxed, dark lashes resting against his cheeks.
Without that constant intensity that defines him, without the weight of leadership and survival pressing down on him, he looks different.
Younger, maybe. Like the person he might have been if the Authority hadn’t started a war, if they hadn’t torn his world apart when he was barely more than a boy.
I imagine I can see hints of who he was before the tower, before the decades of isolation and the burden of leading the Veinwardens in war.
Before he lost his family. There’s something almost heartbreaking about it, this glimpse of the man who might have existed in a world without war, without the need to use his shadows for violence.
I roll onto my side to face him, testing his response. He doesn’t stir, his dark hair falling across his forehead in a way he’d never allow when awake. I resist the urge to brush it back, unwilling to disturb him.
Silver light ripples beneath my skin, his unguarded state waking something fierce and protective in me. It’s something I’ve never felt before. After his rescue at Glassfall Gap, I was sick with worry, focused on keeping him alive. But this feels different from that.
The blanket has slipped down, and his golden skin contrasts against my white sheets.
The muscular definition of his shoulders and arms speaks of a lifetime of training, of fighting, of survival.
But there isn’t a single scar marking his body.
The brutal brand on his chest has gone. The destruction of his body, the infection that nearly claimed him, the wounds that wept blood. All of it erased.
Looking at him now, perfect and unmarked, no one would ever suspect the horrors he’s survived.
But I remember.
I remember every broken bone, the way his ribs had been shattered so completely that each breath sounded wet and wrong. I remember the fevered nights when infection burned through him, when his skin was hot enough to scorch but his body shook with chills that seemed to come from his bones.
I remember the night I thought I was going to lose him, when his breathing grew so shallow I had to put my ear to his chest to hear his heartbeat. When I made bargains with whatever gods might be listening, promising anything if they'd just let him live.
The healing was a miracle, but seeing him like this—whole, safe, peaceful—that feels like an even greater one.
Outside my window, Chicago lies quiet under snow.
Christmas morning has brought an unusual stillness to the city.
There is no traffic, no people hurrying along the sidewalk.
There is only silence and me, lying in bed, memorizing every detail of the man beside me, just in case he disappears when I blink.
My stomach eventually breaks the spell, and I slip out from under his arm, holding my breath when he shifts slightly. But he doesn’t wake up, still lost to sleep and whatever dreams are holding him.
In the kitchen, I move around quietly, making coffee and digging through the refrigerator.
It’s full of things I bought for my sad solo Christmas dinner, and not much else.
My plan had been for a quiet holiday spent alone with takeout and Netflix, maybe a bottle of wine and some self-pity about another year passing without any significant changes in my life.
It seems like that plan belonged to someone else entirely, someone who worried about ordinary things like work deadlines and whether to get premium cable.
Someone who didn't know that other worlds existed, that magic was real, and that love could feel like drowning and flying at the same time.
Love?
The word stops me cold. When did I start thinking of this as love? When did this desperate need, this protectiveness, this feeling like my chest might crack open from the weight of it, become love?
I set the mug down with shaking hands.
I love him. I don’t just care about him. I’m not just attracted to him.
I. Love. Him.
The real thing. The kind that changes everything. The kind that rewrites the story of who you are and what you want from life.
The kind that terrifies me because it means I can't pretend it's anything else. I can't minimize it or make it smaller than it is. Because this is my life now. He is my life now.
Someone who thought the biggest adventure she'd ever have was maybe taking a vacation to Europe someday is in love with a man from another world.
I can barely remember what it’s like to live in this world, to think that this apartment, this city, this life was all there was. To not know that somewhere across dimensions, a man was waiting in a tower for someone to set him free.
I pick my coffee back up and walk toward the bedroom, where I pause in the doorway and lean against the frame. Sacha is still asleep, but he’s changed position. His arm is slightly outstretched across the space where I had been. Even in deep sleep, some part of him seems aware of my absence.
In sleep, the contradictions that define him become more obvious. The strength of his features, mix with the vulnerable softness of his mouth. The man who once manipulated me into breaking his binding in the tower now trusts me enough to sleep in my presence.
When did that change? When did mutual necessity transform into something deeper, something that makes my chest ache just thinking about it?
Was it when I touched his familiar? Or was it when the connection between us first opened, and I felt the crushing weight of his loneliness, his decades of isolation?
Or maybe it was when he sent the raven to me as he fell at River Crossing, choosing to save me even as he faced death.
Or was it after Glassfall Gap when our powers combined to heal his tortured body, when I felt our magic intertwine like our souls were recognizing each other?
Maybe it was later, at Thornspire, when we faced Sereven together.
Or maybe it was all of those moments, a slow accumulation of trust and need over time.
Maybe it doesn't matter when it started, only that it did. Maybe the only thing that matters is that what we have now feels as essential as breathing, as inevitable as sunrise.
What does matter is that I'm not the same person who disappeared from Chicago. I've seen another world, developed abilities I could never have imagined, and took a side in a war. The change I’ve gone through goes deeper than silver eyes, streaks in my hair, or power under my skin. It’s rewritten my understanding of what's possible, what matters, and what I'm capable of becoming.
Sacha stirs, his hand moving across the empty space to where I should be. The gesture touches something deep inside me. This man who survived alone for decades is reaching for me.