Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
ELLIE
“Trust, once broken, leaves scars that shape all future bonds.”
The Healer's Codex, ancient Tidevein manuscript
Sacha is silent as we walk into the Spire.
His face could be carved from wood for all the expression it shows.
He stares straight ahead, head held high, and strides through the entrance hall as though he’s always belonged here.
Which, of course, he has. But last time he was here was when he sneaked in like a thief to steal back his ring.
My eyes drop to the black band that circles the ring finger of his right hand. His fingers flex, curling into his palm. Just once. But it’s enough to tell me that while he might look untouched on the outside, that’s not the truth.
I want to reach out, to touch him, to say something that might ease the tension, but everyone is silent around us, and if I speak it’ll draw attention to the fact he’s not as relaxed as he appears. So I stay quiet, and walk beside him.
Veinwardens are posted at key points on each level, watching everyone who passes by. When they see me with Sacha, immediate recognition flashes across their faces. Every single one of them drops to one knee, and presses their hands to their heart, lowering their heads.
“Please rise.” Sacha gives the same response each time, his voice steady but carrying an edge that I’m sure I’m the only one who notices. Each encounter winds him tighter. The way his jaw sets, the way his breathing becomes more controlled.
By the time we reach the floor where the throne room is, Sacha’s composure is a mask stretched thin. His fingers haven’t stopped flexing at his side, and tension radiates from him in an almost physical wave.
When we reach the doors leading to the throne room, his steps slow.
The two Veinwardens standing outside straighten, salute, and then step forward to open the doors.
They swing open silently. Sacha hesitates for a heartbeat before nodding and stepping across the threshold …
crossing back into a life stolen from him.
The throne room comes into view before us, its vaulted ceiling disappearing into shadows that even the sunlight streaming through the tall stained glass windows cannot fully reach.
Sacha stops walking, his breath catching. The sound is so quiet I almost miss it beneath the echo of footsteps as Varam and Mira step through the doors behind us.
I move closer. His gaze sweeps the room, and a muscle in his jaw ticks when his eyes find the throne. The longing there is clear. The look of a man seeing home after years of believing it lost to him forever.
“The Obsidian Throne. My grandfather sat there when he signed the Treaty of Seven Winds. My father held court there for thirty-nine years.”
At the edge of my awareness, I can hear Varam and Mira talking quietly as they move deeper into the room.
But Sacha remains where he is. He’s studying the room, his eyes moving from one detail to the next with the same intensity he’d use to assess an upcoming battle.
I wonder if he’s seeing a different version, an older memory of what it used to look like.
I touch his arm. The muscles beneath my fingers are coiled tight, ready for action. “It’s yours now.”
His eyes narrow slightly, the only sign that my words have reached him.
“If you would rather wait before meeting people, you could show me around? I haven’t had a chance to see anywhere other than the throne room and a bedroom yet.”
He turns toward me, and for just a moment, his mouth softens into something that isn’t quite a smile, but close. His hand brushes against mine.
“Varam.” He turns to where Varam and Mira are standing examining the restored banners. “Take Jorana and Corwin, and meet with the Veinwardens. Arrange for a formal audience tomorrow with both them and the Veinbloods who helped take the city.”
“Where are you going?”
“There is something I want to see.” He waves a hand for me to precede him out of the room.
“The Spire has seven levels. The throne room, which is called the Hall of Ascension, occupies the heart of the fourth level. Below it are the council chambers, public areas, servants quarters, and below ground is the archives. Above are private quarters for guests and higher staff who live here. My quarters were on the sixth level. The seventh was where my parents lived.”
The mention of his parents sends a shadow across his features, brief but unmissable. I wonder what memories those rooms hold, whether Sereven destroyed them or took them for his own.
We climb the stairs in silence, and step into a hallway. There are two sets of double doors facing each other. One set has iron bands crossing them, secured with locks to keep them closed. The other set is partially open.
Sacha glances at the open doors, but doesn’t move toward them.
“Those are Sereven’s quarters.” His voice is quiet, with no hint of what he’s thinking. He turns to face the locked doors. “These were mine.”
Were. Past tense.
He stares at the doors, at the locks, and I find myself holding my breath.
The tension building is almost unbearable.
I can see the war between the desire to open the doors and the fear of what he might find playing out across his face in ways most people wouldn’t notice.
A slight clenching of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, the way the fingers of one hand flex.
“Maybe some things are better left as they were. What if—”
“What if what?”
He doesn’t answer. Just stares at those locks like they’re snakes coiled to bite. Shadows pool around his fingertips.
“It doesn’t matter.”
But it does matter. This isn’t just about entering a room. It’s about facing the life that was stolen from him by the one person he should have been able to trust. It’s about the man he used to be before betrayal, imprisonment, and torture stripped everything away.
The shadows move, flowing outward to the locks, and pouring through the keyholes.
They click open one by one until the iron bars tilt down, leaving the doors free to open.
With one more flick of his finger, another stream of shadows fills the main lock on the door, and this time when it clicks, the sound echoes along the hallway.
The doors swing open to reveal a small antechamber with a white marble floor inlaid with gold. Lightstones flare as we step inside, their amber glow pushing back the darkness. Two large pots stand either side of the doors. The fact they’re not covered in dust suggests someone has been here.
Recently.
Sacha doesn’t pause. He strides through the space, and throws open the second set of doors.
Light streams through tall arched windows, and dust motes dance in the beams of sunlight. The air smells clean and fresh, not at all what I’d expect from rooms that had been sealed off. Sacha steps inside, and I follow him, watching the way his shoulders tense with every detail he takes in.
He moves to a high-backed chair, carved from deep red wood, placed beside the window. There’s a small round table beside it, and on top a book lies open, face down, as though whoever was reading it had just stepped away.
“Philosophical Treatises on the Nature of Power.” His fingers hover over the cover of the book without actually touching it. “I was reading this the night before we had to flee the city.”
The night his world ended. The last normal evening before everything changed, before betrayal and war tore his life apart.
I want to say something, but I bite my lip and force myself to silence while he moves around the room.
A desk against a wall holds neat stacks of papers, the top one bearing an unbroken seal.
Bookshelves line the walls, reminding me of his quarters in Stonehaven, filled with volumes on history, strategy, philosophy, and poetry.
They speak of a lifetime of learning, of a mind that hungered for knowledge even in childhood, shaping the man he would become.
A sword rack stands empty, the weapons it once held gone—claimed by the Authority or hidden away by whoever has been caring for these rooms.
Someone has been looking after these quarters. Everything has been kept exactly as he left it. As though they’ve been waiting for its owner to return … which is unlikely since Sereven ruled from the Spire, and I doubt he would have wanted anything of his brothers kept intact.
And that raises questions about who looked after these rooms … and why?
Sacha disappears through a door on the opposite side of the room.
I follow him, letting my fingers trail over chairs and tables as I pass, thinking about the younger man who must have lived here.
How much different was he to the Sacha I know?
Mira and Varam have shared stories, but even those were about a man at war, not the one who was being raised to rule.
When I walk through the door, I find him standing motionless in a bedroom, staring at the bed. The covers are clean and crisp, pillows arranged with the kind of care that speaks of regular attention. The smell of freshly washed linen fills the air.
The stillness in him is so complete it’s almost frightening. This isn’t the controlled calm I’m used to seeing, but something closer to shock.
When he does finally move, it’s to touch the edge of the bed frame, his fingers trailing along the carved wood with a gentleness that suggests he’s expecting it to disintegrate under his touch. The gesture is so vulnerable, so unlike the controlled man I know, that it makes my heart ache.
I can’t bear the silence any longer. “Sacha?”
He turns at the sound of my voice and I catch a quick glimpse of raw emotion before he wipes it away—gratitude, grief, and exhaustion.
“I never thought I’d stand in these rooms again.
” His expression shifts, and the iron control he’s been holding onto begins to crack.
Underneath it, I don’t see the manipulative prisoner, or the strategic commander, or even the shadow-wielding prince, but a man who has been given something precious that he thought was lost forever.
“You gave this back to me. All of it. The city. The throne. The people I thought were lost forever.”
“No.” I shake my head, stepping closer to him. “We did it. All of us.”
“It was you who convinced them to fight. Without you, they would have remained hidden. Eventually the Authority would have discovered them, and destroyed them one by one.” He steps closer, one hand lifting to trace the line of my jaw with his fingers.
“I thought I’d lost you, too.” His voice turns rough.
“When I felt your fear, when I knew you were in danger and I was too far away to help—I’ve never known terror like that.
The thought that I might never see you again, that you might die believing I abandoned you … ”
I silence him by pressing my lips to his.
The kiss is different from others we’ve shared. It tastes of homecoming and promises, of recognition and acceptance. It tastes of the man who trusted me enough to let me into his heart, who showed me magic, and gave me purpose, and made me understand what it means to belong somewhere.
His arms come around me, pulling me closer, and it almost seems like my touch is drawing the tension out of his body.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine, and in the golden light streaming through the windows, those black eyes that I once thought held nothing but cold distance look warm.
“Stay with me. Not just until the war is done. Stay.”
Stay in this world that has become mine through choice rather than accident. Stay beside a man whose past is soaked in blood and whose future hangs in the balance of forces outside of our control. Stay and help rebuild something that was shattered before I was even born.
I think about the fierce satisfaction I felt when I saw Veinblood banners flying from the Spire.
About the way his hands fit around my waist like they are meant to be there.
About how right it felt to stand beside him in the throne room and know that I helped give him back a piece of what was stolen.
About the family I’ve found in Varam and Mira, in Jorana and Corwin, and all the others who have chosen to fight alongside us.
“Yes,” I breathe against his lips. “Of course I’ll stay.”
He kisses me again, his hands framing my face, holding me as though I’m something precious, something worth protecting, something worth living for.
The realization rocks me. Somewhere along the way I stopped being the lost woman, the useful tool, the minor inconvenience and became something else entirely.
His partner, his anchor, his equal in all the ways that matter.
“What happens next?” The question comes out soft, but I need to know. We’ve won this battle, but the war is far from over.
His head lifts, and his thumb brushes over my lips in a move that is both soothing and possessive. “Now we rebuild. The Authority still controls most of Meridian, and Sereven may be wounded, but he’ll be making plans. We have Ashenvale, but one city cannot stand alone.”
“Other places will come to join us, surely?”
“Some will. Others will need convincing that open rebellion is safer than hiding.” His hand drops and his fingers find mine, drawing me across the room to the bed.
“It won’t be easy. There will be more battles, more losses.
Some nights we will wonder if what we’re fighting for is worth the cost.” There’s something different in his voice.
Hope. Real, tangible hope for the first time since I’ve known him.
There are challenges ahead. New battles, new choices that will determine the fate of everyone who believes in freedom over control.
But for now, in this moment, we have reclaimed something precious.
We’ve won back a city, and a throne, and a room full of memories, but more than that, we’ve secured the possibility of a future worth fighting for.
The storm has found its shadow. And together, we're going to change everything.