Chapter 11 Violet
Violet
The face that had filled my nightmares for weeks stared back at me from the shadows crawling across the chest of the man I loved most.
The same grotesque features. The same curling black horns.
For a moment, my mind refused to process what I was seeing. I had convinced myself that it could only reach me in my dreams, in the quiet hours when sleep dragged me somewhere I couldn’t fight back.
But now it was here. And I was back in that cell being whipped by that dovamin.
“Baby, I—” His voice faltered.
He grabbed his shirt from the floor and pulled it back on quickly, like covering the darkness might somehow make it disappear.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Even as the words left my mouth, I already knew the answer. I knew the stories his shadows carried. I knew what they whispered when he let them loose.
His eyes darkened. “No one hurts you and gets away with it.”
My stomach tightened. “How did you find out which one it was?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. His jaw flexed as he looked away, the silence stretching long enough that I could feel the truth forming before he even spoke.
Then he looked back at me.
“I killed them all, love.”
* * *
It had been a week since that day, and the nightmares didn’t stop just because Sebastian wiped out an entire species.
But at least, during the day, I got more rest.
Because I still hadn’t trained with Adar.
In that time, Alastor and Theron had already sent two reports back from the Sun Realm’s borders. Neither carried good news.
When Sebastian wasn’t buried in duties, he sparred with me—clean, precise, infuriatingly careful. He held back. Worse, sometimes he let me win. I could feel it in the fraction of a second his guard stayed open, in the way his weight didn’t fully commit to a strike.
I knew why he did it. I loved him for it. I hated it anyway.
Heat came easier now—but fire was only one part of what I was.
My blood held more than that. So between controlled burns and breathwork with Sebastian, I tested the edges on my own: whether a whisper would ride a current if I coaxed it first, how long I could make the air sit perfectly still if I asked instead of demanded.
I needed to know what else lived under my skin.
I kept all of it to myself.
And now, I was sitting in the garden, trying—and failing—to talk myself out of what I was about to do, when Alastor’s voice brushed down the bond.
No others found. Continuing north along the old trade road.
It didn’t surprise me. It still scraped something raw in my chest.
Are you safe? I sent back.
Yes, he answered after a beat. His mind-voice carried dust and distance. Don’t set the castle on fire.
No promises, I replied, and felt the faint sigh that meant he was smiling and pretending not to worry.
I stared at the path leading toward the front of the castle, giving myself one last chance to change my mind.
I didn’t take it. Because Sebastian would never go for my throat.
But Adar would.
So I went to find him.
He had three soldiers on the field that I recognized from the last time he’d humiliated me and two newer men who hadn’t yet learned how to hide their nerves around him. He saw me immediately, and he didn’t dismiss them.
Of course he didn’t.
“My Lady,” one of the older soldiers said, already staring too hard at the ground. Even his bow looked apologetic.
“What are you doing here?” Adar asked.
I didn’t answer.
I walked to the center of the field and picked up a staff. My palms remembered the sting. My shoulders remembered the ache. I settled into stance and waited.
He rolled his wrist, dropping the blade he’d been working with, and reached for a wooden staff of his own.
“Stay,” he told the soldiers without looking at them. “Watch. Learn from her mistakes.”
His gaze cut back to me as he began to circle.
“A week without me,” he said. “Learn anything?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask what.
He lunged.
The first exchange was muscle memory—block, pivot, step, breathe. He pressed; I gave ground. He feinted; I didn’t fall for it this time. His mouth stayed still, but his eyes didn’t—small, sharp marks of disapproval every time I chose restraint over aggression.
A presence tugged at the edge of me.
I didn’t need to look to know Sebastian had taken up position at the tree line. Bronwen’s steps were heavier, her hum audible even when she tried to smother it. Of course he’d felt me square myself to Adar and came running—at least he’d brought Bronwen as a buffer.
Adar’s staff snapped toward my ribs. I caught it and shoved, hard enough to make his boot slide a fraction in the dirt. He glanced down at the shallow trench our fight had carved, then back up at me, expression sharpening like I’d finally earned his attention.
We traded blows. He pressed. I breathed.
“Better,” Bronwen called.
Adar did not speak for a long while, but every strike said what words would have wasted. When he finally did, his voice was flat.
“You still hesitate.”
“Or I’m thinking,” I shot back.
“That’s what hesitation is.”
I blocked another strike, pushed off my back foot, and drove my shoulder into his chest. He barely shifted. Annoyance flickered across his face—gone as quickly as it came.
A quarter hour—or a year—later, sweat slicked my spine and my arms trembled with effort. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He waited until a recruit coughed at the wrong moment, then swept low and fast. My legs went out from under me.
I hit the dirt.
The star-slung sky reeled, then settled.
He didn’t offer a hand.
I felt the shift in Sebastian—sharp, immediate, ready to step in.
Don’t, I sent down the bond as I dragged myself up, jaw locked.
“Again,” Adar said.
We did it again. And again. And again. I landed one clean strike across his ribs and two quick jabs he let me have—long enough to see what I did with the confidence. He took them back with interest.
When the blows didn’t make the point he wanted, he used words.
“You are a liability,” he said, staff angling toward my shoulder. “You think because you burned a few soldiers once that you understand war.”
“I think,” I said through my teeth, “that because I survived you, I can survive anyone.”
His mouth curved, humorless. “You only survive because he’s watching.”
My grip tightened.
Adar’s next strike slammed into my staff so hard the bones of my hands hummed.
“You are incapable of protecting yourself.” Another blow. “Let alone an entire realm.” Another. “Do you not understand that?”
I held. Barely.
“You will never be ready,” he continued. Another strike. “You’d be better off sitting pretty in the castle—”
The staff cracked against mine.
“—and waiting for Sebastian to bed you.”
“Adar.” Sebastian’s voice cut across the field.
I didn’t look toward the trees. I couldn’t. If I did, I’d hesitate—and that would prove Adar right.
But he didn’t know anything.
I was strong. I could defend myself. I could defend others.
Something inside me went very quiet.
I drew in a slow breath and fixed my focus on Adar’s chest.
The air around him tightened when I asked it to. It didn’t feel like fire. Just pressure. A simple, terrifying refusal to let his lungs move.
Adar blinked.
Then he gasped.
His staff slipped from his fingers as he dropped to his knees. The soldiers surged forward—and froze as a line of fire flared up between us. Bronwen swore viciously. Sebastian’s power gathered behind my ribs like a hand ready to catch me if I slipped, but he didn’t move.
I stepped closer.
“Do you know what the Queen Mother gifted the Sun Sovereign with?” I asked. My voice didn’t shake. It sounded wrong in my ears—measured. Precise. “Air manipulation. It’s usually used like Sebastian’s shields. Altering the air to protect his people.”
Adar clawed at his chest. His fingers dug into leather as his face went gray. He couldn’t find enough breath to curse me.
“But it’s also used to smother the fires of even the strongest beasts in the Sun Realm.” I kept walking. With every step, the space around his ribs grew smaller. “Because when you take the air away, the fire stops.”
I crouched in front of him.
His lips had gone faintly blue. He glared at me like hatred alone might drag breath back into his lungs.
“Do you know what else needs air?” I asked softly.
His answer came out as nothing at all.
I reached within him and pulled what was mine to control.
“You,” I said. “And I just took it from your lungs.”
His eyes rolled to the back of his head.
“Violet—” Bronwen’s voice broke on my name.
The bond pulsed once.
With me.
I listened.
I released.
Air slammed back into Adar’s lungs like a broken dam. He collapsed onto his back, coughing hard and ugly, each breath tearing its way back into him. The wall of fire vanished, but the soldiers didn’t move closer. No one did.
Bronwen pressed both hands to her chest like she needed to feel her own lungs working.
I stood, swayed once, and planted my feet.
I would not be the one who stumbled.
“I will never be the strongest,” I said, looking down at the man who had taught me how to fall. “But I will be the smartest. And I will not let my realm fall again.”
Adar dragged himself up to his knees, one hand braced in the dirt. He met my gaze—and whatever calculation he made finished all at once.
His mouth twisted.
Then he looked past me, straight at Sebastian.
“Take her,” he rasped, “to the fucking Sun Realm.”