Chapter 15 Violet #2
“There haven’t been guards here since the Sovereign fell,” he said at last.
“Why?” I asked. “Even if the realm is ruined, someone should—”
“The wards stayed,” he said. His gaze moved across the horizon. “Even after the Sovereign died and the magic started to rot.”
Rot.
The word sat wrong.
“The creatures can’t escape,” he continued. “Just the fae… like it was before.”
I had never truly thought about it.
“With no ruler, there was no command to stabilize the magic. No anchor.” His gaze didn’t leave the land ahead. “A realm without a Sovereign swallows itself.”
His hand tightened slightly at my waist.
After we stepped through the abandoned Ocean border, two massive stone walls with a broken gate in the middle rose ahead. Symbols had been carved into the surface of the gate—spirals, rays, wings that curved like a phoenix mid-flight.
The silence pressed into me in a way I didn’t expect. It was as if the world had decided this place was over and no one had argued with it since.
This wasn’t just a border.
It was a grave marker.
“My realm,” I whispered.
“Are you ready, love?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
Something was grabbing deep inside of me and pulling forward.
Sebastian kissed the back of my head and guided our horse forward. Adar followed without a word. The horses resisted at first, muscles bunching beneath us. Then, slowly, they stepped closer.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight.
I needed to walk.
I shifted, trying to move, but Sebastian’s arm tightened slightly around me.
“Let me down,” I said.
His jaw flexed, but he slid his arm away and dismounted in one smooth motion.
Warmth gathered low, brushing along my calves, climbing higher in slow, steady waves as I stepped forward. A dry breeze curled between my fingers, familiar in a way I didn’t have a name for. My heart thudded once, hard enough that I felt it in my skull.
Sebastian went still behind me. “Violet?”
I took another step.
Heat unfurled beneath my skin. Not the wild, erratic fire I knew from anger or fear. This was steady. Deep.
“It feels…” I whispered, my eyes fixed on the endless stretch of sand before me, “different.”
“Different how?”
“Like—” My throat closed for a beat, the word catching before I could force it out. “—like something knows I’m here.”
The wind rose, lifting my hair from my neck. Sunlight caught the strands, turning them molten for a breath before they fell back against my shoulders.
Sebastian didn’t step closer—but his magic did. It pressed in, dark and steady, like a shield already braced for something it couldn’t yet see.
Sand stretched in every direction, shifting in low, golden dunes that caught the light like water. The sky was the same blue I had always known, but the light here was different—richer, fuller, alive in a way that wrapped everything in gold instead of simply illuminating it.
My breath caught. The desert wasn’t draining me.
It was feeding me.
I turned back to Sebastian. He wasn’t tense anymore. The tight, coiled readiness had slipped from his shoulders. The constant calculation behind his eyes had softened.
And he was smiling.
Not the sharp, fleeting smirk he used when he was amused.
This was softer.
Warmer.
Like watching me stand here—whole, steady, untouched by the dangers he had been bracing for—gave him something he hadn’t realized he’d been waiting for.
“I want to see more,” I said, the words catching slightly on the want.
His smile deepened.
“Then we’ll go,” he murmured, his voice low. “Whatever you’re ready for… we’ll see it together.”
I walked toward him, the sand shifting beneath my boots in a way that should have been unsteady like the beach in the Ocean Realm but wasn’t.
It was as if the ground adjusted to me instead of the other way around, each step easier than the last. One of his shadows skimmed the back of my calf as I closed the distance.
He lifted me with unhurried care, placing me back onto the horse. We rode deeper into the Sun Realm in silence.
I let my gaze move across the horizon. The sand moved in subtle, shifting patterns, like it was breathing. The sun dipped lower as we moved, turning the sand into molten gold, shadows stretching long and thin behind us.
Time blurred. It could have been hours or minutes. I didn’t feel it the same way I usually did.
Then, in the distance, something shifted.
At first, I thought it was just another rise in the dunes. But as we drew closer, the shape sharpened, solidifying into something real.
A town.
It emerged slowly from the horizon, half-swallowed by the desert. Low buildings carved from golden stone stood in uneven rows, some leaning, some broken, their edges softened by time and wind. Sand had claimed parts of it, spilling through doorways and over thresholds.
The remains of a fountain sat in the center of what must have once been a square, its basin dry, its edges worn smooth. Pillars stood in fragments around it, some collapsed, others stubbornly upright. Faded banners clung to walls, their sun emblems barely visible beneath dust and age.
We rode through the empty streets without stopping.
My eyes moved over everything, taking in every broken edge, every sun-bleached surface, every place where someone had clearly once existed and simply… stopped.
But we didn’t slow. I had already spoken to Alastor. He and Theron were waiting.
The thought of seeing them didn’t bring nerves the way it might have before. It didn’t twist or tighten anything inside me. It pushed me forward. The town fell behind us. The dunes rose again, higher this time, stretching wide and uninterrupted.
And then we reached the castle.
It was massive. Not just in size, but in presence.
Towers of golden stone spiraled upward, catching the last of the sunlight and throwing it back in blinding brilliance.
Bridges arched between them like rays, stretching across open air with a kind of impossible grace.
The outer courtyards sprawled outward, half-buried now, their columns cracked but still standing like they refused to fall completely.
Parts of it were broken.
Parts of it had been claimed by time and sand.
But none of it felt weak.
Even in ruin, it held power.
It demanded it.
My breath caught as we drew closer, the light shifting, intensifying, the entire structure igniting in gold as the sun dipped lower behind it. The dunes around it reflected that glow, turning the world into something unreal.
Everything in me went still.
“Violet,” Sebastian said behind me.
I didn’t answer.
I just stared at the palace—at the place that had once ruled an entire realm, that had stood empty for so long, waiting—
Waiting for me.