Chapter 17 Violet
Violet
I stood in the gallery, staring at the paintings that had restored themselves as if time had simply… stepped aside.
They lined the entire hall now, no longer slumped or torn or forgotten on the floor. Gold threaded through each frame, catching the light that poured in from the high windows.
The first portraits were older. Sovereigns with hair ranging from pale gold to deep amber, their expressions carefully composed. Some stood alone, painted as symbols more than people. Others stood beside spouses.
I paused in front of one where a woman with pale, curly hair and sun-warmed skin stood beside a man with deep brown skin and black hair, his posture easy but grounded.
“Flower,” I murmured to myself, recognizing the arranged marriage.
Further down, another pairing—Sun and Ice.
The woman’s features were sharper, her coloring cooler, even here, even surrounded by warmth.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her—going from a realm of frost and stillness into somewhere like here.
Because someone before her had decided it made sense.
I wondered if she’d grown to love it.
Or if she’d just learned how to survive it.
My steps slowed when I reached the final painting.
My breath caught.
He stood tall, his hair cropped short, his expression calm. His eyes were the same light brown I had seen echoed in every portrait before him, but there was something different in the way they were painted. Softer. Warmer.
Kind.
My chest tightened as I looked at him.
My father.
Not Alastor.
The only one I had never known.
I tried to imagine him moving, speaking, existing outside of the stillness of the canvas. Tried to picture what it would have been like to grow up with him instead of wondering what I was missing.
Alastor had done everything he could. I knew that.
But this—
This felt like looking at a version of my life that had been taken before I ever got the chance to live it.
My gaze shifted to the woman standing next to him.
I—
“You look just like her.”
Alastor’s voice broke through my thoughts, and I startled slightly, not realizing how lost I’d been in it. He stood just behind me, hands folded neatly behind his back, his posture as composed as always.
I huffed a quiet breath. “Yeah. When I can’t control my emotions.” My eyes flicked back to the painting. “Did she always look like that?”
She glowed.
Not just in the way artists exaggerated beauty with careful brushwork and gold leaf. She was actually glowing—her hair, her skin, her eyes. Light seemed to live in her, not just reflect off of her.
“Yes,” he said softly.
I glanced at him, catching the small smile on his face, the way it lingered just a second too long. And I remembered—he had lost them too.
Not in the same way, but loss didn’t really care about details.
“Was he kind?” I asked, my eyes returning to the painting.
“Very,” Alastor said. “He cared deeply for his people. For all of it—the land, the creatures, the balance of it. He was calm. Steady. Which made it… interesting when he returned from the phoenix village with your mother.”
I blinked. “Interesting?”
Alastor huffed a quiet laugh. “She was chaos. Wild. Spontaneous. She never stopped moving. Dancing through the halls, arguing with Advisors, ignoring every expectation placed in front of her.” His mouth curved slightly. “She brought something out of him I had never seen before.”
I looked back at the painting. They weren’t stiff or posed like the others. They weren’t looking at the artist with a rehearsed smile.
They were looking at each other.
Like they had forgotten anyone else was in the room.
Something in my chest ached at that—sharp and quiet and impossible to ignore.
“They look…” I trailed off.
“Happy,” Alastor finished gently.
I nodded. “Happy.”
Like they had chosen each other and had all the time in the world.
A light touch brushed the top of my head, and I blinked, surprised, as Alastor leaned down and pressed a brief, gentle kiss there.
“You need to eat, little bird,” he said, already turning toward the doorway. “There will be plenty of days in this castle for stories.”
I lingered a moment longer, my eyes tracing the lines of their faces one last time.
I suddenly felt out of place standing in a golden castle in my travel clothes, covered in dirt with an ancient crown on my head. Still, I had no doubt that I was where I was meant to be.
I followed Alastor.
* * *
“It won’t be long now,” Sebastian said.
The palace had rebuilt itself with impossible precision—arches restored, lamps lit, tapestries drawn back from a century of dust—but it hadn’t conjured anything as simple as a meal.
We ate what we’d carried in: dried fruit, hard cheese, the last heel of Night bread.
It felt almost absurd, sitting in a hall that had once hosted feasts and ceremonies, chewing stale bread.
Alastor gave a single nod, his attention fixed on the rough map Theron had drawn from memory across the table. “They will all know soon.”
Sebastian’s gaze lifted slightly—not to the ceiling, but beyond it. I could feel it through the bond, the way his awareness stretched outward, brushing across the realm.
“I felt it the moment the crown set,” he said. “Every Sovereign will feel it. They may not know what woke, but they’ll know something did.”
Theron’s grip tightened around his cup, his knuckles paling. “Some will come to kneel,” he said, voice steady but thin at the edges. Then, quieter, “Some will come to make sure it doesn’t rise again.”
Adar didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking. She’s weak. She isn’t ready.
“The realm answered me,” I said. I hadn’t meant for my voice to come out like that, but I couldn’t seem to pull it back. “It felt like it had been waiting.”
“It has,” Sebastian said. “But a realm is not an army equipped to fight a war.”
Alastor dragged a knuckle down the sketched coastline, smudging the charcoal slightly. “We need soldiers. Supplies. Messengers. Structure.” He leaned back. “We can’t hold this place on faith and awakened creatures alone.”
I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right.
“Tomorrow,” Sebastian said, and the word landed with quiet finality. “We return to the Night Realm. We gather what we need. We come back prepared.”
“I can stay,” I said, even though I already knew—
“No.” Sebastian’s gaze snapped to mine. “Not without protection. Not until I can put something between you and every person who might decide they want to erase what you are.”
His shadows shifted faintly at his feet.
“I agree with him,” Alastor added.
Theron let out a breath. “I’ll start making lists,” he said. “Names, routes, supply lines, hidden caches—”
“Tomorrow,” Sebastian repeated, softer this time. “Tonight, we eat, and we rest.”
We finished the meal in silence. Maps were rolled, plates stacked, the soft scrape of movement echoing lightly against the restored stone.
Adar, Alastor, and Theron drifted toward a study that had somehow found its books again, their voices lowering into strategy before the door had even fully closed behind them.
Sebastian’s hand found the small of my back as we walked.
The hallways didn’t feel hollow anymore.
Light stretched across the floors in long, golden reflections, catching on tiles that now held our shapes instead of dust. I tried not to think about what these corridors should have been.
Birthdays. Festivals. Arguments echoing off the walls.
A life that had unfolded here without me.
His fingers pressed gently into my spine, grounding, and the ache softened before it could take hold.
He opened the door to a set of chambers that must have once belonged to someone important. The space was wide and warm, high windows catching the last of the light, a carved balcony overlooking the dunes. The bed’s canopy scattered lamplight like sunrise caught in thread.
“This will do,” he murmured.
“What did you feel when I placed the crown on my head?” I asked, brushing my fingertips along the warm stone by the window.
“All Sovereigns are connected because our gifts were created with the original spell. That part of me that holds my gifts… it shook. Like another connection tugged at it and told it that it was alive.” He stepped behind me. “It changes the pitch of our world. We don’t get to ignore that.”
“And what did it do to you?” I asked, turning to look at him instead of the dunes. “When the pitch changed.”
He smiled. “It reminded me you are exactly who I thought you were the moment you walked into my life.” His thumb brushed lightly along my temple. “And that I am very bad at pretending I don’t worship the proof.”
Heat rose under my skin.
He kissed my brow first. Then the corner of my mouth.
Shadows brushed at my ankles, then higher. My top slipped off, guided by hands and shadows both, folded neatly aside. I reached for him in return, fingers finding the edge of his collar, the familiar hum of his magic yielding for me like it always did.
“You were magnificent today,” he murmured against my throat.
The praise sent a slow warmth through me.
“Bash,” I whispered when my thoughts began to scatter, his name softer than I meant it to be.
“When you take this realm,” he said, his voice laced with desire, “I will kneel.”
My fingers brushed along the line of his jaw. “What’s stopping you now?”
His gaze lifted to mine, dark and steady. He lowered himself slowly, one knee and then the other, until he was kneeling in front of me. His eyes never left mine—not when his hands moved to the button of my pants, not when his fingers worked it open with far less patience than he usually showed.
And not when he leaned forward and pressed a kiss low against my skin.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, the soft strands sliding between them as I tilted my head slightly, studying him.
“I like you from this angle,” I murmured.
He glanced up at me, a smirk spreading across his mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”