Chapter 20 Violet
Violet
I learned pretty quickly why we couldn’t just transfer between the Night and Sun Realms.
And it felt like I was being split in half.
With my wrist slowly, excruciatingly knitting itself back together, Sebastian wouldn’t even let me suggest transferring myself. At first, I didn’t understand why. I could slip through the Night Realm almost without thinking. Why would crossing realms be any different?
Then he wrapped an arm around me and took us. We landed in the garden—and he stumbled. It wasn’t much.
But this was Sebastian.
For him to show anything meant it had cost him.
He straightened immediately, jaw setting, shoulders rolling back into place like he could force the strain out of his body through sheer will. I felt a dull ache that didn’t belong to me.
Before I could say his name, he was already turning.
“I’ll get Adar,” he said and disappeared.
Alastor stayed in the Sun Realm to keep tabs on that end. Theron didn’t come back with us either. We’d all agreed it would be better if he stayed concealed a little longer and returned to the Ice Realm. Someone needed to be there when the other realms realized the Sun had opened its eyes again.
When he appeared again, it was much worse than the last time. His shadows lashed wide on landing, snapping back like they’d been struck. My breath hitched at the jolt of pain I felt through the bond, so I could only imagine what he felt.
He should have left Adar.
Sebastian closed his eyes for a single heartbeat before opening them again. One measured breath. A subtle roll of his shoulders. The strain disappeared as if it had never existed at all.
But I noticed.
And so had Adar.
The way Sebastian planted his feet.
The way his shadows reknit themselves a fraction too slowly.
The way he didn’t quite lean his weight where he normally would.
“How many?” Adar asked.
Sebastian’s head turned slightly. “How many what?”
“Crossings,” Adar said calmly. “How many of those before it stops being survivable?”
The garden went very still.
Sebastian’s mouth twitched. “I’ll manage.”
Of course he said that.
Adar clenched his fist. “That wasn’t the question.”
The future snapped into place whether I wanted it or not. I would be in the Sun Realm, and he would be in the Night with Queen Mother’s lands carved between us.
Two crowns.
Two realms.
Two places we were never meant to rule from the same throne.
“If one crossing does this,” Adar continued, “what does a year of them look like?”
Sebastian didn’t answer.
“Or a lifetime?”
His gaze found mine at last.
There was an apology there.
And resolve.
And something worse than both—acceptance.
The anger came fast. Because it wasn’t just about the crossings.
It was about him deciding—again—what I could handle.
Another thing he hadn’t told me. Another quiet decision made in my absence, wrapped up in protection and handed back to me like it was kindness.
Every time he did that, it pressed on the same fracture inside me—the one that whispered I wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t strong enough, that there were still parts of this world he thought I couldn’t stand in.
We were closer than we had ever been.
And still, there it was.
That small wedge he kept between us.
I hated it.
I could help him if he would just let me. But he wouldn’t.
Adar’s gaze shot to me. Just another reason for his hatred for me. He settled on Sebastian again. “We need to speak alone,” he said.
“Go,” I said before Sebastian could answer. My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I want to find Bronwen.”
That wasn’t the only reason.
If I stood there any longer—if I kept looking at him, at the way he was already bracing himself to carry this alone—I might break and say something I couldn’t take back.
He glanced down at the bruising on my neck.
Stay where I can see you, he said through the bond.
I turned before my anger could soften.
Distant kitchen clatter echoed faintly through the halls.
The steady scuff and rhythm of patrol boots marked the corridors.
Somewhere deeper in the castle, parchment shuffled and voices overlapped in low, irritated argument—the unmistakable sound of Bronwen forcing her schedules onto people who would rather be anywhere else.
Mist flickered across the floor ahead of me, thin and silvered in the lamplight. I slowed automatically, waiting for it to gather into a maid, a servant, or anyone else crossing my path.
It was instinct now.
It had taken me exactly one mistake to learn I needed to stop when I saw something out of place in this castle—one step through a veil of mist and straight into Finnel taught you that.
This time, Yara appeared.
She stilled when she saw me. She lifted her hands, fingers moving in smooth, practiced signs.
Your neck?
She reached out, stopping just short of touching me. Her brows pulled together.
Your hand?
Despite everything, I smiled. “I’m okay.”
I’d said that too many times today.
Yara didn’t believe me. Her hands moved again, slower this time—making sure I caught every word.
You came back.
The answer rose immediately.
Of course I came back.
It sat on my tongue, ready, automatic—
But then I realized what she meant.
Back.
Back to the Night Realm. To the place that had quickly become home.
Except now—
I could still feel sand beneath my skin, like my land had marked me and refused to let me forget it. A palace had woken at my touch. An entire realm had bowed.
And standing here now, in the place that used to be everything—
It felt different.
Not wrong.
But not entirely mine, either.
I forced the smile wider. “Of course I’m back.”
Yara tilted her head. Her eyes said she heard the part I hadn’t spoken.
Before I could linger in it too long, she drifted closer, her movement soft as breath. Cool, mist-light fingers hovered just above my bandage.
Then she signed, Be careful.
A quiet shiver worked its way up my spine.
“I will,” I said, softer this time.
She held my gaze for a moment longer, then nodded once. And then she dissolved—mist unraveling into nothing, slipping back into the corridor.
I stood there for a second after she was gone, something unsettled curling low in my chest that had nothing to do with bruises or broken bones.
I really needed to find Bronwen.
I followed the sound of her—heels against stone, quick and precise, layered over the rustle of parchment and the low, strained voice of someone trying very hard not to say the wrong thing.
The corridor opened into one of the inner receiving rooms, just off the main hall.
Bronwen stood near the long table by the windows, one hand braced against the wood, the other flipping through a stack of reports like she could read three at once and still find fault in all of them.
A steward stood across from her, posture stiff, a ledger clutched too tightly in his hands.
“No,” Bronwen said, not looking up. “That’s not what I asked for.”
The steward swallowed. “It’s the updated inventory from the lower stores, My Lady—”
“I didn’t ask for updated,” she cut in, finally glancing at him. “I asked for accurate.” She tapped the page with one ink-stained finger. “These numbers don’t match the last report, and unless the castle has started eating its own supplies, you’re missing something.”
“I—there was a delay in—”
“Then you account for the delay,” she said smoothly. “You don’t hand me a guess and hope I don’t notice.”
He went quiet.
Bronwen set the papers down with careful precision, which somehow seemed more threatening than if she’d slammed them.
“Start again,” she said. “Check the south storage and the second cellar. And this time, bring me a report I don’t have to question.”
“Yes, Lady—Madam—” he stumbled.
Her mouth twitched. “Pick one title and commit. Gods.”
He fled.
I leaned against the doorway. “I bet when they have nightmares, you’re the creature chasing them through the woods.”
“They’d be lucky to dream of such a beautiful monster,” she shot back without looking. “Now, why are you back—”
She turned.
And stopped.
Her gaze went straight to my throat.
Then my wrist.
The shift in the room was immediate. She stepped toward me.
Just one step.
“Why,” she said, her voice quiet enough to cut, “are you injured?”
I took a breath.
And then I didn’t stop.
“When we reached the Sun Realm castle,” I started, the words coming faster than I meant them to, “there were creatures—my father’s.
They had his crown. Or—” I swallowed, adjusting, grounding myself.
“Mine, I guess. When I put it on, the entire realm woke. Not just the palace—the entire realm. The stone, the desert, everything. It was like it had been waiting for me. Creatures rose out of the ground like they’d been buried there all this time just… waiting for permission to move again.”
I could still feel it. The way the land had answered me.
“Sebastian felt it immediately. He said every Sovereign would have.” My voice steadied slightly, but the weight of it pressed harder now that I was saying it out loud.
“So they know. They might not know what, but they know something changed. And when they realize what, we’re probably standing at the edge of a war. ”
Bronwen didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
“And then Calum showed up.”
That did it.
Her eyes darkened.
“He tried to kill me,” I said. “But Sebastian went into his mind and—it wasn’t him.
Not really. It was like…” I searched for it, fingers flexing against the air as if I could grab the right explanation.
“Like someone hollowed him out and moved him where they wanted. He didn’t remember choosing it. He didn’t remember anything.”
My throat tightened, but I pushed through it.
“And apparently Sebastian saw the same thing in Nathara’s mind right before he killed her. The same blank space. The same missing choice.”
Bronwen didn’t interrupt. She just watched me.
“And now we think someone touched my mind,” I finished, quieter now. “Because I woke up and went to Calum without thinking. Without deciding. Like my body was already moving before my mind ever caught up.”
“What?”
The single word was calm.
Too calm.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Everything was happening at once. I haven’t even had time to process the fact that I woke an entire realm, and now we know someone is still after Sebastian, and—”
I exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through my hair.
“And Sebastian,” I added, the anger snapping into place, clean and familiar, “I’m so fucking pissed at him.
He knew something was wrong and that it wasn’t just Nathara and Lilian after him.
And I just figured out that transferring between realms is tearing him apart, which—again—he didn’t tell me.
So that entire trip? The ‘experience the realms’ tour?
” I let out a humorless breath. “That wasn’t for me.
That was him finding a way to travel between our realms without me realizing what he was doing.
And apparently he’s been avenging me on all of his little trips lately, which I’m sure you knew but don’t tell me if you did because I am too angry at him to be angry at you too.
When I figured that one out, I just ignored it because keeping one thing from me was different.
But now I feel like I can’t tell what is the truth and—”
“Violet,” she said evenly, “you are giving me too much information at once.”
A beat.
She stepped closer and wiped a tear from my cheek that I hadn’t even realized had fallen.
“If you ever listen to anything I say, let it be this—you need to talk to him.” Her voice softened, but there was nothing uncertain about it. “Talking fixes more than people think. Talk before it’s too late.”
I nodded. “But not right now. I’m too upset right now.”
A small, knowing smile touched her mouth. “Later.”
The candles around the room flickered. Every flame leaned in the same direction—toward me.
Bronwen’s head tilted slightly, her attention sharpening. “I can feel you more now,” she said slowly.
I stilled. “You can… feel me?”
“Yes.” Her gaze tracked something unseen, like she was following the movement of my magic beneath my skin. “Not like I could have before I was turned. Back then, it was loud. Overpowering. It drowned everything else out.” Her mouth curved faintly. “Kind of like blood does now.”
I grimaced, and that seemed to be exactly the reaction she wanted.
“But after I turned, it changed. Now I only catch pieces of it from the gifted. Echoes.” She paused, then added, “Except for Sebastian. His magic is so strong that I couldn’t ignore it if I tried.”
“And now,” she said, studying me more closely now, “you feel more like him.”
I swallowed.
“I feel it too,” I admitted. “When the realm woke, it was like…” I exhaled slowly. “Like I woke up with it. Like I’ve been breathing shallow my entire life and only just learned how to actually fill my lungs. And it scares me. I don’t know what to do with power like this.”
Bronwen watched me for a long moment.
Then her expression shifted.
“You don’t cage it,” she said.
I blinked.
“And you don’t sand yourself down for anyone. I spent years trying to be less. Quieter. Smaller. Convincing myself I was the problem.” Her jaw tightened. “Maybe if I hadn’t dimmed myself,” she said, quieter now, “I wouldn’t have lost him.”
That landed harder than anything else she’d said.
“So listen to me,” she said, voice low and unwavering. “You don’t apologize for this. You don’t shrink it. You don’t bend for crowns or councils or frightened men. You be true to yourself. To the fire that finally stopped asking permission.”
The candles flared—every single one of them—gold light sharpening across the room.
“And if anyone stands in your way…”
The flames stretched higher.
“…you burn them.”
She ran her hands down the front of my shirt, smoothing imaginary wrinkles, and I saw the shift in her that I noticed so many times before. Like nothing bothered her.
“Now,” she said, “where is Calum?”
“We… sent him home.”
Her brows lifted slowly. “In pieces?”
“No. It wasn’t his fault.”
“I understand that is what you are saying,” she replied evenly, “but I know Sebastian. Fault or not, there is no world where he just lets someone that touched you walk away.”
I shook my head. “He didn’t, exactly. He broke his wrists… but then Calum left.”
Bronwen stilled.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I—” The answer caught in my throat. “Why wouldn’t I believe him?”
Realization slid into place.
“Oh, fuck.”