Chapter 35 Violet
Violet
What was it that people thought? Distance would make the heart grow fonder? Maybe distance would make what Celine did to me not matter as much?
It made it worse.
The nightmares made it worse.
She hurt me. She hurt him.
She wouldn’t fucking do it again.
I stepped closer, and she turned to run.
Fire caught her before she made it three steps.
Her scream rose high and shrill above the clash of steel and magic before ending abruptly as the flames swallowed her whole. I stood there for half a breath longer than necessary, watching the fire consume what remained.
It felt better than it should have.
Then I saw Calum.
He stood closer now, no longer half-hidden among the other Sovereigns.
His shoulders were squared and his eyes were fixed directly on me across the torn battlefield.
But the way he held himself was wrong. He didn’t look angry.
He didn’t look devastated by what had just happened.
There was no grief in his expression, no fury, no shock.
He had watched his mother burn without reacting at all.
Not a flicker of emotion crossed his face.
He was still being controlled.
Then he slammed his fist into the ground.
The ground split open with a thunderous roar. Night soldiers shouted in alarm as the ground buckled beneath them. Some managed to leap backward, but others lost their footing as the earth collapsed. Soldiers fell screaming into the widening chasm as the ground swallowed them whole.
Trees tilted dangerously as their roots tore free from the broken earth. The battlefield split apart into jagged sections of unstable ground and rising debris.
I lost my balance when the shockwave reached me and hit the dirt hard, the impact rattling my teeth.
The crack raced toward me, widening as it tore through the ground.
Instinct shoved my body into motion before panic could take over.
I scrambled backward just as the ground gave way where I had been standing.
When I looked up again, Calum’s expression changed.
The shift was immediate and unmistakable.
Confusion flashed across his face, sharp and sudden, like someone had ripped a curtain away from his mind. I recognized it instantly. It was the exact same look he had worn that morning in the Sun Realm when the control over him had broken.
Even through the chaos, I saw his lips move.
My name.
Then the pain came back.
My vision went completely white as something ripped violently through my mind, the force of it sending me pitching forward as nausea surged up my throat.
Fire exploded outward from my body in a wild, uncontrolled burst, flames lashing across the battlefield in every direction before collapsing abruptly into nothing.
The pressure vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
For a moment I could only breathe, my head spinning as the world snapped back into focus around me. When I lifted my gaze again, Calum was still standing where he had been, staring at the chaos around him like he didn’t understand how it had happened.
Across the battlefield, Sebastian dropped to one knee.
His shadows convulsed violently around him, darkness tearing through the ground in erratic bursts as the same pressure slammed into him.
I caught a glimpse of Sefina through the chaos at the edge of the field.
She looked just as startled as Calum, her hands no longer commanding the blooms that had been spreading across the battlefield moments earlier.
I found Eira then, and she was racing for her mother through the madness, no longer fighting.
That was when the realization struck me.
They were all being controlled.
All of the royals were, but the Guards weren’t. They were following orders. It was everyone with Sovereign blood running through their veins being controlled.
It wasn’t betrayal.
My stomach dropped as it all clicked into place.
“Sebastian!” Bronwen’s voice cut through the battlefield and the thoughts that were slowly consuming me whole.
An Ocean soldier had slipped behind him during the chaos. The soldier raised a heavy staff over his head, bringing it down toward Sebastian’s back.
I was too far away to stop it.
So were Bronwen and Adar.
The staff came down.
And Sebastian fought.
A shockwave detonated outward from him as his power surged back under his control. The force field he kept wrapped around himself exploded into place again, slamming the soldier backward hard enough to snap bone before the man skidded across the torn earth.
Ice screamed through the air a heartbeat later.
A spear launched straight toward Sebastian’s chest, moving too fast for anyone else to intercept.
It shattered harmlessly against the shield surrounding him.
Sebastian lifted his head slowly and his gaze locked onto the Ice Sovereign.
That was all it took. He drew his blade and began to walk.
With every step Sebastian took forward, soldiers within reach simply ceased to exist. Shadows surged outward with him, devouring bodies before they could even finish raising their weapons. Armor and flesh vanished into the darkness as if they had never been there at all.
The Ice Sovereign saw him coming and turned to run, but Sebastian transferred in front of him. His blade drove straight through the Sovereign’s chest, lifting the man off his feet before grabbing his neck and turning him into mist.
Then the battlefield shifted again.
The glaze was on Calum’s eyes again. And Sefina’s. And every other fae with Sovereign blood here.
Everything was falling into place. Whoever was behind this could dominate the other Sovereigns completely because their blood was only Sovereign blood.
They could force them to attack and destroy without resistance.
Me and Sebastian were only half Sovereign.
And controlling even a fraction of Sebastian—or me—took far more effort.
And they couldn’t do it all at the same time.
They were choosing when to press.
I watched as Calum shifted from confusion to pure, obedient destruction again. A Night soldier charged him, but Calum… Calum tore the soldier in half. Magic flared wildly across the field as all of the Sovereigns and their families were controlled again.
We can’t be controlled at the same time as the other Sovereigns, I forced through the bond, pushing through the noise around us.
Sebastian didn’t answer with words, but his shadows surged outward in confirmation.
We pushed harder, and I kept my eyes on a Sovereign at all times.
“The Sun!” Tyvir yelled to his Commander. “Kill her!”
The Commander nodded as he threw his spear at me.
I ducked just in time for it to land in the chest of a soldier coming up behind me.
I let out another blast of fire, taking the Commander down, but it strained to do so this time.
I had never wielded so much, and it was catching up to me now. I grabbed my sword.
I watched as the Forest Sovereign’s steps faltered mid-strike, allowing Bronwen to sink her teeth into his neck. The glaze left as terror filled his eyes.
It’s coming again! I shouted through the bond.
If it hit me where I stood, I wouldn’t survive it. There were too many enemies around me.
I transferred.
Space folded violently around me as I ripped myself out of the chaos. The world snapped tight and then released, dumping me several yards away near the treeline. My boots skidded across the torn earth as I landed, the ground uneven beneath my feet while the battle continued raging behind me.
Behind me, Sebastian unleashed another violent surge of darkness.
Shadows detonated outward in a crushing wave that flattened the ground and hurled soldiers through the air.
The blast tore through the forest like a storm, tree snapping like dry twigs as the pressure of his magic rolled across the battlefield.
Then the pain hit him again.
It drove straight into him with enough violence to make my breath catch. Sebastian dropped to his knees as the pressure slammed down, his shadows thrashing wildly around him as he fought to stay conscious.
But the surge of darkness he had just unleashed had cleared the space around him, crushing the nearest soldiers and throwing the others far enough back that no one was close enough to take advantage before the hold released again.
After I knew he’d be okay, I scanned the battlefield again, and my heart dropped.
Adar was slowing.
It was subtle. Anyone else might not have noticed it in the middle of the chaos. But I had trained with him. I had watched him fight, studied the way he moved through combat with mechanical precision.
Adar did not slow.
Yet his strikes were just a fraction behind now. His stance shifted unevenly as he cut down another soldier, the movement lacking the ruthless certainty he usually carried into every fight.
Though the control had released Sebastian, he was too busy.
He had already pushed deeper into the Forest Guard lines, cutting through them with brutal efficiency as shadows devoured anything that stepped too close.
Bronwen was a streak of red and black across the far flank of the battlefield, tearing through soldiers with vampire speed—but she was pinned on the opposite side, surrounded by too many enemies to break away.
Adar was exposed.
“Adar!” I screamed, already moving.
Fire exploded beneath my feet as I burned a path straight toward him. Flames tore through the soldiers between us, soldiers staggering back or collapsing where they stood as heat slammed through their ranks. The air warped around me as I forced my way across the battlefield.
I reached him just in time to see the strike he didn’t.
A soldier had slipped behind him in the chaos, blade already swinging toward his unprotected side. My sword sank straight into his chest.
Then something slammed into my back.
Hard.
The impact drove the air from my lungs in a violent rush as I staggered forward. My breath left me in a sharp, choking gasp. Heat flared instinctively under my skin as my magic tried to answer the attack, but my legs buckled before I could even turn.
“No!” Adar shouted.
His voice sounded distant.
I looked down.
A sword jutted from my stomach, buried deep enough that the hilt brushed against my armor. Blood was already spilling through the metal plates, soaking the gold in dark red as warmth slid down my legs.
Shock stole the breath from my lungs. My hands trembled uselessly at my sides, my fingers hovering over the blade without touching it as the world tilted sharply around me.
The battlefield blurred.
Adar caught me before I could collapse, pulling the sword out before he lowered me toward the ground. He pressed his hands hard against the wound, trying desperately to slow the blood pouring through his fingers.
“What did you do?” he said hoarsely. “No—Vi—”
The panic in his voice barely cut through the roar of the battle still raging around us.
The clash of steel. The roar of magic. The scream of Sebastian’s shadows tearing through another wave of soldiers.
But for the first time since the fighting had begun, none of that felt close anymore.
All I could feel was the warmth of the blood spilling through my armor.
And the terrifying realization of how much of it I was losing.