Chapter 38 Bronwen
Bronwen
Relief hit me so hard, my knees nearly buckled.
Violet came down from the sky in a spiral of fire and light, wings folding inward as she descended.
Flames peeled away from her body as she fell, scattering through the air like embers shaken loose from a dying star.
They drifted across the battlefield, briefly illuminating the wreckage below before fading into harmless sparks.
When her feet touched the ground, the fire collapsed inward, sinking into her skin and vanishing as if it had always belonged there.
And she was standing.
Whole.
There was no blood soaking through her armor. No sword buried in her stomach where it should have ended her life. No sign remained of the wound that had dropped her into Adar’s arms only minutes earlier.
Alive.
The phoenix burned away and left a girl standing in its place, breathing hard as she dragged air into lungs that had stopped working not long ago. Her shoulders rose and fell with each breath, and her eyes were bright.
Then Sebastian reached her.
He crossed the distance between them, boots tearing through ash and broken ground as he closed the final stretch.
When he reached her, he didn’t say anything.
He simply wrapped her up in his arms and pulled her against him with a force that looked dangerously close to desperation.
His shadows surged around them instantly.
Violet laughed—a breathless, disbelieving sound that trembled between exhaustion and exhilaration. Her hands clutched the front of his armor like it was the only thing anchoring her to the ground.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
Gods help me, I was happy for them.
After everything they had clawed through to get here, after every fight and stubborn refusal to give up on each other, they had somehow come out the other side stronger than before.
Sebastian’s shadows tightened once more around Violet, cocooning her completely within the dark before folding inward on themselves.
The air twisted briefly where they stood, and then the darkness swallowed them both, carrying them somewhere far away from the battlefield and the wreckage we were standing in.
Smart.
Very smart.
The battlefield rushed back in the moment they disappeared.
Bodies littered the torn ground where the fight had carved through the forest. Trees leaned at strange angles where Sebastian’s shadows had torn through the realm.
The wreckage of the Sovereigns’ attack was everywhere.
Broken weapons. Torn banners. Fallen soldiers from realms that had marched here believing they would win.
If they survived this humiliation, they would be licking their wounds for centuries.
The dead I had raised were gone now. Their bodies had collapsed back into stillness where they had fallen.
Armor hung awkwardly over empty ribs. Limbs twisted at angles no living creature could endure.
Whatever magic had dragged them back into motion had released them completely, and the blade consumed them once more.
Silence settled slowly across the ruined ground, heavy and strange after so much chaos. And standing in the middle of it all, watching the last embers fade into the dirt, I realized the fight might have ended.
But the consequences were only just beginning.
I turned slowly.
Adar stood a few paces away, shoulders drawn tight.
His sword still hung loosely in his hand, the blade dark with blood that hadn’t yet had time to dry.
But he wasn’t looking at the battlefield.
His gaze was fixed on the empty space where Violet had been only moments ago, as if part of him was still waiting to make sure she hadn’t disappeared for good.
“She’s okay,” I said.
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
Adar’s eyes shifted to me. “We would have all been dead if she wasn’t.”
There was no argument in his tone. Just blunt acknowledgment.
“Maybe that would have been simpler,” I muttered, flexing my fingers on my black-veined hand.
The motion sent a flare of pain racing up my arm. It had been quiet for a long time—centuries of manageable silence—but now it burned again, the poisoned veins in my skin pulsing like they were remembering something they shouldn’t.
Adar noticed. His gaze flicked briefly to my hand before returning to my face, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I knew exactly what he was thinking.
I could feel something ugly beginning to rise in my chest. The kind of feeling that wanted to claw its way out and say things that couldn’t be unsaid once they were spoken.
A stone in the wall of my mind slipped loose.
I looked away quickly, placing the stone back where it belonged.
Carefully.
I exhaled slowly as the weight in my chest settled again. “It really looks like the entrance to the Night Realm castle now,” I said, gesturing toward the devastation.
Adar huffed out a breath, the sound faintly amused despite everything around us. “Maybe Sebastian can summon some creatures to eat it all,” he said.
I grimaced instantly, my nose scrunching. “That’s disgusting.”
A beat passed while I stared out at the field again.
“Or,” I added thoughtfully, tilting my head as I considered the problem more seriously, “it could keep Finnel busy for a few… weeks.”
That earned me a real look. “He will appreciate that you thought of him.”
Then his attention shifted beyond me, his voice rising as he addressed the remaining Night Guard scattered across the battlefield.
“Form up,” he called. “Anyone still breathing follows me.”
They moved immediately. Even wounded and exhausted, the soldiers snapped into motion with disciplined efficiency. Survivors began gathering themselves from the wreckage, some limping, some leaning on each other, but all of them alive.
Enough of them, at least.
Adar paused once more before leaving. Just long enough to look back at me. Our eyes met across the ruined ground, the unspoken weight of the last hour sitting between us.
Then he turned away without another word.
His armor clinked softly as he walked toward the trees, the remaining Night Guard falling in behind him as they disappeared one by one into the dark forest beyond the battlefield. When the last of them vanished between the trunks, the quiet rushed in all at once. That was when I let myself feel it.
Adar is alive.
Sebastian is alive.
Violet is alive.
I repeated the words in my head like a spell, like if I said them enough times they might carve themselves into my bones and stay there.
I saved them.
I protected them.
But the relief never settled the way people thought it would. It would never sink deep enough to quiet the rest of the noise. It just hovered there for a moment before the weight of everything else pushed in behind it. I stepped over the nearest body.
Dead.
Another lay sprawled a few feet farther, armor twisted, a spear still clutched in a hand that no longer had the strength to lift it.
Dead.
I walked slowly, boots crunching against broken branches and scattered armor. The ground was soft with churned earth and blood, the scent of smoke and iron hanging thick in the air. I hadn’t seen this part in the visions.
But now I knew what happened after.
What happened to the dead once their purpose was fulfilled.
They had collapsed where they stood, returning to the stillness they had come from. It almost looked intentional, as if they had understood the moment their work was done and stepped willingly back into whatever waited for them afterward.
Almost all of them.
One body twitched.
My attention snapped toward it instantly. I crossed the distance without thinking, instincts already moving ahead of the rest of me, searching for the narrow sliver of possibility that someone might still be salvageable.
Hope was a stupid habit.
But it was hard to kill.
I crouched beside the soldier and rolled him onto his back. The hope died immediately.
Half his face had been burned down to bone, the flesh melted away. His abdomen was torn open, armor split and blackened where magic had hit him. The wound was catastrophic—organs shredded, blood loss far beyond anything even I could tolerate pretending to fix.
I exhaled slowly.
My hand moved to the blade at my waist, fingers wrapping around the small hilt as I drew it free.
Mercy, then.
As I lowered the tip toward his throat, the soldier’s remaining eye flickered weakly, unfocused, but he didn’t fight. He barely seemed to notice.
“There is always a price.”
I froze.
The tip of the blade barely kissed his throat, biting just enough to break the surface of the skin.
“What?”
“She altered the blade’s purpose,” the dead body continued.
The sound of it was wrong. Old. Layered. As if several voices were speaking over one another in the same breath.
“But you,” it went on softly, “brought it where it was always meant to be.”
Cold slid slowly down my spine.
“He never should have been inside it,” the voice murmured, quieter now. Almost pleased. “Now he’s free.”
My fingers tightened around the hilt.
“And he’s coming for you.”