Chapter 39 Violet
Violet
I died.
I knew the exact moment it happened. The world had gone strangely quiet around me, like someone had pulled the sound out of the air.
The battlefield, the screams, the clash of steel—all of it faded until there was nothing left but the slow, distant pull of peace waiting just beyond the edge of everything I had ever known.
It wasn’t frightening.
That was the strangest part.
It was calm. Warm. Like slipping into water that welcomed you instead of drowning you.
I didn’t want to go. But that didn’t seem to matter.
Then the peace shattered.
Blinding light swallowed me whole, heat tearing through every part of me as breath crashed violently back into my lungs. It felt like being born and burned alive at the same time, like my body had been ripped apart and forced back together.
The next thing I knew, the ground was far below me.
And I had never felt more free.
We landed in the garden with enough force to shake the stone beneath us.
Sebastian hit the ground on his knees, still holding me, his arms locked around me. The impact knocked the air from my lungs, but he didn’t seem to notice. His shadows exploded outward the moment we landed, racing across my skin in frantic sweeps, searching for wounds.
They slid across my shoulders, my ribs, my stomach—pausing where the sword had been.
Nothing.
The wound was gone.
His shadows searched anyway.
His arms were so tight around me that it was almost painful. I could barely draw a full breath with the way he held me, like his entire body had decided the only acceptable place for me to exist was pressed against his chest.
“Bash,” I rasped.
He didn’t answer. I pulled back slightly, trying to see his face.
He looked shattered.
His breathing was uneven, shoulders rising and falling too quickly. His hands were shaking where they gripped my armor, fingers tightening and loosening in restless bursts like he kept expecting me to disappear between one breath and the next.
“Bash,” I said softly.
His eyes lifted to mine. I had seen Sebastian furious. Cold. Amused. Lethal. I had never seen him terrified.
That hit me harder than the sword had.
“You stopped breathing,” he said hoarsely.
“I know.”
“You stopped breathing,” he repeated.
His hand slid to my stomach where the blade had gone through me, fingers pressing lightly against the hole in the armor as if he expected to feel the wound again.
“There was blood everywhere,” he said. “I couldn’t feel the bond. It was just… gone.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Something twisted painfully in my chest.
“I’m okay,” I whispered.
His hand shot up to my face immediately, rough and desperate, like he needed to feel the warmth of my skin to believe it. “You died,” he said.
I didn’t try to argue.
“I know.”
For a moment he just stared at me, breathing hard, his eyes searching my face.
Then he broke.
He pulled me against him again, burying his face in my hair as his arms tightened around me with enough force to almost hurt.
“You don’t get to do that,” he said roughly. “You don’t get to leave me like that.”
My hands slid up his back automatically, holding him the way he was holding me. “I didn’t exactly plan it.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me again, his forehead pressing against mine. “I felt the bond snap,” he said. “Do you know what that feels like?”
The pain in his voice made my stomach drop.
“It felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and handed me the empty space where you used to be.” His hand moved to the back of my neck, holding me there as if he needed the contact. “I thought you were gone. Not hurt. Not dying. Gone.”
The shadows around us tightened.
“I lost control,” he admitted. “Completely. If Bronwen hadn’t stopped me, I would have destroyed everything. And the worst part?” His eyes searched mine again. “I didn’t even care.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“If you were gone, nothing else mattered,” he continued. “Not the realm. Not the war. Not the people who still needed me. I would have torn the world apart until there was nothing left in it that reminded me of you.”
“Sebastian—”
“No. You need to hear this.”
The intensity in his voice sent a shiver down my spine.
“You have completely destroyed the version of me that existed before you,” he said. “And I would let you do it again. Every lifetime. Every world. Every version of me that could exist.”
His thumb ran across my cheek.
“You are my heart, Violet. You are the only thing that is keeping me from letting the darkness take over again.”
The bond between us flared warm and bright, echoing every word he was saying.
“There is no version of this world that survives if you’re not in it.”
I kissed him immediately, the urgency rising before I could think about it. My hands slid into his hair, pulling him closer, needing him to feel that I was here—that I hadn’t vanished into the silence he’d just described.
I wasn’t leaving.
“Gods,” he murmured against my lips, his breath still uneven as it brushed my skin. “Impeccable timing.”
“What—”
The question died in my throat as Adar came around the corner of the garden.
He stopped the moment he saw us, his expression snapping from relief to fury so quickly it would have been impressive if I hadn’t been too distracted by the man still holding me like the world might collapse if he let go.
“Have you lost your mind, Violet?”
I ignored him for another moment, my thumb brushing lightly across Sebastian’s cheek. His skin was still warm from the heat that had poured out of me, his eyes darker than usual but finally steady.
“Excuse me?” Adar snapped. “Did you not hear me?”
Sebastian exhaled slowly, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders. His arms loosened slightly around my waist, though he didn’t actually move away from me.
I smiled at him when I saw the last of the panic fading from his eyes.
“Violet!”
I finally turned toward Adar.
The moment I looked at him, a laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Adar blinked once, clearly not expecting that reaction.
“What,” he said flatly, “is funny?”
Sebastian stood, pulling me up with him.
“That,” I said, pointing lightly at him, “is the first time you’ve ever said my name.”
He stared at me like he was deciding whether I had hit my head during the transformation.
Then he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do not ever stand between me and a blade again.”
“That’s an odd way of saying thank you.”
His eyes snapped back to mine, irritation flaring immediately. “You were stabbed!” he yelled. “Because you decided to throw yourself in front of a strike I could have handled!”
“You didn’t see it coming!”
“That does not mean,” Adar continued through clenched teeth, “that you sacrifice yourself for me.”
I tilted my head. “You’re welcome.”
That made him visibly angrier.
His jaw tightened as he looked between the two of us—Sebastian still standing far too close, my armor still blackened from the fight, the faint golden glow of my newly claimed power still lingering under my skin.
For a moment, it almost looked like he might keep arguing.
Instead, he exhaled sharply and turned away. His boots struck the stone path harder than necessary as he stalked off toward the castle.
I watched him go, still smiling faintly.
Sebastian leaned closer to my ear, his voice low. “He’s right. Do not take a blade for him again.”
I shrugged. “I’ll just come back to life again.”
* * *
I am a fucking phoenix.
The thought still landed in my head at the most inconvenient moments.
Like when I reached for a cup and my hand hesitated halfway there, half-expecting flames to crawl up my fingers.
Or when I woke in the middle of the night with the echo of wings still beating through my bones, my skin humming with the memory of heat and sky and the strange sensation of falling upward instead of down.
It had been a few days since the battle.
Thank the gods, I could reincarnate.
I’d shifted three times since then. Not intentionally—at least not the first time. At least I knew that what had happened on the battlefield wasn’t a single miracle meant to save me and vanish the moment the danger passed.
This was part of me now.
Each shift took a little less out of me than the last. The first had left me barely able to stand afterward, every muscle in my body trembling like I’d run for miles without stopping.
The second came with bone-deep exhaustion that made my limbs feel too heavy to lift.
The third left behind a hollow ache behind my eyes and heat lingering under my skin long after the fire was gone.
But I was learning.
Learning where the power sat in my body. Learning the difference between letting it breathe and letting it consume everything around me. Learning that the fire didn’t want to destroy me—it wanted to move. To rise. To be used.
Sebastian watched me like he was afraid I might combust again if he blinked.
He never said it out loud, but the bond made his concern impossible to miss. It was always there now—a steady, low awareness humming beneath everything else. His attention stayed tuned to me constantly, following my pulse, my breath, the subtle shifts in the temperature of my magic.
If my heart sped up, he noticed.
If my power flickered too sharply, he noticed.
If I breathed even slightly wrong, he noticed.
He hadn’t left my side much since the battle.
Not willingly.
Occasionally someone dragged him away to deal with the thousand problems that came with war, but he always came back quickly, shadows curling around him the moment he stepped into whatever room I happened to be in.
Bronwen hadn’t gone far either.
She moved through the castle with her usual sharp confidence, issuing orders, repairing damage, pretending everything was perfectly under control. But every so often I would catch her watching me with a strange expression.
Alastor was back.