Chapter 42 Violet
Violet
“How do you expect us to get to her?” Adar snapped, pacing the length of the room. “March into lands no one sets foot in without a Guard? We have no idea what we’d be walking into. Gods—she could be listening right now for all we know.”
His boots struck the stone floor in sharp, frustrated rhythms as he turned at the end of the table and started back the other way.
He had been doing that for the better part of an hour—pacing, stopping, gesturing toward the maps spread across every surface, then pacing again when none of us could give him an answer he liked.
We had been at this for hours.
The war room looked worse than the battlefield had.
Maps of every realm were scattered across the table, layered over one another where we had tried to trace routes and territories that none of us had stepped foot in before.
Lines had been drawn, erased, and drawn again until the parchment looked scarred.
Notes filled the margins—half plans, abandoned strategies, ideas that had fallen apart the moment we tried to say them out loud.
Every suggestion ended the same way.
Raised voices.
Half-formed plans.
And the crushing certainty that none of them were enough.
No matter how many angles we tried, we kept circling the same truth: we were reacting. Always reacting. Always one step behind.
Sebastian stood near the window, arms folded as he stared out into the dark stretch of the Night Realm beyond the glass. His shadows gathered at his feet, unusually subdued, as if even they understood the weight pressing down on the room.
Alastor remained near the far end of the table, one hand braced against the wood as he studied the map of the Sun Realm like the answer might eventually appear if he stared long enough.
I sat in the center of the chaos, staring down at the tangled mess of routes and borders until the lines blurred together.
I felt hollowed out.
The thought that someone had been able to reach inside my mind—inside Sebastian’s—and force us to our knees without us even realizing it made my skin crawl. She had slipped past his protections. Past his shadows. Past everything that was supposed to keep us safe.
None of us were safe.
Adar was probably right. She could already be watching. Listening through my ears. Watching through my eyes. Waiting patiently to see what we would do next.
The idea made the back of my neck prickle.
“I don’t know,” I said finally, lifting my head from the maps. The words tasted like failure. “I don’t know where we go from here.”
The door slammed open hard enough that the maps on the table shifted.
Every head in the room snapped toward the sound.
Bronwen stood in the doorway.
I half expected her to waltz in like she always did—dramatic, irritated, announcing that we were all insufferable and that the war room was closed for the day.
I expected her to dump armfuls of silk and jewelry onto the table and make me look at everything she’d bought while Sebastian pretended not to care how much it cost.
Honestly, I would have welcomed it.
Anything was better than this.
But Bronwen didn’t move.
Her eyes were wide, red around the edges, her face streaked with tears she hadn’t bothered to wipe away. The composure she normally wore like armor—the effortless control, the sharp amusement—was gone. Whatever she had just come from had stripped it clean off her.
My stomach dropped.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, already pushing back from the table.
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she stepped aside.
A man entered the room.
He was tall—taller even than Sebastian—with hair so pale it was nearly white in the light from the windows. He moved with an ease that made my skin prickle immediately, the kind of quiet confidence that came from someone who had never expected to be stopped, never expected to be challenged.
Casual.
Certain.
A shadow snapped around my waist and yanked me back against Sebastian’s chest. The stranger tracked the movement instantly, his eyes flaring at the shadows.
There was something unmistakably predatory in the way his eyes scanned the room, like he was cataloging threats before deciding whether any of them were worth the effort.
“August?” Adar said sharply, stepping forward.
He moved instinctively, placing himself between us and the man.
I stared at the stranger, my pulse roaring in my ears.
This had to be wrong.
Another manipulation. Another trick. Another carefully placed fracture meant to splinter us when we were already barely holding together.
Bronwen’s hands were shaking.
Not subtly. Not the quiet tremor she usually hid.
The kind that came from floodgates breaking open all at once.
My chest tightened when I realized she wasn’t even trying to hide it.
August tilted his head slightly as he looked at Adar. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“Take off the glamours, Sebastian,” Bronwen whispered.
Sebastian’s arm tightened once around my waist before he lifted his hand. The glamours slid away from Adar and Bronwen both, revealing them fully.
The moment the illusion broke, recognition flashed across August’s face.
“Adar!” he said, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth. “Hiding your beauty? I never thought I’d see the day.”
Adar didn’t return the humor.
“And I never thought I’d see the day a dead man walked,” he said coldly.
“Well, technically, didn’t you see an army of dead men when Winnie used the blade?”
Adar completely ignored him and looked at Bronwen. “B,” he said sharply. “What happened?”
She didn’t look at him. She was solely focused on August.
“He’s out,” she said.
That was all.
No clever remark. No dark joke to soften the moment.
“I fucking see that!” Adar snapped. “But that’s impossible!” His gaze cut to Sebastian.
“What is this? Is it a trick? Is someone glamoured as him?”
Sebastian shook his head once. “It’s him.”
The certainty in his voice settled heavily in the room.
“He came back to me,” Bronwen whispered.
* * *
Yara found me in the west corridor and told me I was needed.
Since the invasion, I was being pulled in a dozen directions at once.
Duty tugged at one arm, fear at the other.
Every corridor I walked seemed to end with someone needing an answer, a decision, reassurance that I barely knew how to give.
My thoughts were constantly crowded with strategies, threats, the quiet knowledge that we were still one step behind a woman who had been planning this for centuries.
So when Yara turned down the hall toward the throne room, I didn’t question it.
My steps echoed softly against the stone as we walked, the castle unusually quiet at this hour. When she reached the doors, she simply gestured toward them and stepped away, leaving me alone in the corridor.
I frowned slightly but pushed the doors open anyway.
Then I stopped short.
Candles lined the floor in wide, careful arcs, their flames steady against the dimness of the room. A small band stood at the far end of the room, already playing. The music drifted softly through the space.
Above us, the glass ceiling revealed the sky.
Sebastian stood alone in the center of it all. When he saw me, his eyes softened.
“What is this?” I asked as I crossed the room.
He smiled. “May I have this dance, love?”
Before I could answer, he stepped forward and pulled me into him.
One hand settled easily at my waist while the other took mine, guiding my arm into place. The music sank into me immediately.
“This was the song we danced to at Lulenacht,” I said when I realized.
“Yes it is.”
I rested my forehead against his shoulder as we began to move, our steps falling easily into the rhythm.
“And what’s the occasion?” I murmured.
Sebastian’s hand tightened just slightly at my waist as he guided us into another turn.
“We’re here,” he said simply. “Together. And I’ve decided that from now on, we’re going to spend every moment we can like this.”
I smiled.
“Everything else feels uncertain right now,” he said.
“Realms. Alliances. Threats we can’t see yet.
All of it could change tomorrow.” His thumb brushed lightly against the back of my hand where he held it.
“But you aren’t. You’re the only constant I have.
And I want to show you what you mean to me whenever I can. ”
My chest tightened.
“Does this have anything to do with a certain vampire returning from the dead?” I asked.
Sebastian’s mouth tilted as he spun me, the movement smooth and controlled as he guided me through the turn. “It may have reminded me… a little.”
I met his gaze again as he pulled me closer. “I knew she missed him. Even though she tried to hide it. But seeing her today…” I shook my head slightly, the memory of Bronwen’s face still sitting heavy in my chest. “If she loves him the way I love you. I don’t know how she kept going.”
“She went on for Adar,” Sebastian said. “But she wasn’t really herself.”
“Well,” I said softly, “now she can finally heal.”
His hand at my waist stilled, the easy rhythm of the dance faltering for a fraction of a second.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Something about him doesn’t feel right,” Sebastian said.
I straightened slightly, studying his face. “But you said it was him today.”
“I do believe it’s him,” he replied. “But he still doesn’t feel right.”
I frowned. “He’s a vampire who formed out of nothing,” I said. “I don’t think that would feel right to anyone. Is he even a vampire anymore? Or some new, terrifying category?”
That pulled a smile from him. “It’s not what he is that bothers me,” Sebastian said. “It’s who he is. My shadows are on edge around him. They don’t trust him.”
I watched him carefully. “And you?”
Sebastian exhaled slowly. “I’m just… waiting.”
“For what?”
His gaze drifted briefly toward the glass ceiling above us before returning to mine. “To see what happens next.”
“What does Adar think?” I asked.
“He’s worried,” Sebastian admitted. “He never trusted August. But if Bronwen is happy… he won’t stand in her way.”
I sighed. “I think the two of you are just overprotective.”
“I hope that’s all it is,” he said.
The music swelled gently around us, the melody weaving through the quiet throne room while the band at the far end of the room played on like nothing beyond these walls existed. Sebastian spun me again, and for a while, we didn’t speak.
We simply moved together through the candlelight, our steps falling easily into the rhythm of the music. I rested my head briefly against his shoulder, letting the quiet of the moment settle around us.
For a little while, we allowed ourselves to pretend.
Pretend the world wasn’t fraying at the edges.
Pretend the future waiting beyond these walls wasn’t uncertain and dangerous.
Pretend this moment might last longer than we both knew it ever would.