Chapter Twenty-Three
Elysia
Sorryn insists on walking me back to my chambers, and I finally relent, if only because my body is too exhausted to argue and my mind too full to think.
The corridor stretches long and gleaming before us, its floors inlaid with silver-veined marble.
Rhune follows a few paces behind, a silent shadow trailing us both. I can feel him there, just at the edge of my senses, the pressure of his presence folding around me like the remnants of a storm.
I take a deep breath and push the sensation away. He’s just a bodyguard ensuring my safety.
When I walked away from him after our dance, I told myself that it would be the last time I allowed my mind to be distracted and confused with the ache I feel for him.
I made a promise to Lisbeth and all those we’d lost. Matters of the heart have no place in my life now. Not when there is so much on the line.
“You don’t need to follow,” Sorryn says over his shoulder, not bothering to slow his long strides despite my struggle to keep up. “She’s with me.”
“I wasn’t asking,” Rhune replies, his voice low and sharp.
The tension hums louder than our footsteps.
Sorryn says nothing more, but I catch the narrowing of his eyes, the tightening of his jaw. I knew I hadn’t imagined the bubbling animosity between the two brothers at the temple, yet I still don’t have a grasp of where it stems from.
Rhune stays just steps behind me. Unshaken. Unbothered.
Eventually we come to a stop before my chamber door. I reach for the handle, ready to slip inside and vanish from everyone and everything. This has been the most agonizing day of my life and all I want is to close my eyes and let reality slip away for a few blissful hours.
Sorryn steps into my space, preventing me from moving forward.
“Today was difficult,” he says softly, bringing his large hand up to cup my cheek. “But you carried it with grace. I hope tomorrow is gentler.”
He leans in, eyes on mine, and I know what’s coming. My stomach tightens and I don’t move until the very last second. Then, I turn, offering my cheek.
It should feel flattering. He’s a king. Powerful, graceful, and impossibly revered from what I glimpsed at the ball.
I should feel chosen, but as his mouth touches my cheek, my eyes find Rhune.
He’s watching.
There’s fire there flashing through his expression before he turns away—jaw locked, shoulders coiled. It’s gone too quickly to comment on, but not quickly enough to forget.
Why does he insist on saying one thing to me, while lacking the ability to display matching emotions on his face? Everything about him has been a contradiction.
He’s told me himself that he isn’t an option. He’s sworn it with his distance, with his silence, with the way he pulled away when I needed him most.
Yet it’s not Sorryn’s lips I imagine on my skin. The thought has my lips thinning just as Sorryn pulls back to look down at me.
“Rest well, my Queen,” he says.
I nod and let out a breath. “Good night.”
He leaves without another word and my shoulders instantly sag. There’s an overwhelming pressure to present myself as well as I can around everyone besides the shadow that moves into place next to my door, silent as ever.
I continue to pause in the doorway, hand still on the handle.
After a breath, I lift my eyes to the sharp and beautiful lines of his face, hating the way his beauty continues to steal my breath.
Maybe in time I will stop thinking of him as the protective, nurturing elf from my dreams. The one who broke laws to see me. The one who admitted his fear for me when he couldn’t find me at night. The one who cradled me as my soul cracked open to reveal a new version of myself.
My jaw clenches as I shove that tender moment into the depths of my mind. That isn’t the elf in front of me now. Maybe if I finally agree to his demands of not being an option, he will stop making this so confusing.
“You already denied my attempts to make you an option,” I say quietly as he blinks. “I’ll respect that, but I expect you to respect my decisions moving forward—especially the ones that don’t involve you. If you have anything left to say, say it now.”
Silence stretches and still he won’t even meet my eyes.
I wait, despite knowing I should walk through my door without looking back. I watch for a flicker of emotion. For a falter. For anything.
Maybe I imagine it, but just before I turn the handle, I think I see something slip through the mask—regret, sharp and fleeting.
No. I don’t let myself believe in what-ifs or looks that may or may not linger. Not anymore.
I step inside and close the door behind me, instantly sinking against the solid wood for support.
My chambers are still, touched only by moonlight through the windows.
I don’t bother lighting the lamps, loving the quiet and ethereal moment.
It brings a sense of quiet to my mind as I strip the gown from my shoulders and let it fall into a pool of silk at my feet.
I remove the crown with steady hands, staring at it in disbelief for a moment as the light gleams off the metal.
This morning I had greeted the day with Thalia’s small hand in mine and the desire for us all to survive the day with our minds intact.
I don’t stop the tears that fall freely down my cheeks as I lay it on the small pillow atop my vanity and begin to work on removing every pin from my hair.
The silence in the room tightens around me.
I toss the last pin aside and drag my fingers through my hair until it falls loose around my shoulders, wild and tangled. My breath trembles as I stand there, surrounded by an opulence that would take the combined wealth of the eastern lands where I’m from to emulate.
The bedding is silk and the floors gleam to perfection. The windows open to glistening stars and I hate it. I hate every inch of it.
Because Thalia is dead and I’m standing in a palace atop clouds.
Because Lisbeth had to watch me walk away and handle the fallout alone.
Because no matter how refined this room is, no matter how lovely the furnishings or how soft the sheets, nothing can hide the truth that I was handed a crown shaped from suffering and told to smile like it was a blessing.
My throat burns as I force a silky nightgown over my body, hating the way it clings to my skin, ever-present like the duties I can’t escape.
The tears don’t stop this time, but they’re different now. They scald my skin as they fall, and I welcome the heat, the ache, the fury that churns beneath every soft part of me that I’ve tried to protect.
I turn, pacing the room like a caged animal. My bare feet slap against the stone and fists curl at my sides until my nails dig into the tender flesh of my palms.
They made me watch her die.
They made me kneel in front of corpses and call it destiny.
This unrelenting fury is proof of the stranger that I’ve become.
I’m not the girl from Edritch anymore. Not the girl who braided her sister’s hair. Not someone who felt so weak despite her father calling her brave.
I’m not the woman who wears sorrow like a second skin in silence.
I want to scream and tear this room apart with my hands and make it look as torn as my soul is. To shatter every glass bottle on the vanity and throw the crown out the window.
Yet I can’t let it out. It’s trapped within me, simmering.
I prowl through the room, chest heaving, like it’s a battlefield.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I whisper as my cheeks flame with heat.
The words echo against the marble. They feel too loud, reverberating back to me.
“I didn’t ask to be a chosen. I didn’t ask to be a queen. I didn’t ask to watch my friends die so I could stand in a room fit for a goddess while the women who bled for this crown rot beneath the soil.”
My voice shakes. My legs do too, but I don’t stop, needing to get it out.
“I’m tired of pretending this is fine. That I’m fine. I’m tired of swallowing every ache just to be what they expect.”
I reach for the edge of the vanity, gripping it so hard I think the wood might crack.
This fury … it’s not weakness. It’s not shameful. It’s mine and it’s about damn time I let it breathe.
“I will wear this crown,” I say through my teeth. “But I will burn down everything that made it.”
The last words leave my mouth in a rush, and I don’t realize I’m not alone until I feel it.
That unmistakable pull.
I whirl toward the door, breath caught in my throat.
Rhune stands there, silent and unmoving, just within the threshold with the door closed behind him. His expression is unreadable, but I don’t miss the way his shoulders rise with each breath or the tightness around his eyes.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask, voice hoarse.
He doesn’t answer, instead choosing silence, his favorite defense since I ascended to his world.
I’ve bled too much for this crown, cried too many tears into the ground thousands of miles beneath us, and I’m done being met with silence when I deserve truth.
I storm toward him, anger giving my bare feet purpose as I cross the room and stop just a breath from his chest.
“Why are you even here?” I ask with a cold bite to my words. “Standing there like you care about anything I just said. If you’re only going to watch me break and say nothing, then get out.”
He flinches.
I press forward, shoving my finger into his chest. “You don’t get to glare when Sorryn touches me and then pretend you’re a statue again the second I try and fight for you. You don’t get to do both.”
Still, he says nothing and it makes my blood boil.
I hit both of my palms against his chest. Not hard. Just enough to make contact. To feel something solid under my hands instead of the crumbling edge of my restraint.
He grabs my wrists firmly and holds them between us. Our breath comes fast and uneven as we stare at each other, close enough now that I can feel the heat of his body and the trembling of my own hands.
His voice is ragged when he finally speaks.
“You think this is easy for me?” he says. “You think I haven’t spent every second of this damn journey fighting the instinct to reach for you?”
His fingers flex around mine, and his gaze drops to the space between us, as if the weight of his own words is too much.
“I don’t want to be the King of Nothing, Elysia,” he says quietly. “I was born outside both courts. I’ve never belonged—not to the Dromin, not to the Nithrin, not to anyone.”
His voice cracks just barely. “I hate that I’ve spent my life trying to be enough for people who look at me and only see failure, and now … now I’m forcing myself to walk away from the one person who’s ever looked at me like maybe I’m worth something.”
My heart stutters, but the heat in my veins doesn’t die down. It changes, shifting into something far more dangerous.
“I don’t want to do this without you,” I say, voice breaking. It feels like my soul tears with every word. “You’re the only soul atop these clouds I don’t fear.”
He lifts his eyes to mine, and the longing in them steals the air from my lungs.
“That’s interesting,” he whispers, “because yours is the only soul I do fear.”
I blink.
“I fear the way you make me want to throw my role and responsibilities into the sky. I fear the way I need more of you each time you leave my sight. I fear the way I’ve not been able to get you out of my mind for years …”
His voice lowers further, raw and trembling.
“Well before we ever exchanged words in your first nightmare.”
I inhale sharply, but the room feels too small now.
Years?
I thought his visits began just before I left for the selection. I thought he found me then. Not years before. Not when I was still just a girl in the village, plucking berries from bushes and sitting atop a hill longing for something more.
“You’ve been in my dreams that long?”
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to.
His hands lift slowly, gently, to cradle my cheeks. His touch is reverent, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he blinks.
We lean in until our breath mingles. I can feel the promise of it on his lips, feel the war raging in his hands as they tremble against my skin.
We pause and the world holds still.
“We can’t,” I whisper, voice already breaking as my hands come up to rest atop his. “Can we?”
He doesn’t answer. Just stares at me like the question itself is agony.
Then, softly, he says, “I watched you step forward before all those women from your lands. I watched you stand between them and that orb, hoping to stop them from being broken the way the High Priestess meant to break them.”
His thumb brushes across the back of my hand, almost absentmindedly. Like he doesn’t even realize he’s reaching for something he’s already told himself he can’t have.
“You did it,” he murmurs, “because you aren’t capable of putting yourself first when it means hurting others.”
The words gut me. Not because they’re cruel, but because they’re true.
My voice is quiet when I say, “You can’t put yourself first either.”
His jaw clenches.
“For the sake of the courts,” I continue, “and the blessings you want the Goddess to bestow. You want one of them to win, so she might bless their lands again, and to do that … you walk away from the one thing that makes you feel like you could belong.”
He looks at me for a long moment, anguish flickering behind his eyes.
Then he lifts his hand and gently brushes a tear from my cheek.
“Yes,” he breathes. “I can’t rip that chance away from our people. One court desperately needs it. They’ve been crumbling from within for too long. The magic isn’t flowing the way it should.”
I search his face, my breath catching in my throat. “So where does this leave us?”
The question hangs between us, heavy and fragile.
I see his answer in the tight set of his jaw, in the way his eyes drop like he’s already mourning a life that he never had the chance to live.
Somehow I want him more for it, not less. Not despite his restraint, but because of it … because I understand it now.
I understand what it means to carry an entire realm on your back for the sake of people who will never know the weight of that choice.
I understand what it is to want and to withhold in the same breath.
I understand why we can’t.
My feet slowly return to the ground, and I take a step back. Then another. I walk to the bed, feeling like each movement unthreads something inside me.
As I slip beneath the covers and close my eyes, my heart still pounding against my ribs, I whisper into the quiet, “Good night, Rhune.”
The door closes softly behind him.