Chapter 35 #2
“If Anethesis was right… then Amara can open portals.”
I laugh, harsh, mirthlessly. Born of exhaustion, frustration, and a grief that has long since rotted into something uglier.
“Amara barely breathes, yet you think she could open a portal to An’kel?”
“I can think of no other way.”
I shove to my feet, raking a hand through my hair.
“Even if she could, you know the price. Blood. Every last drop.” My heart thunders painfully. “If I haven’t already lost her, opening a portal would take her from me for certain.”
“But it could save your child.”
My eyes snap to hers. “You would have me choose between one and the other?”
Her composure does not falter.
“Amara risked her life to protect your daughter. She didn’t expect to survive. She was willing to pay the price. I have no doubt she would lay down her life again if it meant her child lived.”
My jaw aches with the force of my clenched teeth. “That is not your decision to make. And what if…”
The words wedge in my throat. They burn like fire, tear like claws.
“What if?” Zyphoro presses, her voice low.
When I meet my sister’s gaze, the sting of tears betrays me.
“What if my daughter is already dead? What if I lose them both?”
The warmth comes from the last place I expect. Her hand on my shoulder, firm and steady.
“Then at least we’ll be in his temple,” she says, her grip tightening. “Where Gygarth waits and we will kill him, brother. End him, once and for all.”
“I dream of nothing more, sister. But he is no different from Emranth. He cannot be killed. He is not flesh and blood.”
Her head tilts, moonlight catching the sharp line of her jaw. “But you destroyed Emranth.”
My hand presses to my chest, deeper than fabric, deeper than flesh, seeking the shadowed place where that truth festers. “Not truly. Only contained him… in here.”
“Yes,” Zyphoro says, voice calm though her eyes storm. “And now he is your prisoner. You control him. There cannot be one without the other, but there can only be one master, Daedalus.”
Her hand falls away, and then her wings burst from her back in a sweep of darkness, catching the wind.
I watch her silhouette rise against the moon, gliding into the crow’s nest. She folds her wings, settling into the shadows, the wind whispering through her feathers as she bathes in silver light.
I watch her for a long moment, her words seeping into me like ink through cloth, sinking past skin, finding some quiet, dangerous place of reason.
She is my twin. The other half of my splintered soul.
Time and betrayal have stolen centuries from us, yet I know her as I know my own heartbeat and still, there are shadows in her I will never reach. Dark corners I will never fully see, never truly understand.
I trust her with my life, and I know without a doubt that she would end it if she had to.
Sometimes I wonder how different the world might have been if Gygarth had chosen a favored daughter over a favored son. If the curse had been hers, not mine. If I had been the one locked away in a room that does not exist, counting the years slip by while the world outside forgot my name.
There cannot be one without the other.
Does Zyphoro speak of the Father Below… or of us?
I leave Zyphoro in the moonlight and descend below deck.
The door groans open beneath my hand, and the first thing I see is the crib.
Empty.
Haunting.
I wrench my gaze away before the hollow ache in my chest can deepen, but there is no peace elsewhere.
Amara lies silent on the bed, arms still at her sides, her body a ruined statue.
Char clings stubbornly to her skin, burned and blistered, red and raw, torn as though the world itself had tried to unmake her.
I barely recognize her and yet golden threads, the Binds of Fate, still wind through the dark between us, reaching for me, reminding me that beneath the agony, she is still mine. My mate. My heart.
A faint golden halo wraps around her, holding her in place, freezing her in this single moment in time.
Hunched in a chair beside the bed is Reon.
Exhaustion drips from every line of him.
His hair has dulled, his eyes ringed in dark shadows, their usual glow snuffed out.
His skin is ashen, his once sharp frame worn thin.
One trembling arm stretches toward Amara, his fingers sparking with faint flickers of light as if they might gutter out at any second.
He’s been holding the barrier since we departed Baev’kalath, pouring every scrap of his essence into keeping Amara suspended, so her body cannot slip further toward decay. The strain is eating him alive.
I do not know the full extent of his Fae gifts, only scraps from old texts, the kind of knowledge gathered in fragments over years.
Each House’s magic is bound to their bloodline.
The Mordorin, with their void-walking. The Taramethos, masters of transmutation.
The Maledannan, healers without peer and the Fae of Eyr’Drogul, manipulators of time itself.
I’ve seen Reon use it before, moments in battle where seconds meant survival, or in smaller moments, like plucking a boy from mid-fall.
He’s even been known to boast, with a roguish grin, how his gift serves him in the bedroom, stretching out pleasures far beyond what his own body could claim credit for.
But this… this I have never seen.
Holding her like this takes more than skill. More than will. It demands the very lifeblood of him and it could fail at any moment.
All Fae gifts have limits. No matter how infinite they may seem, magic is fickle. Wild. It has no master, only slaves and yet, I have never seen Reon so fixed, so unshakably devoted to a single purpose.
I know without question that he will hold this barrier for as long as he can, until his last breath if it comes to that, and for that, I am more grateful than I can ever say. More grateful than he will ever know.
I’m so fixed on Amara. On Reon. On the empty crib, I don’t notice Solena at first. She moves quietly in the corner, leaning over a washbowl. Her hands twist a cloth, wringing water from it until droplets patter back into the basin.
She crosses to Reon without a word, pressing the cool fabric to his brow, wiping away the sheen of sweat that clings there. Then she reaches for a cup on the table, lifts it to his lips until he drinks. When he swallows, she returns it to its place.
All of it done in silence.
“How much longer until we reach land?” Solena asks finally, though her gaze does not meet mine, fixed instead on the tasks she vigilantly tends to.
“Not long. A day or two at most. Zyphoro and I can conjure more smoke to drive the winds.” I exhale. “I can summon as much of the void as I wish, it seems. Gygarth doesn’t care. He’s not hunting me anymore. He has something else.”
A small, sharp gulp from her. “What do you think he will do with her?”
“I do not know,” I breathe.
Truth is, I don’t want to know. My heart cannot bear the weight of what that answer might be, and to speak my fears aloud would give them teeth.
“What will happen when we reach the Grove? Will her people truly be able to heal her?”
I turn from her. From Reon. From the bed and drift toward the crib. My fingers graze its edge, and the chill of the wood startles me. The furs inside are just as cold, robbed of my daughter’s warmth.
“You ask questions I cannot answer,” I say quietly.
“They are questions that must be answered. Months, Rook. We have journeyed for months. We have bled and endured, and in that time our enemies have only multiplied. Their power has grown. And us? We have gained nothing. We have only lost more.” Her voice sharpens.
“You must give us something if you wish to keep hope alive.”
I lift my gaze to hers at last, though my stare feels hollow. “If hope is what you seek, Solena, you’re looking for it in the most hopeless of places. I have none to give you.”
“Then what are we fighting for?” Her voice cracks on the words, and the moment they leave her lips, she flinches like they weren’t meant to be spoken.
My eyes find the crib again. Still empty.
“I fight for Amara. For my daughter. For my family.” My voice is low, steady.
“That is the fire in me. The reason I will burn until nothing is left but ash. If you mean to stand beside me, then you must find your own fire. What would you burn for? What would you die for? I cannot give that to you, Solena. But if you choose to walk away. If you and Orios take to the skies to carve out your own peace, far from the torment I’ve brought upon you, I will not fault you.
I would take that peace myself if I could. ”
I hear Solena’s breath in the quiet, in the dark.
She has given so much to my cause. Inked sigils into my skin until her fingers bled. Transformed from a maid to a warrior, all for the human she once despised. From a servant to a trusted, beloved friend, both to Amara and to me.
I owe her everything. Granting her freedom is the least I can do.
“I stay for Amara, and for her daughter,” Solena says at last, and the weight of those words carries a freedom for me that she does not realize.
“I fight for the peace you speak of. For Orios and me, for our eternity together. But we will not know happiness until this is finished. Whatever shape that may take. However it may end. But you must give us hope, Rook. Without it, we have already lost this battle.”
Her words drift on the wind, press against my skin, trap my breath. She demands something of me, something I have struggled to claim for my entire cursed life, let alone offer freely.
Then I notice, as my hand brushes over the crib, the absence of red. The ribbon. Arax’s ribbon. His daughter’s ribbon.
“Estra’s ribbon is missing,” I murmur.
Solena exhales, a note of frustration threaded with sadness. “Yes,” she says, voice catching. “I think… I remember… it is with your daughter. Amara must have…”
I nod, sparing her the weight of recollection.
“She loved Arax,” I say softly, my gaze settling on Amara, frozen in time. “She barely knew him, and yet her heart found a way, and I know Arax felt the same. He saw Estra in her, I do not doubt that for a second. Amara’s heart mourned Estra even though she was nothing more than a memory.”
A smile slips across my face, fragile and fleeting, yet it eases the ache just slightly. “Only Amara could carry such a heart.”
And then the truth settles in me, warm and solid as the gold threads of the Binds of Fate. Hope is not gone. Hope lives in her. In this child. In the promise that no matter the darkness, there is something worth fighting for.
I kneel beside the crib, pressing my hand gently over the empty furs.
“If it is hope you want, Solena, then it will have a name,” I murmur, feeling the weight and the lightness all at once.
“Our daughter… Estra. A name for hope. For love. For the pieces of us we refuse to lose. Estra will carry us forward. She will carry Amara, and she will carry all the light we have left. She is a new age for Fae and human. A binding. A reckoning. Estra.”
Solena’s eyes widen, and I can see the hope she’s been demanding finally take root, warming her from the inside out. “Estra,” she whispers, tasting it. “She is… our hope.”
“Yes,” I say, letting the word hang in the air, heavy with promise. “And if she is anything like her mother, she will never stop fighting. She is alive.”