Forty-Nine
ChApter
This was not whom I expected. A woman stands before me, still as carved stone.
A deep-red cloak pools at her feet, its hood casting her face in shadow.
When she lifts her chin, candlelight skims over an intricate silver mask that hides everything from her brow to the tip of her nose, leaving only her mouth bare.
Below it, full lips are painted the shade of fresh blood.
Her presence is a tangible weight in the air, confident, deliberate, as if every movement has already been decided before she makes it.
“You’re the seer,” I say.
It feels as if her gaze were piercing straight through me.
“You can call me ‘Ella.’ We’ve been expecting you, Princess.” Her voice is smooth, certain, and threaded with something that makes the fine hairs on my arms lift.
The words don’t settle over me as much as they settle into me, making them impossible to shake off.
“Have you?” I manage, though my voice sounds smaller than I’d like it to.
The corner of her mouth lifts, not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “You’ve taken your time getting here.”
I straighten my shoulders. “I’ve been busy.”
A low, lilting hum slips past her lips—barely audible, but it slides under my skin like warm oil, coaxing my pulse into a slower rhythm. “The things you’ve been occupying yourself with are trivial. You are a special being with special purpose. And you belong here.”
“I belong at the head of my regiment, protecting Terre Ferique from your monsters.”
And I belong with Dante. At his side. Forever.
She doesn’t answer right away, simply staring, as if measuring me. “The prophecy speaks of one with great power—power to change the tides of fate itself. I see that power in you. And I am going to help you use it… to change the world.”
A chill ripples through me, not from fear of her words, but from the certainty that her idea of change is twisted. “Then it seems,” I say evenly, “that our visions of the world are vastly different.”
Her smile deepens, slow and knowing. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you simply haven’t seen clearly yet.”
“Or maybe you’re not as good a seer as the rumors say you are. Because if you were any good at it, you would see I’m not going to cooperate.”
The corner of her lips quirks upward. “Though you are a clever girl, there are some things you simply don’t understand.”
Before I can retort, footfalls echo behind me, measured and purposeful.
The seer glances over my shoulder, clasping her hands together and straightening her shoulders.
I swallow hard, steeling myself before turning around.
The man in the black-hooded cloak raises his head. Just a fraction. Enough for the candlelight to catch his bearded jaw, the line of his mouth.
My throat closes.
He lifts his hand in a single, smooth motion, grabbing the black fabric of his hood and pulling it back.
My knees nearly give out.
“No…” I whisper, but the word barely escapes.
He’s older, shadows etched beneath his eyes. But it’s unmistakably him.
My father.
Alive.
And in his eyes, there is no warmth. Only calculation and power and something that cuts deep.
Like betrayal.
I stagger back a step, my eyes welling with tears.
He is alive.
And he is the tsar.
I can’t feel my hands. My pulse thunders in my ears, drowning out the hiss of the candles and the cold that bites at my skin.
My father is alive. Not a ghost or a myth. Not some charlatan in disguise. He stands before me, the same jawline that appears in dusty portraits hung in Delasurvia’s castle halls. The same presence from my childhood that once made me feel safe.
But now, there’s a coldness behind those eyes that makes me feel sick.
I shake my head slowly, as if I could dislodge the truth and make it untrue again. “I thought you were dead.”
The words are so quiet, I’m not even sure I truly said them.
He regards me for what feels like forever before he finally speaks. “I was. In all the ways that mattered.”
My breath stutters. “No,” I say louder now.
“No. You—” I step back, the stone floor solid beneath my boots, anchoring me before I fall.
“You let the world believe you were gone. You let me believe it. And instead, you—” I gesture around at the fortress, the frozen rot of this place. “You became this.”
He doesn’t flinch.
“How could you be here all this time?” My voice trembles with anger.
“Living all this time as the Shadow Tsar. I wanted to believe the tsar was just some monster. That it couldn’t be you.
Because that was easier than thinking my father would ever become something so… so—” I choke on the word. “Cruel.”
His expression barely shifts. A twitch of his mouth. Not quite a smile. “I became what was necessary.”
I stare at him, heart splintering, trying to reconcile the man I remember—golden and fierce and jovial—with the one in front of me now.
Torbin watches this exchange with thinly veiled satisfaction, clearly pleased with the drama unfolding—but I doubt he could understand the magnitude of this moment. How it’s breaking me. His gaze flicks between us, hungry for the next words.
I steady my breath, forcing steel into my spine. “What exactly do you need me for?”
The question falls like a gauntlet at his feet.
He steps closer, slow and deliberate. The candles flare as he moves past, catching glints of silver at his sleeves, the hint of a blade at his side.
“You carry something precious,” he says softly. “A power inside you that I need to access.”
My stomach knots. Does he know that my mother hid our power? Does he know it’s trying to break free?
My fingers curl into fists. “You think I’ll help you?” I snap. “That I’ll stand beside someone who slaughters villages and creates monsters? So you can make everyone bend the knee?”
A grim smile twists across his face, a look of conviction.
“You think too small, Celeste. I don’t care about thrones. I care about reshaping the world.”
“Well, I care about the people who live in it,” I bite out. “And I will never support someone so callous, so malicious, so twisted as to become what you’ve become.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Then he says, almost gently, “You will.”
My breath catches.
“Not because I ask,” he continues. “But because there will come a day when you’ll have no other choice.”
A chill wraps around my spine—not from the room, but from the certainty in his voice.
I grit my teeth hard enough to ache. The pulse in my neck pounds, furious.
I could kill him.
Or at least hurt him enough to incapacitate him.
The thought doesn’t come as a whisper this time; it hits like a blade unsheathed, bright and cold. I see it in my mind as clearly as if I’ve already done it: my energy ripping through him, his body crumpling, the tyranny ending with one, clean strike.
The memory of Mersos rises like a tide—the vines snapping under my command, their sharp recoil. I could snap him just the same. Bone instead of wood.
The buzzing inside me swells, sharp and electric, racing through my chest, into my fingertips. It’s eager. Hungry. My hands twitch with the need to aim, to release.
I lock my eyes on him, already imagining the way he’ll stagger when the force hits, the silence that will follow. The world would be free of him. Dante would be free. I would be free.
One heartbeat. That’s all it would take. One heartbeat and—
Movement cuts through the air.
Ella glides forward from the shadows, her deep-red hood catching the light, silver mask gleaming. She tilts her head, like she’s reading every thought in my skull, and then… she hums.
The sound is low, almost intimate, curling into my ears like smoke. At first, it’s nothing—just a note hanging in the air—but then the melody snakes through me, winding into my ribs, my spine, my skull.
The fury dulls. The hunger fades. The buzzing sputters and dies, leaving only emptiness.
My legs weaken. My breath comes shallow, as if the hum has stolen the air itself. My limbs go heavy, sluggish, like they’ve been packed with wet sand.
A siren. My uncle warned me about a siren.
The thought barely forms before my knees buckle. Torbin’s grip closes around my arms, catching me, keeping me upright.
The humming stops, but the silence she leaves behind feels worse—like she’s carved my power out with a surgeon’s precision and locked it away, just out of reach.
The tsar lifts a hand and gives a dismissive wave. “She’s tired. Take her back to her chamber.”
Torbin bows slightly, his hand still at my elbow.
Despite the weakness pulling me down, I jerk away. “I can walk,” I snap.
The tsar doesn’t watch me leave. He’s already turning back toward the center of the chamber, the flickering light swallowing him once again.
The seer watches me intently as I make my way out of the room.
As the door shuts behind me, my head drops. I don’t know if I’m mourning the man he was, or the one I wanted him to be. But either way, something inside me cracks.
Torbin leads me back through the frozen halls in silence, though I feel the weight of his gaze on me every few steps.
When we reach the door to my chamber, I stop short, planting my feet.
“I want to see Nadya,” I say, my voice low but firm. “Where is she?”
He turns to face me, brow arching slightly. “You’re in no position to make demands.”
“She’s my friend,” I snap. “She’s done nothing wrong—”
“She is fine,” he cuts in smoothly, stepping closer. “You, on the other hand, have bigger things to worry about.”
His smirk widens, and he turns the iron key in the lock. The door creaks open, and I take two steps inside.
When he follows, I stop short and whirl to face him. “What are you doing?”
His gloved hand rises—slowly, deliberately—and brushes a lock of hair behind my ear. The gesture is almost tender. Almost.
It takes every ounce of control I have not to flinch.
His eyes flick to mine, and something dark and possessive stirs there. He chuckles softly, seeing through my tough facade. “Everything is falling into place, Celeste. You’ll see that soon enough. All you have to do is stop fighting it.”
“You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t agree with you.”
His eyes flit over my features as he clicks his tongue. “Be smart, my dear. You’ve already seen what happens when you go up against the seer. You wouldn’t want to test my patience. Things could get rather… ugly.”
I shake my head. “I’ll take my chances. You’ve had a chance to kill me, but you haven’t. So unless you’re going to kill me right now, why don’t you get the hell out of my room?”
For a moment, he simply stares at me, his expression unreadable. Then he leans in before I can pull away, his lips brushing my cheek in a mockery of affection. The touch curdles in my stomach.
I dip my head and recoil.
He lets out a small chuckle. “Sleep well, Celeste. We have lots to discuss in the morning.” He steps back, watching me as he pulls the door closed.
After the sound of his footsteps diminish, I check the handle.
Locked.
Of course.
I stand frozen in the dim room, the silence pressing down on me like a second skin.
The fire in the hearth has burned low, throwing soft, twitching shadows against the stone walls.
I press a hand to my cheek, wiping away the ghost of Torbin’s kiss as if it were filth.
Then I walk to the small window, needing air I can’t reach.
He’s alive.
My father is alive.
The thought circles my mind like a vulture. It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be. And yet—I saw him. I heard his voice. I felt the gravity of his presence in my very bones.
He’s not a rumor or a myth or a nightmare conjured by others. He’s real. And he has become something I don’t recognize.
Something I want no part of.
I think of what my uncle said. “I can’t prove it to be true. But I believe your father killed your mother.”
I hadn’t wanted to believe him. Not then. Not even now.
But after tonight… how can I not?
I sink down to the cold, stone floor, pressing my back to the bedframe. My hands are trembling, rage and sorrow warping every breath I take.
Hot tears streak down my cheeks, leaving me with the last ounce of hope I had that my father was not some wicked fiend. I close my eyes and reach out—not with my hands, but with the quiet ache that lives deep beneath my ribs.
“Dante.”
I don’t know if he’ll hear me, but I reach, anyway.
“Can you hear me?”
I picture his face, his hands, the warmth I felt when he held me. That quiet certainty that, even if no one else could save me, he would try.
“Dante, please.”
Nothing.
Just the crackle of embers in the hearth and the howling wind outside.
Still… I wait.
Because some part of me—irrational and fragile and impossibly stubborn—believes he might hear it. Might feel it.
That somewhere, across the miles, his pulse has stuttered.
That the same ache I feel in my chest might echo in his.