Chapter 7 #2
Brynelle’s expression softened. “Because you are dangerous, Isara. You crossed the Veil. And you didn’t just survive, but emerged changed.
Stronger. There are maybe five people in recorded history who’ve done that without losing their minds or their souls.
” She paused. “He’s not trying to cage you.
He’s trying to keep you from becoming something that needs to be caged. ”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to rage against the presumption, the arrogance, the sheer audacity of these people thinking they knew what was best for me.
But all I could think about was Mireth’s laughter this morning. Eryx’s sticky fingers clutching that wooden horse. The way they’d slept, really slept, for the first time in months.
The way Varyth had pulled me from the Veil when he could have left me there.
I could feel Brynelle weighing my every breath, every micro-expression that might betray what I was thinking.
What I was thinking was that she made too much sense. That her words carved through my defences like they were made of paper instead of steel and spite.
And I fucking hated that.
“So what?” I said finally, voice rough with exhaustion. “I’m supposed to just... trust? Stay here and play house while he decides what kind of monster I might become?”
“I’m saying give it a chance.” Brynelle stepped closer, and her expression was almost gentle. “Before you drag your children back into the wilderness because you’re too stubborn to admit you might be wrong.”
She was right, gods-damn her, she was right. Running would mean pulling Mireth and Eryx back into that life of fear and hunger and sleeping with one eye open. It would mean watching the light fade from their eyes again, watching them learn to flinch at every shadow.
It would mean failing them. Again.
But staying meant trusting people who spoke in riddles and kept secrets that could get us all killed. It meant believing that their version of protection didn’t come with strings attached.
It meant letting someone else hold the blade.
I looked at the map clutched in my hand, then reluctantly set it back on the desk. “I’ll think about it.”
Brynelle’s smile was small but genuine. “That’s all anyone can ask.”
She moved to leave, then paused at the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder with an expression that was pure mischief.
“Oh, by the way, Varyth will be out of the castle for the next three days. Trade negotiations in the Eastern Courts. But when he returns, he wants to assess your combat skills properly. So... be ready.”
Of course he fucking does. “Naturally,” I said, voice dripping sarcasm. “Because what’s a day in paradise without someone wanting to test how efficiently I can kill things?”
Brynelle’s grin widened. “I think you two are going to get along just fine.”
She slipped out into the corridor, leaving me alone with moonlight and the taste of bitter truth.
But the silence Brynelle left behind wasn’t really silence at all.
It was full of song.
The moment her footsteps faded down the corridor, it crept back in, that cursed melody that had been threading through my skull since I’d first set foot in this realm. Beautiful and maddening, like wind chimes made of starlight and broken promises.
It hummed through the stones beneath my feet, whispered along the edges of the moonlight streaming through Varyth’s windows. A lullaby sung by something ancient and patient, something that had been waiting far longer than I’d been alive.
I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to muffle it. But the song wasn’t coming through my ears—it was resonating in my bones, in the marrow, in the spaces between heartbeats where silence should have lived.
“Shut up,” I whispered under my breath, pressing my back against the cold stone wall as I navigated another turn. “Just... fucking shut up for five minutes.”
The melody only grew stronger. Insistent. Like it was trying to tell me something I was too stupid or too stubborn to understand.
My bare feet made no sound on the marble floors, but the song filled the silence anyway, threading through the shadows, curling around the moonlight spilling through tall windows.
It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly. That was the problem.
It was gorgeous in the way that dangerous things often were. Seductive. Compelling.
The kind of beautiful that made you forget to be afraid until the knife was already between your ribs.
“Not tonight,” I snarled at the empty air, quickening my pace. “I don’t have time for your mystical bullshit.”
But the castle didn’t care about my schedule. If anything, the song grew more complex—harmonies layering over the main melody like voices in a choir I couldn’t see. Each note seemed to resonate in my bones, in whatever magic lay coiled beneath my skin like a sleeping serpent.
I turned another corner, then another, the familiar path to my chambers burned into muscle memory from weeks of careful navigation. The song was changing, shifting from ethereal beauty to something else. Something that made the hair on my arms stand up and the fire in my veins stir restlessly.
Warning.
The castle wasn’t just singing, it was trying to tell me something. And whatever it was, I probably wasn’t going to like it.