Chapter 13
Wrenford’s daylight had a way of pretending everything was ordinary.
Sun pooled through the warped slats of Alaric’s tiny room, turning dust into drifting gold, warming the rough boards beneath Evelyne’s boots. Outside, the village carried on in muted rhythms. Inside, the air tasted like tonic, old blood, and fear.
Alaric lay on the narrow bed, swaddled in bandages that climbed his throat and wrapped his arms and ribs like someone had tried to stitch him back together with cloth.
His skin looked too pale and every breath he took was shallow.
Two Glaciermaw wolves stood like carved stone near the door, broad-shouldered and silent, their eyes never leaving the bed.
Beau from Moonshade lingered in the corner as if he’d been told not to move, not to blink, not to breathe too loud.
The lodge felt too small to hold what Alaric had become.
Evelyne’s gaze drifted to Heidara, who hadn’t moved from the bedside.
She still wore her moon-ritual leathers, rumpled now and smeared at the hem with dirt and dried blood.
Her hair had come loose and tangled over her shoulders, and her hands rested on her knees like she was afraid to touch anything.
But she stared at Alaric’s chest with the intensity of someone keeping a candle lit through sheer will.
Lorena had checked Evelyne hours ago, declared her “well enough” with a look that dared her to argue, and sent her away to rest. But Heidara hadn’t left Alaric’s side once. Her eyes tracked each inhale. As if counting them could keep him here.
She felt guilty. Evelyne recognized the shape of it in Heidara’s stillness and in the hollow quiet where her fire usually lived. If anyone understood what it meant to miss the signs until it was too late, it was Evelyne, and her throat tightened watching her friend drown in guilt.
A scrape of boots sounded as Beau stepped toward Heidara with cautious softness, like he was approaching a wounded animal that might bolt.
“Heidara,” he murmured, voice low. “You should eat something. Or at least—”
“Get out.”
The words were sharp enough to slice. Beau froze. His mouth parted as if he’d expected anger, not… this. Not the rawness that made Heidara’s voice tremble.
“Heidara, I’m just trying—”
“I said get out.” She didn’t look at him. Her eyes didn’t leave Alaric. “If you want to help, stand outside and keep breathing where I don’t have to listen to it.”
The Glaciermaw wolves did not react, though one shifted his weight in the smallest hint of warning. Beau’s jaw flexed once. Then he gave a tight, wounded nod and stepped back. The door closed behind him with a soft finality that felt far louder than it should have in the hush that followed.
Evelyne let out a slow breath and turned to Cillian.
He sat opposite her on the edge of a creaking chair, shoulders bent forward, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone pale.
The bruises at his throat looked darker in the daylight, stark against his fair skin.
Yet his eyes were clearer than they had been in days.
Focused. There was a steadiness in him she was not accustomed to seeing, one she thought she may have witnessed only once before, when he had been fully absorbed in one of those curious scientific books he loved.
He watched Alaric for a long moment before speaking.
“I can help him.”
Evelyne’s entire body went rigid as his words dropped over her like ice water. “No.”
Cillian’s gaze flicked to hers. He didn’t flinch. “Evelyne—”
“No.” She kept her voice low for Heidara’s sake, for Alaric’s sake, but it came out like steel anyway. “You nearly died the last time you used that light. I felt you burning. I watched you—”
“I know,” he said firmly. “I know what it did to me, and I’m not claiming I can fix him. But I might be able to help.” His eyes flicked toward the bed. “It could hurt, yes. Leaving him like this will hurt too. All of us.”
She hated that he was making sense. “You do not even know if it will work,” she whispered.
“No.” He swallowed. “But I have an idea. Or at least the shape of one.” He rubbed his palms together, as if grounding himself. “When I let the light out all at once, it nearly consumes me. It is too much, too fast. So what if I don’t let it out that way?”
Evelyne stared at him. “What are you saying?”
Cillian drew a breath. “What if I pull it out in pieces? Small fragments, not the whole darkness at once. Just enough to ease the pressure. Just enough to give him room to breathe. To be himself.”
Evelyne’s heart struck hard against her ribs. “You speak as though darkness in a soul can be drawn out like a splinter from flesh.”
“I’m talking about trying,” Cillian said quietly. “Carefully… slowly.”
Her hands curled in her lap as every fierce instinct in her rose at once, urging her to shield him, to put herself between him and anything that might hurt him again. He was her brother. Her responsibility. The softest part of her in a world that had proven, again and again, how cruel it could be.
“And when you finally let it out?” she demanded. “How do you control that? How do you make it come slowly? What happens if it turns on you? If it consumes you instead?”
Cillian’s mouth hardened into a line. “Then you stop me. However you must. At once. And we do not try again until we understand more.” He held her gaze. “I am not offering certainty. I am offering a chance to bring our friend back.”
Evelyne opened her mouth to argue, to break that fragile chance into safer pieces, to insist that being alive mattered more than being brave.
Then came a broken inhale, like a sob swallowed before it could fully form. She turned and saw Heidara standing, face gone still, hands clenched into fists at her sides. Tears trembled on her lashes as she stared at Alaric.
“Please,” she said quietly.
Cillian looked to her and blinked.
“Please,” she said again, finally dragging her gaze from Alaric. “I need him back. I need him… I need him to be himself. Just once more. Just long enough to look at me and know me.”
The break in Heidara’s voice struck deep in Evelyne’s chest.
Cillian’s shoulders sagged, as though something in him gave way at the sound. “I’ll try,” he said. “I cannot promise anything, but… I’ll try.”
Evelyne’s protest withered before it reached her lips. Heidara was looking at her as though the world might break if she said no. And beneath all the fear, Evelyne wanted the same thing. She wanted Alaric back.
She forced her voice to steady. “Then we do it carefully. Slowly, Cillian. And the moment you feel it consuming—” She looked at her brother, hard. “You stop. Do you hear me?”
Cillian nodded. “I hear you.”
***
Lorena refused to let Cillian attempt any healing until both he and Alaric were steadier.
On the outside, Cillian looked improved, at least compared to the night before.
The bruising around his throat had darkened into ugly bands instead of fresh red, and his breathing no longer sounded like it might tear.
But inside, he was wrecked. His throat still burned every time he swallowed, his muscles ached from where Alaric’s grip had crushed him, and exhaustion sat heavy on his bones.
Not just physical exhaustion, either. The kind that came from fear and sleeplessness and the constant strain of holding yourself together.
So they decided to wait one more day.
It should have felt like relief. Instead it felt like another chain.
Every night they remained in this small village was another night farther from Caltheris, farther from answers, farther from his mother and sister.
Farther from knowing what waited at home.
But if they were forced to pause, Cillian would not waste it.
He would use the time to focus inward. To find that light again and learn how to touch it without letting it devour him.
It wouldn’t be like the throne room. That night, he hadn’t chosen anything.
The prophecy had chosen for him. His body had obeyed as dormant power tore awake and flooded his mind, his blood, his very breath.
It had been glorious and terrifying, and he’d had no control over the outcome.
Now there was no prophecy to ride like a wave.
There was only himself, and whatever this strange gift had become.
He did not even know whether it could help Alaric. Still, he meant to try.
So while the pack gathered to eat and the firelight made the village seem warm, almost ordinary, Cillian slipped away. Not to hide, but to think. Because silence was the only thing that did not ask anything of him.
The moment did not last.
A soft knock sounded at the door, and Lorena let herself in carrying a steaming cup that smelled of bitter herbs and metal.
“I thought you might want another dose before you sleep,” she said, setting it carefully on the small wooden table before fluffing his pillow with the ease of long practice.
The tonic reminded him of the drafts his healers back home used to force down his throat whenever the hallucinations came. They had meant well, but they had never understood what they were treating. At least Lorena’s brew truly helped. For a few precious hours, it dulled the raw pain in his throat.
“Thank you,” Cillian murmured.
Lorena gave a single nod. “Let me see the bruises.”
She reached him before he could object, tipping up his chin and turning his face from side to side as her eyes narrowed over the marks.
“He got you good,” she said, blunt as ever. “I’m glad you’re still breathing.”
“Yes,” Cillian said dryly. “It would have made Evelyne’s heroic quest to save me a rather spectacular waste of effort.”
A quiet huff of laughter escaped Lorena. “That would have been unfortunate. You can thank your wolf blood for healing so quickly.” Lorena’s mouth curved faintly. “And your voice sounds better.”
Cillian watched her move about the room. “Do you ever rest?”
“Not often,” she admitted. “The pack is always in need of mending. Quick healing only goes so far, and we are not exactly known for avoiding danger.”
“That makes sense,” he said. Then, after a small pause, “I only wonder who looks after you.”
Lorena stilled, then gave his shoulder a light pat, warmth softening her expression. “I like you,” she said. “Perhaps one day you can take my place, and I may finally get some rest.”
Cillian laughed, though the sound came out thin. “Tempting as that sounds, my life back home is bound up in duty. It is where I belong. Where my father needed me.”
The word lodged in his throat like a stone.
His father. Newly dead.
Grief rose swift and sharp, tightening around his chest.
Lorena’s eyes grew kind, as though she understood far more than he had said. After a quiet moment, she spoke again, her voice gentler now. “That light in you was meant for more than purging darkness.”
Cillian blinked.
“It heals,” Lorena went on. “It strengthens. It restores what the dark tries to take.” She tilted her head, appearing to search some old corner of memory. “My mother was the pack’s healer before me. When I was little, she used to tell me stories of an ancient order. She called them Sunweavers.”
The name made something in Cillian’s chest stir faintly.
“I do not recall every detail,” Lorena said, a little sheepish, “but their power sounded very much like yours. I used to beg my mother to tell me those stories at night. She said the Sunweavers were like living dawn, sent to keep the world clean and good whenever it began to rot.”
Cillian’s throat tightened, and not because of the bruising.
Lorena’s mouth curved slightly. “If you want my advice,” she said, her eyes glinting with quiet knowing, “a witch is your best hope for learning to control it. To use it as it was meant to be used.”
She gave him a wink, then nodded toward the cup.
“Now drink your tea.”