Chapter 13
Nyxiana
Iwake in the guest chamber at Briarstone with the shard’s account still running behind my eyes. I lie still and let it finish. My mother’s line goes back, back and then stops at a wall someone built on purpose. I know that now. I knew it last night too but it didn’t get lighter overnight.
Morning light comes warm through the shutters, the kind of light that belongs to a house where nothing is supposed to be wrong. Down the hall, someone is already moving, footsteps and low voices, the ordinary sounds of a family starting its day without knowing what I know yet.
The shard itself is already wrapped and secured, tucked safe for the crossing. That much, at least, is done.
I get up and dress myself, no maid called, no one summoned to help with the laces. I’ve always done this alone. Today isn’t the day that changes.
I open my door to find Valen already in the hallway, dressed, a small, enchanted pack slung over one shoulder.
Torchlight catches the silver threaded through his hair leaving the rest of him in shadow.
He takes up more of this corridor than one man ought to.
He’s standing far enough back from my door that I have to come out to him.
“Ready?” he says.
“Ready.”
Rhonan and Serena catch us on the way to the breakfast hall, Serena still tying her hair back, Rhonan already dressed for the day like he’s been up for hours. Rhonan claps Valen’s shoulder hard enough to rock him.
“Get her home in one piece,” he says. Then he looks Valen over. “Didn’t say much at the feast last night either. Talking not really your thing?”
“Not really.”
Serena pulls me into a hug and holds on, studying my face before she lets go. She doesn’t ask what’s wrong, just looks like she already knows something is.
Niko and Saige find us in the same corridor a moment later.
Before we reach the hall, I ask for a private word with all four of them.
I tell them about the shard from the vaults and what reading it showed me.
Then I tell them about Faelan, his magic already woven into Briarstone’s foundations, laid there longer than anyone in this house has been alive.
Niko goes still. For a moment his composure slips before he pulls it back into place. “How deep does it run?”
“Ancient. Deliberate. Faelan didn’t erase your family’s beginning. Someone else did that, long before him. He only found where it was hidden.”
Niko doesn’t ask anything more than that. His hands go still at his sides. Rhonan’s easy manner from a moment ago is gone entirely. Serena’s hand goes to his arm without either of them looking.
Saige puts a hand on my arm. “We’ll check the foundations ourselves and see what else Faelan touched,” she says. “You take the shard and keep going.”
We sit down to breakfast, the smell of eggs and a spice I don’t recognize filling the hall. Nobody brings up what I told them in the corridor. I steer the conversation toward ordinary talk, mentioning that Evren seemed off before we left Ash Hollow.
“That’s just Evren these days,” Rhonan says, reaching for the bread. “Nobody thinks much of it.”
“He’s restless,” Serena says. “He’ll settle when he settles.”
The honey here is better than anything Ash Hollow’s kitchens keep stocked. I take twice as much as I need on the bread just because I can.
For a few minutes we look exactly like what we’re supposed to be - a family having breakfast together before Valen and I leave. Serena catches my eye across the table and doesn’t say anything. I’m grateful.
Breakfast ends. We walk together toward the portal chamber, Niko and Saige leading, Rhonan and Serena behind us, the corridors giving way to older, harder stone the deeper we go.
Valen’s eyes cut down every side corridor we pass, checking more of them than the walk alone requires.
If Faelan got into this house once without anyone knowing, nothing says these halls are as safe as they look now.
“Ready to go home?” I ask him.
“Yes.” He keeps his eyes moving over the hall ahead of us.
Home. The word settles strangely after even a short stay somewhere that isn’t. Ash Hollow is home, even after less than a year. I say it again to myself anyway, just to make sure it still fits.
The portal chamber is a round stone room, a ring of dark pillars with a platform of pale stone at the center.
Warm light comes down through gaps between the pillars, catching motes of dust that drift in slow spirals near the platform.
Valen checks the exits. A Briarstone portal guardian, an angel-blooded woman, test the pillars one at a time.
Each one lights blue-white as she reaches it, steady and clean, the way pillars are supposed to look.
Niko takes both my hands in his, his grip warm and sure. “Briarstone’s doors stay open to you. Whatever you need, whenever you need it.”
“I’ll keep the shard safe. I’ll let you know what it turns out to mean.”
He nods once and lets my hands go. For a moment his eyes hold something heavier than the words carried. Then it’s gone and he’s every inch the king again.
Saige holds my face steady between her palms for a moment. Then she looks past me to Valen. “If anything happens to her out there, you’ll answer to me.”
“Understood,” he says.
Rhonan pulls Valen into a handshake that turns into a shoulder grip, the kind of hold that means more than the words riding on top of it. “Look after her out there.”
“I intend to.”
Serena hugs me hard, her arms tight enough that I feel it in my ribs. “Safe crossing.”
The portal guardian calls the platform ready and waves us forward.
Saige lifts a hand in one last wave as we step onto the platform together.
The current feels wrong under my feet on the first step.
It stutters where it should hold steady, a hitch under the sole of my boot that shouldn’t be there at all.
I stop walking, read it a second time to be sure.
It twists again, sideways. This is the same signature I read in the foundations yesterday, faint, careful and wrong in exactly the way Faelan’s work is wrong.
It’s dragging the exit toward somewhere that isn’t Ash Hollow.
My pulse is up. I push it down and read the current a third time, searching for a version of this that isn’t the one already in front of me. There isn’t one.
“The current isn’t clean,” I call out.
The portal guardian reaches for the controls, her hands moving fast over the stone, her calm from a moment ago gone entirely.
The light along two of the pillars stutters from blue-white to red, the color climbing higher up the stone with every passing moment.
Somewhere behind me, one of the pillars gives off a low sound I don’t have time to name.
“Halt the crossing,” Niko orders. The platform is already active. The doorway that should open on Ash Hollow flickers, unstable, refusing to settle on a clean destination. Behind me, Saige says my name once, sharp.
Trust the guardian to stabilize an exit that might put us wherever Faelan wants us or take Valen out blind and find out on the way whether I can carry him.
I don’t wait for anyone else to decide. I grab Valen’s wrist and drag him off the platform, away from the unstable exit.
He comes without a fight, trusting me enough not to ask why.
I wrap my power around both of us and phase, taking him with me into the dark between places.
The void tears at me harder than it has ever has, a resistance I’ve never had to fight through with another body in my grip.
My chest pulls tight around the effort of holding onto him and keeping the phase itself from collapsing, every moment of the dark taking more out of me than the last one did.
His weight drags at my power more than a man his size should.
My arms shake with the effort of not letting go of him.
If I lose my grip here, there’s nothing to catch him, no ground no realm, just the space between everywhere.
I don’t know if he’d ever find his way out of that on his own.
I aim for the treeline outside Ash Hollow’s border instead of the compound itself, the closer, rougher landing over a crossing I’m not certain I can finish cleanly the longer way.
We come out of the dark hard. I hit the ground on one knee, his arm still locked in my grip, grass and cool earth under me, tall pines rising around us on every side.
Afternoon light comes down warm and slanted through the overhead branches.
We left Briarstone at breakfast. The realms have never agreed on the hour.
For a moment neither of us moves. The only sound is our breathing and somewhere off in the trees, a bird carrying on as if nothing happened at all.
Valen stays on his feet, steadying himself against a nearby tree.
My legs won’t hold me the first time I try to stand.
The ground tilts under me like the phase hasn’t finished letting go of my balance yet.
I drop back down to my knees. He’s in front of me fast, hands running over my arms, checking my face before he says a word. Then he gets one hand under my elbow.
“Are you hurt?” The words come out fast, almost sharp.
“Not hurt. Drained. Carrying you through that took more out of me than it should have.”
He goes quiet a moment, still adjusting to a kind of travel that’s new to him. Then he smiles. “I’ll work on losing some weight before the next one.”
A short laugh escapes me. “Maybe you shouldn’t have gone back for seconds at breakfast.”
His hand stays under my elbow after I’m steady enough to stand on my own, face close enough that I can see the pale gray of his eyes clearly for once.
Stubble along his jaw, catching the light from the trees.
Vault dust is still in his hair. His thumb moves once against the inside of my elbow, small enough that it might not be on purpose.
Neither of us moves to close the rest of the distance.
Neither of us moves away either. Some part of me wants to close it, wants to know what his mouth would feel like.
I don’t let myself. There’s just the two of us standing closer than a landing requires, breathing the same warm afternoon air, his gaze steady on mine.
Valen checks the treeline.
I brush the dirt from my knees, grass stains dark against the fabric. We turn toward Ash Hollow together, the treeline thick enough ahead of us that the compound is still hidden somewhere on the other side.
We start walking, close enough that our shoulders nearly brush the whole way in.