Chapter 16
Thorne
The Ember Vein, The Broken Plains
The tunnels release me reluctantly.
Heat still clings to my skin as I ascend, The Ember Vein’s glow fading behind me, replaced by cooler stone and the distant hush of the surface wards.
Dagan remains below—his presence anchoring the earth, his power folded into the rock like a living seal.
He is steady.
He is patient.
I am neither.
Every step upward tightens something in my chest.
The farther I move from the Vein, the stronger the pull becomes—hot, insistent, alive.
Not duty. Not the realm.
Her.
My Shula.
Something happened while I was below.
I feel it now with frightening clarity.
The bond hums where it once whispered, stretching through me like molten thread wrapped around bone.
It is not fading with distance. It is growing.
That should not be possible.
This was meant to be strategy.
A necessary deception.
A means to an end.
We spoke the vows, sealed the Rite, took the Fates at their own crooked game.
The zareth should be contained—functional. Controlled.
And yet—no.
This is different.
This is hunger layered with awe. Need braided with fear.
I want to see her. To smell her.
To put my hands on her just to reassure myself she is real and not something the fire has conjured to torment me.
I want to hold her.
To revel in her most sacred embrace.
The thought hits me so hard I stumble.
I have taken lovers. Countless. Bodies have passed through my bed like sparks through a forge—bright, brief, forgettable.
Desire has never frightened me before.
But it has never felt like this before, either.
Wild. Desperate. Yearning.
Her dark eyes haunt me. The way they meet mine without flinching.
The curve of her body—gods, do not think of that now.
Not while my power still simmers too close to the surface.
But I do think of it.
I think of her softness against my heat.
The way she tastes.
The sounds she made when I claimed her.
The mating night was one thing.
This—whatever this is—feels like a door I cannot close.
Will she let me have her again?
That is the question that burns deepest.
I did not ask for more than the Rite. I did not demand affection or devotion.
I told myself then, that was restraint. Honor.
Or maybe it was cowardice.
Because what if I ask—and she says no.
What if she sees me clearly?
Sees the monster.
The two-face.
The thing that turns to flame and bone when fear or rage takes hold.
My pavilion comes into view, its wards shimmering faintly in the twilight.
I stride forward—and stop dead.
It is empty.
EMPTY.
The air inside is wrong.
Cool. Untouched.
No trace of her warmth.
No scent of skin or soap or the soft human sweetness that has begun to haunt my lungs.
The bond snaps tight.
Agony detonates in my chest.
“No,” I snarl, power surging without permission. “No.”
Fury rises, fast and total. Not controlled. Not measured.
The zareth grips me like a vise.
The word alone crashes through me with brutal certainty.
This is it.
This is what Alaric warned of.
What the scrolls whispered about in cautious, blood-stained margins.
This is no trick of the Fates.
This is real.
My head tips back and I bellow—a sound ripped from the center of my being, shaking stone and sky alike.
Flame erupts from my skin, the mask slamming into place as my body answers instinct over reason.
Bone. Fire. Rage.
Mine is gone.
Then—I catch it.
Her scent.
Sharp. Clean. Wet.
Kael.
She is in Kael’s tent.
I do not think.
I move.
The world blurs as I tear through to his tent, bursting through wards and canvas and stone alike. I roar as I strike, claws slashing, fire flaring as Kael throws himself back with a curse, water exploding between us.
Half my mind knows this is wrong.
The other half knows only one truth.
She was not where I left her.
And then—she is there.
Standing at the edge of the pool, soaked and incandescent in white, hair slicked to her skin, eyes blazing not with fear—but fury.
And something else.
Trust.
She runs to me.
To me.
Not away.
Her hand presses to my chest, right where the fire rages hottest, and instead of recoiling—she grounds me.
“I’m fine,” she whispers. “I’m okay.”
The world stills.
My flames stutter.
The inferno falters.
The monster fractures.
She reaches for me.
Not the Lord. Not the weapon. Not the terror.
Me.
The fire collapses inward. Bone melts. Heat recedes. I drop to my knees before her, breath ragged, shame flooding in behind the fading fury.
“Mine,” I rasp, forehead pressed to her body as if anchoring myself there is the only thing keeping me from burning apart.
She strokes my hair.
We exchange more words.
She soothes me.
I breathe in her scent.
She does not flinch.
I think she makes a joke.
She does not recoil.
I respond, but my thoughts are everywhere.
She does not fear what I am.
And in that moment—kneeling, undone, clutching at a human woman who should never have matched my fire—I know.
This is no deception.
No borrowed bond.
No trick played on the Fates.
She is my true viyella. And I am her viyen.
The second I acknowledge it, its’ like the world holds its breath around us.
She cradles my face like I’m not still burning.
Like I’m not barely restraining the power inside me.
Her palm is warm against my cheekbone, water still dripping from her soaked hair, from the curve of her breasts beneath white linen.
I could have killed my brother.
I would have burned this entire camp down if she hadn’t stopped me.
If she hadn’t looked at me.
If she hadn’t come to me.
Now, my fury is ash.
All that remains is need.
Not anger. Not shame. Not even the low growl of instinct.
This is something else.
I rise slowly, still trembling—not with rage, but with the effort of keeping myself contained.
My true form lingers beneath my skin like a second heartbeat.
It is power made flesh.
Vow made tangible.
It has never emerged so fully before, never roared through me with such clarity.
Only one reason for that.
Delia.
Shula.
My viyella.
My fated mate.
And this zareth bond forged by the Fates themselves.
I must tell her.
But first, I must touch her.