Chapter 27 #2
Servants flatten against walls, bowing low, but I don’t slow.
I can feel Delia through the bond — bright, steady, then spiking with bewildered concern as the wards’ alarm pounds through the castle.
Good, I think savagely. Feel it. Know what we fight.
I don’t knock.
I shove the door to the sitting chamber open, slamming it so hard against the wall it bounces.
Three pairs of eyes turn toward me.
Jules, silver-streaked hair loose around her shoulders, hand on her swell of belly. Phoebe, fair hair wild, perched on the arm of a chair, a book forgotten in her lap.
And my Shula.
Delia is on her feet already, cloak half on her shoulders, eyes wide and searching for me like she knew I’d be the one coming through the door.
“Thorne?” she breathes, stepping forward. “What is it? Is everything okay?”
I cross the room in three strides and take her hands.
They’re warm. Strong. I cling to them harder than I should.
“No, Shula,” I say, and for once I don’t bother to temper the truth. “It is not.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “The sound—”
“The wards,” I confirm, jaw clenched. “The protections we wove over The Ember Vein have been struck. Idris and his ilk are making their play for the Vein.”
Her face goes pale, then flushes with anger.
“I must go,” I add.
“I want to go too,” she says immediately.
Of course she does.
She lifts her chin, eyes blazing, that EMT instinct flaring — the part of her that runs toward fire, not away from it.
It hits me in the chest like a blow.
Gods, she is perfect. This woman was made for this realm—for me.
And that is precisely why I cannot take her.
“No.” The word comes out harsher than I intend. I crush it down, soften my voice even as my flames surge.
“I cannot allow it. Not this time. You don’t know what battle at the Vein looks like, Delia. I need to know you are safe.”
“But—”
Her protest slices at me. I see the hurt flash across her face, quickly buried under stubborn resolve.
My grip on her hands tightens.
“Please,” I say, softer now, roughened with everything I don’t have time to say.
“I go into the ground, into Idris’s shadow, knowing my people fight and die to keep the ore safe. I cannot do that if I’m wondering whether the next tremor I feel is you falling.”
Her eyes shimmer.
Jules pushes herself up from the bed with a little grunt, crossing over to us. There’s steel under her gentleness — I see why Alaric fell.
“We’ve got her, Thorne,” she says firmly, laying a hand on Delia’s arm. “She and Phoebe will stay here with me, won’t you?”
Phoebe nods quickly, sliding off the arm of the chair to stand beside Jules.
“Kael already told me,” she says, mouth tight but steady. “If the wards scream like that, it’s bad. We won’t make it worse by getting in the way.”
Delia looks between them.
She doesn’t want to agree. I can feel it through the bond, like a fire trying to leap its hearth.
Slowly, she exhales.
“I hate this,” she mutters.
“Good,” I say roughly. “So do I.”
Jules snorts. “You go do your Lord-of-Fire thing,” she tells me. “We’ll keep each other from losing our minds up here.”
“Speak for yourself,” Phoebe murmurs, but she steps closer to Delia, linking their arms.
Delia looks back at me then, dark eyes locking with mine. “You’ll come back,” she says.
Not a question. A demand.
“Yes,” I answer. No hesitation. “I will.”
“You promise.”
“I swear it on flame and stone and the Vein itself,” I say, letting my fire show in my eyes, letting her feel the truth of it through our zareth. “I will return to you.”
Her fingers slide from my hands to my face, thumbs brushing my jaw with a tenderness that threatens to undo me completely.
“Then go,” she whispers. “Before I change my mind and try to follow you anyway.”
I huff a breath that’s almost a laugh. Almost.
I lean down, capturing her mouth in a kiss that is far too brief for what I want but all we have time for. She tastes like caramel and smoke and stubborn hope.
I pull back, pressing my forehead to hers for a heartbeat.
“Stay with them,” I murmur. “Stay here. Stay safe.”
“I will,” she answers, voice shaking just a little. “Now you stay alive. That’s an order, Lord of Fire.”
I bare my teeth in a grin that feels more like a snarl.
“As my viyella commands.”
I straighten, forcing my hands to let her go.
Jules offers me a small, fierce nod.
Phoebe crosses herself with some human gesture from her old world, then curls an arm protectively around her belly.
I turn and stride from the chamber before I can look back.
Alaric and Kael are already waiting in the corridor, having already said their own goodbyes. Their eyes are sharp, magic coiled. Dagan’s too.
“Well?” Alaric asks.
“They stay,” I say. “We go.”
He nods once. Kael exhales slowly, then reaches for his power.
The wards scream again, shuddering through the stone.
Dagan’s presence looms at the end of the hall, the earth around him already shifting.
“Idris is at the Vein,” he says grimly. “Or close enough to taste it.”
My fire surges, answering the call of the mine, of the ore, of the dreams that depend on it.
Of her, above, who believes I can stand between all that darkness and the world.
“We end this today,” I say.
And with that, we move.
Four shadows. Four Demons.
The Lords of Nightfall descend as one into the dark.
For the realm.
For the worlds beyond.
For what is ours to guard—and for the bond that ties us to each other.