Chapter 19
SERIS
Dawn came without rest.
I hadn't slept. I'd pretended. Curled against the cavern wall with my eyes shut, breath measured.
Sleep required a calm that remained beyond my reach.
The group shifted around me through the long hours.
Quiet murmurs. Zephyr's labored breathing.
The distant drip of water that marked time in the absolute dark.
When gray light finally filtered through cracks in the stone ceiling, illuminating the chamber in shades of ash, Daemon rose first.
"We move in ten minutes." His voice carried the flat authority of someone who'd spent years leading men who didn't want to be led. "Kane, inventory what we have. Kael, check the perimeter. Zephyr, keep watch."
Kane crouched beside our meager supplies. We had a single waterskin, half-empty. One day's worth of dried meat if we stretched it. Less if we didn't. His jaw tightened as he parceled out portions with mechanical precision.
I watched him work. Watched him distribute shares with careful fairness, keeping nothing extra for himself despite the shadows beneath his eyes. Despite the tremor in his hands that he hid by keeping them busy.
"Eat." He pressed flatbread and jerky into my palm.
I stared at the offering. My stomach twisted.
"I'm not hungry."
"Wasn't a question." He folded my fingers around the food. "You need strength."
For what? The thought scraped through my skull, bitter and raw. Vaelthorne burned. Lyralei died. The only home I'd ever known, the only people who'd ever wanted me, were gone. Erased. And for what? Because I existed? Because my blood carried magic that kings feared and monsters craved?
I shoved the food into my mouth without tasting it. Kane watched until I swallowed, then moved to the others.
Movement resumed ten minutes later, just as he promised.
We filed through the tunnels in silence.
Single file, feeling our way along damp stone walls.
The passage narrowed, then widened, then split into branching paths that all looked identical in the dim light.
Daemon chose directions with the confidence of someone who'd navigated worse, but I saw the tension in his shoulders.
We were lost. He just refused to admit it.
I followed anyway. One foot in front of the other. Mechanical. Empty.
Daemon kept glancing back at me.
I pretended not to notice. Kept my eyes on the ground, on the uneven stone that threatened to trip me with every step. My new boots, gifted by the Fae and lovingly crafted, were caked in mud and dust. Everything Vaelthorne had given me felt like mockery now. Pretty clothes. Soft bedding. Hope.
All of it ash.
"You're favoring your left side." Daemon fell back to walk beside me. "Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Seris, "
"I said no." I didn't look at him. Couldn't. If I looked at him, I'd see that damned concern in his eyes, that stubborn refusal to give up on me, and I couldn't afford that right now. Couldn't afford to feel anything.
He let it drop. For three hours, he let it drop.
We stopped to rest when Zephyr nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Kane crouched beside him, checking his previous wounds with gentle efficiency.
"Healing's holding," Kane murmured. "Barely."
"Lucky us." Zephyr managed a weak grin. "Saved by Fae magic right before the Fae got slaughtered. Poetic, that."
I flinched.
Daemon's head snapped toward Zephyr. "Enough."
"What? It's true, isn't it? We were there. We saw, "
"I said enough." The temperature seemed to drop five degrees. Shadows flickered at the edges of Daemon's form, responding to emotion he couldn't quite leash.
Zephyr raised both hands in surrender. "Just saying what we're all thinking."
"Then think quieter." Daemon stood, rolling his shoulders. "We rest five minutes. Then we keep moving."
Five minutes. As if time still mattered. As if we had somewhere to go, something to do besides stumble through darkness until we starved, or the king's soldiers found us, or,
"Walk with me." Daemon's hand closed around my elbow.
I jerked away. "Don't touch me."
"I need to talk to you."
"I don't want to talk."
"I don't care." He stepped closer, voice dropping low enough that the others wouldn't hear. "You've been moving like a ghost for twelve hours. You won't eat unless forced. You won't speak. You barely looked at me when I asked if you were hurt." His eyes searched my face. "Where are you?"
Nowhere. Everywhere. Trapped in a loop of memory that wouldn't stop replaying. Lyralei's face as the arrows struck, the screams of children, fire consuming everything beautiful and good while I did nothing. Helped no one. Saved no one.
"I'm here," I said flatly. "Walking. Moving. Exactly what you wanted."
"That's not what I, "
"What do you want from me?" The words ripped free before I could stop them. "What exactly am I supposed to do right now? Smile? Pretend everything's fine? Act like I'm not responsible for, "
"You're not responsible." He cut across me, voice hard. "Aeron did this. His soldiers. His hatred. Not you."
"I led them there."
"You didn't, "
"I exist, and people die!" The shout echoed off the stone walls. Somewhere behind us, the others went silent. "That's the pattern, Daemon. That's what I am. A walking catastrophe that destroys everything good it touches."
"That's grief talking, not truth."
"Is it?" I laughed, sharp and bitter. "My father died protecting me.
My mother was executed because she gave birth to me.
Those who fed me suffered because they showed me kindness.
And Vaelthorne, " My voice cracked. "They welcomed me.
Accepted me. Danced with me under Veil-light.
And I repaid them with fire and death and, "
"Stop." Daemon grabbed my shoulders. I tried to pull away, but he held firm. "You don't get to take responsibility for every evil thing that happens. You don't get to erase context and pretend you're the center of all suffering."
"I'm the reason they came!"
"My father is the reason they came!" Shadows writhed around him now, agitated and dark.
"He's spent decades hunting your kind into extinction.
Do you really think you're the first Veil-touched to lose people?
The first to watch something beautiful burn because a tyrant feared what he couldn't control? "
"That doesn't make it hurt less."
"No. It doesn't." His grip loosened, but he didn't release me. "But it means you get to choose what comes next. Lyralei gave her life so you could survive. So you could finish what she started. Are you going to honor that, or are you going to curl up and die because living hurts?"
I shoved him. Hard.
He stumbled back a step but didn't fall.
"Don't you dare." My hands shook. "Don't you dare use her death to manipulate me into, "
"Into what? Fighting back? Choosing to live?
" He moved closer again, deliberate and careful.
"You told me once that if you had to be a weapon, you'd choose who deserved to burn.
So choose. Decide whether you're going to let Aeron win by giving up, or whether you're going to make him regret ever learning your name. "
"I can't." The admission tasted like failure. "I can't be what you need. What Lyralei thought I was. I'm not what you think I am. I'm just broken, Daemon. Whatever destiny or prophecy or soul bond connected us, it made a mistake. I'm not strong enough for this."
"You survived Blackstone Keep."
"Barely."
"You broke free of a binding ritual that should have killed you."
"By accident."
"You learned control in a few weeks when most Veil-touched train for years." He stepped closer. "You danced under Veil-light and chose joy even when you had every reason to choose despair. That's not weakness, Seris. That's strength I don't possess."
"Then you're blind." The words came out strangled. "Because all I see when I look at myself is a coward who ran while people died."
"You were evacuated by someone who loved you."
"I should have fought."
"You would have died."
"Maybe I should have!" The shout ripped from somewhere deep and raw. "Maybe that would've been better than living."
His hand closed around the back of my neck, and he pulled me against his chest. I tried to fight, to push away, but he held me with careful force.
"Breathe," he ordered quietly.
"Let go!"
"Breathe."
I couldn't. My lungs locked. The world tilted sideways, and I realized I was shaking, trembling so hard my teeth chattered.
"In through your nose." His voice rumbled against my ear. "Hold. Out through your mouth."
I tried. Failed. Tried again.
Slowly, painfully, my breathing steadied.
Daemon didn't release me. He just held me there in the dark while I fell apart in increments too small to measure.
"I don't know how to do this," I whispered eventually.
"Do what?"
"Keep going. Keep fighting. Keep believing any of it matters."
"Then don't." His hand moved to my hair, fingers threading through tangled strands. "Don't believe. Don't hope. Just survive one more day. And then one more after that. Eventually belief comes back. Or it doesn't. Either way, you're still alive."
"That's pointless."
"That's honest." He pulled back enough to meet my eyes. "I've lived most of my life without hope, Seris. It's possible. Not pleasant, but possible."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him that wasn't living, just existing. But what did I know? I'd spent years as a slave, months in a cell, weeks in a false paradise, and now stood in darkness with nothing but ash behind me.
Maybe existing was all anyone could manage.
Footsteps echoed down the tunnel.
Daemon's hand dropped from my neck. He spun, shadows coalescing into blades as he positioned himself between me and the sound.
Kael and Kane moved to flank him. Zephyr pushed off the wall, swaying but ready.
The footsteps grew louder. Multiple sets. Moving with purpose and precision.
Armed figures emerged from the darkness.
Ten of them. Dressed in leather armor that blended with shadow, weapons drawn but not raised. They moved like Daemon's team, trained, lethal, and efficient.
A woman stepped forward from their center.
Tall. Lean. Dark hair braided tight against her skull, and eyes that reflected torchlight like a wolf's. She studied our group with the cold assessment of someone who'd killed more people than she could remember.
Her gaze fixed on Daemon, pegging him as the leader.
"Identify yourselves."
"We escaped Vaelthorne," Daemon said carefully. "Aeron's forces invaded. We barely, "
"Vaelthorne." Kaelen's expression didn't change, but something shifted in her voice. "What has become of it? It should have been hidden."
"Was hidden." Bitterness leaked through Daemon's words. "They tracked us. It's gone."
Her eyes scanned each one of our faces until it landed on mine. Recognition flickered across the Fae leader’s features.
“You,” she flicked her chin in my direction. “What’s your name?”