Chapter 28
Worship in the Dark
CAELIRA
Ileft before he could say anything further.
The door to my rooms thudded shut behind me, cutting off the sight of him and the storm struck air still trembling around him.
It didn’t cut off the feeling. My pulse was still doing its best impression of a war drum, my skin feeling too tight for my own bones.
The storm under the castle hadn’t settled either.
I could feel it, low and relentless, like a second heartbeat in the stone.
The corridor outside the chambers was half-lit, morning bleeding in through a tall arched window at the far end.
Stormglass veins laced the walls, faintly glowing the color of old lightning.
The air smelled of oil and steel and distant rain.
Somewhere below, the horn sounded again, the sound traveling up through the keep like a spine.
I put one foot in front of the other and walked.
I didn’t know where I was going. Away was enough.
My hands were shaking, which was ridiculous, because I wasn’t afraid.
I knew what fear felt like, Verdant had made sure of that.
This was something else entirely, a knot of too many things at once: anger, yes, and hurt, but also a sharp, disbelieving wonder that the shadows had touched me, chosen me, reached for me as if I had belonged to them all along.
All my life, people had talked around me about what I might be. How I needed protection. Containment. Guidance. All my life, I had been treated like a problem someone else would eventually solve.
And now the one person who felt like a choice, not an obligation, was standing on a balcony full of broken glass and secrets, deciding which pieces of the truth I was allowed to hold.
I hated how much that hurt.
Wind slid down the corridor, low and sliding, curling around my ankles with a cool, insistent tug. The tall windowpanes rattled lightly in their frames. The stormglass veins in the walls pulsed once, just once, in time with my heartbeat.
“Stop,” I muttered under my breath, to myself or the storm, I wasn’t sure.
It didn’t.
A pair of junior guards rounded the corner ahead, nearly colliding with each other when they saw me.
One of them recovered fast enough to snap to attention, hand pressed against the storm sigil in his chest. The other just stared for a half-second too long, eyes darting from my face to the shadows pooling along the floor at my heels.
They stepped to the side to let me pass; bodies pressed to the stone.
I could feel their fear like a draft.
It slid over my skin, familiar and unwelcome. Verdant had worn the same expression when they’d thought I wasn’t looking. As though I were a blade left unattended on a table, useful, dangerous, always a breath away from cutting someone open by accident.
I kept walking.
The horn’s echo chased itself through the keep, long, then short, then a distant series of shouts as orders rippled outward.
The whole castle felt like a creature bracing for impact.
Doors opened and closed with more force than necessary.
Boots hammered on stairs. Somewhere below, voices were already rising into sharp argument.
The storm inside me responded to the storm outside, or maybe it was the other way around.
Either way, there was no pretending I didn’t feel it now.
No pretending the shadows brushing my ankles were a coincidence.
No pretending the pulse beneath the castle the night before had been anything other than an answer.
I thought of Atlas’s face when he’d said the word prophecy. The way his voice had ragged around it. The way guilt and fear and devotion warred behind his eyes.
Some things are dangerous before they’re understood.
Dangerous to who? I had asked.
He hadn’t answered me. Not really.
I reached a landing that overlooked one of the inner courtyards through a row of open arches.
Below, where Stormguard usually trained, the space churned with movement: armor flashing, commanders barking orders, couriers sprinting between doors.
Stormglass panels mounted along the walls flickered with shifting sigils, the wardline breach pulsing amber.
“Dawnbreak,” someone hissed. “At the east gate.”
“Priests don’t cross borders without cause,” another snapped. “Something happened under the castle the night before last—”
Their words rose and fell with the wind, broken by distance but sharp enough to lodge under my ribs.
Something happened under the castle.
My stomach dropped.
Atlas and I had woken the current beneath the castle. We had felt it turn toward us, seen the trapped lightning in the stormglass ceilings stutter and flare like a creature taking its first breath in a century. We had stood there in that chamber thinking—for a heartbeat—that it was ours.
It was never going to stay ours.
I stared down at my hands. My fingers flexed once, twice. Shadows clung stubbornly to the edges of my vision. The air around my wrists felt charged, as if invisible threads had wound themselves there while I wasn’t paying attention.
For a breath, I wondered if Verdant had been right. If I was the problem. The danger. The flaw in the pattern everyone had been waiting to fracture.
The thought made anger ripple sharp through my chest.
I turned away from the courtyard and kept moving, deeper into the keep.
The corridors narrowed, then widened into grander halls where carved storm-vines climbed the walls and thick carpets muffled the sound of my footsteps.
Servants moved with their heads down and their eyes sharp, the way people always did during moments like this.
The stormglass embedded in the stone brightened as I passed. Tiny veins of light chased one another through it, like lightning searching for ground. I exhaled carefully and attempted to push the storm back.
It resisted.
Of course it did.
I lifted my chin and kept walking. If Dawnbreak had come because something under the castle had stirred, the Courts would circle like birds of prey. They would ask questions. They would assign blame. They would search for the easiest piece to move on their board.
For the first time in my life, I knew exactly where I fit on that board.
I also knew I wasn’t going to let them move me.
I had almost reached the next archway when a startled gasp snapped my attention sideways.
“Caelira—!”
Maren nearly collided with me as she rounded the corner at speed, skirts gathered in her fists, breath coming fast from running somewhere she probably hadn’t been allowed to be. She skidded to a halt, wide-eyed, hair escaping its braid in frantic curls.
For half a heartbeat, she just stared at me.
Not like the guards had.
Not like I was a threat creeping loose in the hall.
But like she was afraid for me.
“Gods,” she breathed, pressing a hand to her chest. “I’ve been looking everywhere—are you alright?”
The question caught me so off guard I almost didn’t recognize it. People didn’t usually ask if I was alright. They asked if I was stable, contained, or safely tucked out of the way. They asked if I needed escorting or watching or praying for.
They didn’t ask like this—raw, unscripted, human.
“I’m fine,” I said, though my voice sounded sharper than I meant. “You should be with the others, Maren. The keep’s in chaos.”
“So are you,” she said softly.
It wasn’t accusation. It was observation—quiet, honest, and somehow worse for being true.
I let out a slow breath, pressing my fingers briefly to my temple. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do,” she said, surprising me again. “Everyone felt… something. The night before last. And again, this morning. The storm…” She swallowed, eyes flicking to the stormglass veins humming faintly behind me. “The castle is unsettled. The ward-witches are whispering. The soldiers are tense.”
She hesitated, then added, almost apologetically:
“It’s not you they’re worried about. It’s what Dawnbreak means. Priests don’t cross borders unless something is deeply wrong—and everyone can feel it in the stone.”
A tight exhale slipped from me.
The tension hanging in the keep wasn’t aimed at me, it was fear aimed outward, toward Dawnbreak, toward whatever purpose brought a priest to the Storm Court’s walls.
“Caelira,” Maren said, softer now, stepping closer, “I know something’s wrong. I don’t need to know what. But I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
The stormglass behind her brightened in a slow pulse, like the castle itself agreed.
I studied Maren, really studied her, maybe for the first time.
She was small, yes, but built of wiry steadiness rather than fragility.
Her dark hair, still bound in the loose braid she always wore, had begun to unravel—strands clinging to her temples, cheeks flushed pink from running up and down stairs she probably wasn’t permitted to use.
There was a quickness to her, a sharp, instinctive awareness in the way her eyes moved—too perceptive for her own safety in a place like this.
But beneath that was something else.
Something steadier.
A spine most courtiers lacked.
A kind of quiet, stubborn bravery that didn’t announce itself, it just stood there, trembling but unbroken, choosing to walk toward me instead of away.
She looked small in the vast stone corridor, dwarfed by stormglass and banners and the weight of the Court.
But I had the unsettling feeling she noticed more of this castle than half the officers who commanded it.
She had no reason to plant herself beside me in a moment like this.
She did anyway.
“If you’re going somewhere,” she added, voice trembling only slightly, “I’m coming with you.”
I almost laughed, almost. “You don’t need to follow me.”
“Maybe not.” She lifted her chin a fraction. “But I’m still going to.”