CHAPTER EIGHT
An unnatural draft swept across the stone floor, pulling the warmth from the room.
Even before I opened my eyes, I felt it. A prickle of awareness traced a path down my spine, my breathing turning shallow as the sensation of being watched settled over me.
I did not need to see him to know the shape of the shadow waiting in the corner of the room.
Slowly, I peeled my eyes open and looked toward the arched window.
Moonlight filtered through the iron bars of the arched glass, spilling pale silver across the floor.
He stood within it as though he had stepped out of the night itself. One hand rested lightly against the stone beside him, long fingers splayed as if testing the texture of the wall.
The light traced the breadth of his shoulders and caught along the dark, etched markings that curved over his forearms. In the silver glow, his skin looked like polished bronze, and the shadows near him did not fall away, they leaned inward, drawn toward him like iron filings to a magnet.
“How did you get in here?” I asked. “There is a guard stationed at the door.”
“Is there?” Talon mused, his gaze remaining on the window. “I would not know. I did not use the door.”
I pushed myself up, pulling the thick wool blanket higher. Despite the night chill, a strange, radiating heat emanated from his proximity.
“You cannot invite yourself into someone’s sleeping chambers,” I blinked incredulously. “That is intrusive!”
“I see.” He finally turned his head, his icy blue gaze pinning me to the pillows. “And yet, you are not calling for help.”
I gritted my teeth, suppressing the urge to hurl a pillow at his arrogant face.
I hated how easily he read the lack of alarm in my posture. I hated even more that he was right—I was not afraid. I was agitated.
“You must leave.”
“Tell me, Kaelia,” he began, ignoring my dismissal as he moved further into the room. “How fares the search? Have you found a soul ‘suitable’ enough to satisfy the council’s ledgers?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“No?” He stopped at the edge of the moonlight, half-veiled in shadow. “I am the reason every unbound person fears their solstice. I would say I am the most concerned party in this room.”
I rolled my eyes. “You are incredibly arrogant.”
“I am a realist,” he countered. “And I am assuming your presence here, among the dust and the dead, means the search is not going as well as you had hoped.”
I glared at him. “If a certain Master of Veythar had not sent half of my prospects scattering in the market, I would possibly be bound by now.”
His eyes darkened instantly, his lip curling in a flash of disgust. “You would not.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I would never let it happen,” he growled.
I let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Talon, why do you wish to see me fail? Why are you so intent on my ruin?”
“I do not wish to see you fail.”
I peered at him through my lashes, the last traces of sleep vanishing. “Well, you do not wish to see me bound, which means I will end up in a cell with my soul fed to your kin in forty-eight hours. Is that your version of success?”
“I do not wish to see you bound to a man who cannot hear your soul.”
“Well,” I replied coolly, though my fingers tightened in the blanket pooled at my waist. “Haelen was built on people settling for less. I am not special, Talon. I just want to be left alone.”
Talon’s gaze sharpened, the faintest flicker of something dangerous moving behind the icy blue of his eyes.
“Has it ever occurred to you, Kaelia, why the High Court is so terrified of a soul that does not answer to their ledgers?”
My pulse gave a traitorous leap, but I forced my expression to remain flat.
“The High Court preserves the realm,” I said, though the words felt like a script I had memorized but no longer believed. “And you deal only in shadows and cold. Why should I trust your version of the truth?”
“I do not ask for your trust,” he replied, his gaze dropping to the pulse point at my neck. “I only ask why they omit the parts of history they cannot govern. They have convinced you that a true axis is a myth, because they cannot control a heart that has already found its center.”
My spine stiffened. Axis. Convergence. The Sayel.
He was using the same language as the forbidden texts, but he was twisting it.
“Be careful,” I warned.
He tilted his head slightly. “Of what?”
“Of accusing the court of deceit within its own walls.”
A faint smile curved his mouth, though there was no warmth in it. “You think stone listens?”
“I think you enjoy sowing doubt.”
“I think you are already doubting,” he countered softly. “I am merely providing the mirror.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “The High Court preserves order. The Lunthra ensures proper alignment. The Sayel is extinct. There is nothing left to question, Talon.”
His gaze sharpened at the word, his entire posture going unnaturally still.
“The Sayel,” he repeated slowly.
My heart jolted at the shift in his expression. For a second, the predatory mask slipped, and something unreadable flickered behind the icy blue of his eyes.
Keeper Sora’s voice echoed faintly in my mind.
You would simply know.
“It is extinct,” I repeated firmly. “A tale of history.”
“Is it?” he murmured. “Give me your hands, Kaelia.”
I eyed his extended hand wearily. “Why?”
“Because you deserve the truth.”
“I already know the truth,” I said.
“Then you have nothing to fear.”
I should have refused. Every instinct told me to turn away, to call for the guard, to end this intrusion before it rooted itself any deeper.
But something beneath my sternum stirred, reckless and aching.
Slowly, I extended my hands toward him, his fingers enveloping mine completely.
I did not have time to take note of the scars across his palms or the heat flooding my body, because the world folded in on itself.
The chamber fell away around me, dissolving into something vast and ancient. I could smell stone—not the dust-warmed stone of the Archives, but something colder. Obsidian corridors slick with shadow. The air of Umbral, thick and mineral-rich, heavy with the weight of centuries.
I had never been there. And yet I knew it.
The scent clung to my lungs as though I stood within those halls myself.
Heat unfurled beneath my skin, spreading outward from the point of contact. My pulse scattered, my breath hitching as images flooded behind my eyes.
Towering archways carved from black glass.
Markets lined with lanterns that burned a muted violet, their light flickering over faces I had never seen before.
Tall shadows moving with quiet authority.
Figures cloaked in darkness that did not frighten me—because I understood, somehow, that this was home.
His home.
A sense of loneliness washed over me. But it was not mine.
Years of standing apart. Of watching bonds form around him that were never meant for him. Of holding power without warmth. Of hearing others’ souls echo and finding no answering chord within his own.
And beneath it, a yearning not for conquest, but for someone who could step into those obsidian halls and not recoil.
My fingers tightened around his instinctively. I felt an invisible thread pull between us, beginning in my chest and ending in his. I gasped as it lit up a molten gold in response, shimmering vibrantly.
You would just know.
My heart slammed violently against my ribs.
No.
No, this was not that.
It could not be. Because if it was, it meant the texts were fraudulent.
It meant the High Court had spent centuries weaving a lie to keep us compliant.
And more terrifyingly, it meant the one thing I had always wanted for myself—that impossible, undeniable alignment—was now within reach. But it was attached to him.
I tore my hands from his and the chamber slammed back into focus.
My shoulders struck the wall the bed rested against as I shuffled away from him, the cold biting through the thin fabric at my back.
“You did that,” I accused, my voice unsteady. “You forced me to see things. You planted hallucinations.”
He remained exactly where I had left him, hands empty at his sides. “I did not.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I bit out. “What you are insinuating is not possible.”
“Who decreed that?”
I stared at him incredulously. “The texts. The High Court. Me.”
His jaw flexed, a subtle tightening that betrayed the first crack in his composure.
“Where is your fire, Kaelia?” he asked, stepping forward now, his knees pressing against the mattress. “You challenge everything that does not sit right in your spirit. You defy expectations, you mock tradition when it suits you. So why not fight for the truth?”
“Because I do not believe this is the truth!” I said furiously, heat rising to my cheeks. “The Sayel is a relic of a broken age. It is extinct. This is just your magic twisting my mind to get what you want.”
“You think I would fabricate that?” he asked, voice low and edged.
My chest tightened at the hurt that flashed through his eyes, so I chose not to answer that.
“What do you want from me, Talon?”
He leaned over the bed, his face coming so close to mine that the world narrowed to the icy blue of his eyes. I could feel his hot breath fanning across my lips, smelling of woodsmoke and the cold mountain air he had carried in with him.
“I want to feel your soul ignite mine, little flame,” he said quietly. “I want you to burn for me.”
My body warmed at the way he said it, at the way his gaze dropped briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
“Leave,” I whispered, though the word lacked force.
His eyes searched my face. “I refuse to let this go.”
Tears of frustration blurred my vision before I could stop them.
One part of me believed him.
Another part clung to Keeper Sora’s teachings, to the safety of doctrine, to the structure of a world that made sense even when it was cruel. It was easier to accept a system that demanded sacrifice than to accept that it might have lied about something this profound.
“Why?” I asked, voice cracking despite my efforts to steady it.
His gaze dropped the moment the first tear spilled free. His shoulders tightened and his breathing quickened.
He raised his hand to my face, his thumb brushing the tear from my cheek with an almost reverent touch.
“Do not cry, little flame,” he murmured. “It hurts me too.”
I swatted his hand away, though not as forcefully as I might have intended.
“Stop,” I choked, my breath unsteady. “Stop acting as though this is some grand destiny. You can let it go. You can walk away.”
His face hardened then, not into cruelty but into something strained.
“You think I have walked willingly alone for centuries?” he asked, the words vibrating with something dangerously close to anger. “You think I would grasp at this if it were not real?”
“I think you see an opportunity,” I whispered, though the accusation tasted hollow even to me.
The hurt that crossed his features this time was not fleeting. It lingered, etched into the set of his mouth, into the tightening of his eyes.
“Really, Kaelia?” he pressed, disbelief threading through his tone. “You truly believe I would flip an innocent’s life upside down for entertainment?”
“I do not know what to believe,” I confessed.
His expression shifted again at that, the anger receding.
“I know,” he affirmed. “That is why I cannot let this go. Not until you see.”
“Then you are a fool,” I said, because if I did not wound him, he would keep reaching for me.
His jaw tightened, pain flashing across his face before he sealed it away behind ice.
“I will see you tomorrow, Kaelia,” he said coldly.
I wanted to tell him not to bother.
I wanted to tell him I would have guards posted at every entrance.
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong.
But my body felt hollowed out, wrung dry by the storm of sensation and doubt. My eyelids grew heavy, the exhaustion of resisting both him and myself pulling me under.
The last thing I felt was the echo of that thread—still there, still humming faintly between us.
I did not hear him leave.
I only lay there in the moonlight, tears cooling on my cheeks, heart aching with a truth I was not brave enough to name.
And when sleep finally claimed me, it did not bring peace.
Only obsidian corridors.