CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Isat on the edge of the moss-covered dais, my fingers trembling as I smoothed the tunic over my knees, watching him.
Talon stood by the far obsidian wall, the faint bioluminescence of the room tracing the harsh, beautiful ridges of his jaw.
I cleared my throat. “Are you feeling well?”
He eyed me for a heartbeat, his gaze unreadable before he offered a single, curt nod.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” I whispered, my eyes dropping from his steely gaze to my interlocked hands.
He strode forward, his hand resting atop my head, before his fingers trailed down to grip the nape of my neck. “You will always have a home here. With or without me.”
I straightened with a flare of annoyance, batting his hand away. “That is not what I was afraid of, Talon. Do not twist my words into a matter of shelter.”
“I know.” He let out a deep breath, his hand dropping to his side. “I am sorry.”
I sniffed, turning my face toward the wall to stare blankly at the violet fissures in the stone. I could not maintain eye contact without bursting into tears.
“I am sorry,” I blubbered, nervously picking at a loose strand sticking out from the furs. “This whole situation… it has brought nothing but ruin to both cities.”
Talon scoffed. “This is not a burden for your shoulders alone, Kaelia. Do not flatter yourself by thinking you are the sole cause of centuries of hatred.”
“But people are dying, Talon,” I said, shaking my head. “Bodies are falling in every corridor, and it is only a matter of time before the pile outgrows the spires of this city.”
His breathing ceased. The silence was so sudden that I spun around to ensure he was still alive. He was leaning against the uneven wall, his arms crossed over his chest and eyes pinned on me.
I released a shaky breath of relief before crossing my legs to face him fully.
“You are speaking of the soldiers,” he grunted, his eyes searching mine.
“They were not soldiers. They were pawns sent by the High Court to die in a game they did not understand. You could have sent them back with a message, but you chose to leave them as husks.”
Talon stepped forward, his eyes burning with a cold light. “There is no salvation for those who cross into my city with murder in their hearts. We did what was required to ensure no others would follow.”
I clenched my jaw, my words dying in my throat as my eyes traced the length of him. They latched briefly onto the cotton-covered wound on his chest before skipping down to the power held in his legs.
“You think of me to be cruel because you have lived in the light,” he said.
“But you did not grow up with a kingdom hunting your kin. You did not bury brothers gutted in the name of a High Court order. They will take until nothing of us remains, Kaelia. I will not apologize for being the monster they made me.”
“I do not think you are cruel,” I replied, my hand reaching out to grasp his. “I believe you are a master driven by fear. And I am terrified of what that fear will make you do to my people.”
“Your people?” He scoffed and his hand tightened around mine. “The ones who would have seen you shackled or dead for the crime of existing in the presence of a forsaken bond? They are no longer your people.”
“My family is in Haelen!” I shouted, shooting to my feet. “My friends. Good people who are caught in the middle of a war that is starting because of me. I will not stand by while my old world is turned to ash.”
Talon’s hand shot out, his calloused fingers catching my chin and forcing my gaze to lock with his. The possessiveness in his eyes was as clear and cold as Thrynn water.
“Your soul is tethered to mine. Your home is where I am. Your people will either accept what you have become, or they will fall. It changes nothing between us. You belong to the shadows now. You belong to me.”
My eyes searched his, looking for a crack, but his resolve was concrete. I licked my dry lips, and his gaze dropped to the motion, his thumb tightening its pinch on my chin.
A soft rap at the archway broke the tension. Leona entered, her face tired as she carried a small stone flagon. She glanced between us and moved toward the rocky bedside table.
“He needs to drink this,” she said quietly, pouring a liquid that glowed with a mesmerizing violet hue. The scent of crushed herbs filled the room.
“What is it?” I asked, pulling away from Talon’s grasp.
“A distillation of star-moss and spirit-bloom,” Leona replied, offering the cup to Talon. “It will rejuvenate his damaged spirit and knit the shadow-veins back together.”
Talon took the cup, with a grateful grumble. He drained the violet liquid in a single sip, his eyes closing as a faint glow rippled beneath his tattoos.
The tension in his frame seemed to ease, just a fraction, though the weariness remained etched in his brow.
Leona moved to me, her hand resting briefly on my shoulder. “And you, Kaelia. You must rest. Your body is also rejuvenating.”
As she slipped out of the chamber, the silence returned. Talon watched me, his eyes burning with obvious exhaustion. The nausea I had been fighting finally surged, along with a wave of overwhelming fatigue.
I slumped back onto the bed, my strength vanishing like mist in the sun. I did not have the energy to speak anymore.
Before my eyes drifted shut, I felt the bed dip. A large, warm hand found my cheek, tugging my face into a kiss.
I sighed against his lips.
Talon pulled back and tapped my cheek. “Get some rest, little flame. I am meeting with Bater but will join you shortly.”
I tried to burrow into the furs, desperate to wrap myself in their warmth and disappear, but my body had other plans.
An insistent pressure in my bladder made sleep an impossible luxury.
With a groan of frustration, I kicked back the heavy blankets. Every muscle screamed in a protesting chorus as I forced myself upright and drifted toward the washroom.
I reached the basin and splashed cold water over my face, the chill doing little to settle the anxious beat of my pulse.
When I finally looked up, I flinched at my disheveled state.
My hair was a tangled nest of sweat-dampened strands, and my lips were cracked, almost pale enough to blend in with my skin.
I leaned in closer, my fingers gripping the cool edge of the stone.
I traced a finger across the surface, outlining the dark bruises beneath my eyes just as the glass tilted slowly.
I blinked, rubbing my bleary eyes, but the distortion did not fade. It deepened, creating a ripple-like effect that rapidly expanded.
The walls behind me in the reflection began to melt, the glowing stone darkening into the blood-stained dirt of a battlefield.
The reflection of my own face began to warp. My eyes bled into pools of unblinking white, and my skin took on the gray, ashen hue of the dead. I tried to pull away, but my feet felt as though they had been fused to the floor.
A hand reached out from the surface of the mirror.
The fingers were long, skeletal, and topped with silver-gray nails. They pressed against the glass from the other side, the surface bending like liquid silk.
Behind the distorted image of my own face, a woman with the white hair appeared. She was standing right behind my reflection, her lips curved into a conniving line.
“Come, Kaelia,” the mirror-ghost whispered.
The air in the small room vanished. The stench of blood and smoke exploded around me, so thick I could taste the rot on my tongue. The lantern light flared a violent, plagued green, and the floor beneath me began to heave like the chest of a dying beast.
My heart gave one final thud against my ribs before the glass shattered inwardly, a void of violet-black shadow rushing out to meet me.
The last thing I felt was the cold, biting grip of those spectral fingers around my throat before the floor rose up to claim me, and I fell headlong into the slaughter.
* * *
I awoke in the center of a battlefield that had no end. Above, the sky was a festering wound of plagued green, choked by roiling clouds that burned a bruised, sickly violet.
Ash fell from the heavens, coating my skin and hair in the ruin of a dying world.
The earth beneath my boots was a graveyard of churned mud and cooling blood, a wasteland marked by the prints of those who had already fallen.
Around me, chaos reigned.
The scream of steel against steel and the shrieks of the dying tore through the air, a symphony of slaughter. Human soldiers fought with warcries, their blades flashing in the diseased light.
Behind them, witches moved like wraiths, their hands wreathed in a translucent white light that twisted the very air into distorted shards.
And beyond the line of men, the Veythar moved. Obsidian smoke curled from their weapons as they carved through the living, their whispers trailing behind them like a thousand restless spirits.
The world was fire and shadow. In every direction I turned, there was only the harvest of souls.
The woman from the washroom stood at the heart of the carnage, her form illuminated by the plague-sky as if the heavens themselves were bowing to her cruelty.
Her pale, white-blonde hair whipped around her face in a spectral halo, and her claw-like hands were lifted high toward the churning clouds. Power surged from her in waves.
Behind her, a circle of witches cried out in a haunting unison, their light merging with hers to weave a force so blinding that even the shadows recoiled in fear.
I stood frozen, rooted to the blood-soaked soil. My heart stilled in my chest as I watched her wield a power so deadly. Each pulse of light she sent forth swept across the field, scattering both mortal and Veythar alike like dry leaves in a gale.
Her gaze locked onto mine through the swirl of ash and death, and the world went silent. The blood, the screams, the clash of steel—it all muffled beneath the crushing weight of her eyes. Slowly, with a grace so purposeful it made the blood in my veins turn to ice, she raised her hand toward me.
“They are here,” she said. Her lips curved into a terrible smile. “And they are bringing you to me.”
The earth shuddered. It was a tremor at first, a heartbeat in the stone, and then a violent quake that rippled across the battlefield.
Soldiers stumbled into the mud and witches cried out as their spells fractured.
Even the Veythar faltered, their dark forms flickering.
The sky convulsed, lightning splitting the violet clouds in a jagged display of fury.
“Come, Kaelia.” Her voice deepened, layered with a resonance that sounded like a thousand voices speaking through one throat. “Come and join me.”
The ground split open, jagged fissures tearing through the soil and bleeding that same eerie, green light.
From every direction, the voices rose—the dying soldiers, the screaming witches, the silent Veythar. Their mouths opened in perfect, haunting unison, their words a single command that thundered above the roar of the wind.
“Join her, Kaelia. Join her.”
The chant became a chorus, a haunting song that scraped against the inside of my skull. Their eyes—every pair of eyes on that field—turned upon me. They were empty. They were knowing. They were waiting.
The quake intensified, the fracture in the battlefield traveling beneath my feet. The sky bent lower, the plague clouds descending as if to swallow the world whole. She stretched out her hand, her palm open in a mockery of an invitation, her eyes blazing with an unearthly fire.
“Join me,” she commanded.
“Join her, Kaelia. Join her. Join her.”
The words vibrated in my bones, a song of ruin I could not silence.
The battlefield vanished, the ground collapsing into a void of shadow. The screams of the dying became the choir of the damned, and still, they sang my name until the world exploded in a burst of shadow and light, following me as I fell into the gaping hole.