16. If It Were a Better World
IF IT WERE A BETTER WORLD
The nightmare came in fragments, disjointed and wrong.
Malec stood in his chambers, but the walls were bleeding.
The bed was empty, sheets twisted and torn.
He could smell her—sweet butter and cocoa, warm oils and the faint copper of blood—but she wasn't there.
The tether inside him pulled taut, screaming, a golden thread being severed one fiber at a time.
He tried to move, but his legs wouldn't obey. His hands reached forward, grasping at nothing, fingers curling and uncurling in the air. The rhythm was wrong, everything was wrong. "Allora," he whispered. Then louder. "Allora!"
The room shifted. Now he was in the forest. Snow fell upward instead of down. Trees bent at wrong angles. And there she was, her back to him, walking away.
He ran. His boots pounded against ground that felt like water, each step sinking, slowing. His breath came in fierce gasps, too fast, and too shallow. The air tasted like iron.
"Stop," he called out. "Please, Stop!"
She kept walking forward, her figure growing smaller, dissolving into mist.
His chest constricted. The tether snapped.
The pain was immediate and total. It felt like his ribs were cracking open, his heart exposed and bleeding. He collapsed to his knees, hands clawing at his chest, trying to dig out the agony that lived beneath his sternum.
"No," he gasped. "No, no, no?—"
The word repeated, a loop he couldn't escape, each repetition faster than the last until it became a continuous sound without meaning.
His body began to shake.
In the waking world, Luko stirred on his bedroll near the dying fire. The tent was small, cramped, lit only by embers from the portable brazier. He heard it first—the sound of ragged breathing, too quick, too desperate.
He sat up and looked toward the bed where Malec lay.
The Malec's body was rigid, spine arched, hands fisted so tight his knuckles had gone white. Sweat soaked through his tunic, darkening the fabric across his chest and shoulders. His platinum hair clung to his face in damp strands, lips moved soundlessly, forming the same word over and over.
"Malec," Luko said quietly, standing.
No response.
Luko approached the bed carefully. "Malec, wake up."
Malec's eyes were closed, but beneath the lids, his pupils darted frantically. His jaw clenched and unclenched in rhythm with his breathing. A low sound escaped his throat, almost a whimper, before he choked it back down.
Luko reached out and touched his shoulder.
Malec's eyes snapped open.
For a moment, he didn't see Luko. He saw nothing but the empty space where she should have been. His hand shot out, grabbing Luko's wrist with crushing force, his ash-tan eyes wild and unfocused.
"Where is she?" His voice cracked. "Where did she go?"
"You're dreaming," Luko said steadily, not pulling away despite the pain in his wrist. "It's just a dream."
Malec's grip loosened slightly, but his breathing didn't slow. He looked around the tent as if seeing it for the first time, cataloging each detail, trying to anchor himself.
"I lost her," he whispered. "I felt it. The tether—it broke. She's gone."
"It was a nightmare," Luko repeated gently. "The tether is still there. You can feel it if you focus."
Malec closed his eyes, his free hand moving to his chest. His fingers pressed against his sternum, searching for the connection. For a long moment, he was silent, only his breathing audible in the quiet room. Then his shoulders sagged slightly.
"It's faint," he rasped. "So faint I almost can't?—"
"But it's there," Luko finished.
Malec released Luko's wrist and sat up slowly, methodically.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, feet planted firmly on the floor.
His hands moved to his knees, gripping them, grounding himself in the physical sensation.
His thumb traced circles against the fabric of his trousers—another pattern, another attempt at order.
Luko sat beside him, close but not touching. He'd seen Malec like this before, though never this severe. The rigid posture, repetitive movements, the need to catalog and organize his surroundings when his internal world felt like it was collapsing.
"You should eat something," Luko said quietly. "You haven't eaten since yesterday morning."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're shaking."
Malec looked down at his hands. They trembled despite his grip on his knees. He tried to still them through force of will, but the tremor only worsened.
"The routine is broken," he said, more to himself than to Luko. "Everything is wrong. The order of things. I wake at dawn. I train. I eat. I work. But now there's only searching. Only hunting. No structure. No—" His breath trembled. "No her."
Luko's chest tightened. He'd known Malec for decades. Had fought beside him, celebrated victories with him, mourned losses together. But he'd never seen his friend this fractured.
"She had to run," Luko said softly.
Malec's head turned sharply. "What?"
"Allora. She had to run from this." Luko gestured vaguely at Malec. "From what you've become. What you're becoming."
The words hung between them, heavy and damning.
Malec's jaw worked silently. Then, quietly, "I would have given her everything?—"
"Except freedom," Luko replied. "And that's the only thing she wanted."
Malec's hands curled into fists against his knees. "She doesn't understand. The world is dangerous. She needs my protection…she needs?—"
"A cage?" Luko interrupted. "That's what you were building. A beautiful, comfortable, well-meaning cage."
"I love her."
"I know." Luko's voice was unbearably gentle. "But love that takes away choice isn't love. It's just ownership wearing a different name."
Malec stood abruptly, needing to move, needing an outlet for the energy crawling beneath his skin.
He paced like a wild animal with anxiety, then back and forth in the small space needing the rhythm, the same path.
Over and over. His hand rose to his hair, smoothing it back compulsively, checking that the strands were still in place even though they'd long since fallen loose.
"I can't stop," he said, his voice barely audible. "I've tried to stop thinking about her, to let her go, but I can't. The tether won't let me. My mind won't let me. Every moment she's not here, I feel like I'm suffocating."
Luko watched his friend pace, watched him fall apart in slow motion, and felt his heart break.
Because he understood now. This wasn't just obsession.
This was a man whose brain wouldn't let him rest, whose need for order and sameness had fixated on a single person as the key to his entire world's stability.
And when that person left, everything else collapsed.
"Maybe," Luko said carefully, "the problem isn't the tether."
Malec stopped pacing, his back still to Luko.
"The bond goes only one way," Luko continued quietly.
"It's unrequited. Not because she doesn't have the capacity to love you back, but because you haven't learned how to love her the way she needs to be loved.
" He paused, letting the words settle. "You poisoned your own bond, Malec. And she chose to free herself of it."
"She chose wrong," he said flatly.
"Or she chose herself," Luko countered. "And you can't forgive her for it."
The snow answered for them, falling soft and indifferent beyond the glass, the wind wailing like ghosts.
Finally, Malec spoke, his voice so quiet Luko almost didn't hear it.
"If I find her, I don't know what I'll do. Part of me wants to hold her and never let go. Part of me wants to—" He stopped, unable or unwilling to finish the thought.
Luko stood and moved to his friend's side. "Then maybe you should ask yourself what kind of Vash’telor you want to be when you find her. The one who proves her right to run, or the one who shows her she was wrong about you."
Malec's hands were still shaking. His breathing was still too fast. But a thread of Luko's words seemed to reach him, piercing through the chaos.
"I don't know if I can be the second one," he admitted.
"I know," Luko said sadly. "And I think she knew that too. That's why she ran."
Malec turned and looked at his friend. In the dim firelight his face was gaunt, dark circles carved beneath his eyes, his skin pale as death. He looked like an Awyan nearing the edge of ruin.
"No one deserves this madness," Luko said quietly, more to himself than to Malec. "Neither of you deserve what this bond has become."
But the words offered no comfort. Because the madness was already here, woven into the tether that bound them, written in the nightmares that wouldn't let Malec rest. And somewhere in the distance, Allora kept running, carrying a secret that would change everything, while the man who loved her in all the wrong ways continued his relentless hunt.
The carriage groaned as it veered off the main forest trail, Leira's hands steady on the reins. To anyone else, the path ahead looked like a dead end, a tangle of brambles and thorns twisted into a wall of green. But Leira leaned forward, flicked her fingers, and tapped a single stone at the base.
Click.
The wall unfolded like a curtain, vines drawing back as if afraid of her touch.
Allora sat up straighter. Kalemon did too, though hers was less intrigue and more suspicion.
The horses clomped forward through the hidden gate, hooves echoing on a path of cracked black stone, half-swallowed by roots and moss. The trees thickened, arching overhead like skeletal sentinels, their branches blotting out what little light the sky had left.
And then it appeared.
The chateau.
Small, but menacing. Its spires crooked like claws, shingles black and slick with age, shutters bolted tight as though the house itself wanted no one inside.
Dead vines strangled the walls, their brittle skeletons reaching for the roof.
Every window was narrow and sealed with heavy curtains, giving the impression of a hundred eyes closed tightly against the world.