Chapter 11 #3
For the next two weeks, morning to night, we’re out there in the same meadow.
Kaelzar coaxes, commands, intimidates, and comes just short of begging me to use my magic.
But it is erratic, and every time I feel it stir, surging toward the surface, I sense its chaotic current, threatening to spill out of me in uneven bursts I know I would not be able to control, let alone direct at will.
I grit my teeth and tense my shoulders, trying to gather it into something coherent, something I could measure and guide. Instead, nothing happens at all and the magic retreats.
Kaelzar brings food so we don’t have to return to the Palace except to sleep. Not that I’m eager to go back. The stone guards follow me through the Palace, letting me out of sight only in my rooms or when I cross into the forest.
I stopped trying to see Ryker after my third attempt when the guards turned me away from the royal wing without explanation, restricting me to my chambers and the narrow hallways I needed to pass through to come and go. I haven’t tried since.
Wouldn’t, even if given the chance.
Maybe Ryker didn’t know everything. Maybe Mael didn’t tell him the whole truth. But Ryker’s refusal to ask, his choice not to look deeper, sits inside me like a thorned vine lodged in my throat. It tears at me every time I swallow. Refuses to go down.
And while I’ve gotten good at avoiding everyone at court—leaving before dawn, slipping back in long after nightfall—tonight, I won’t have that luxury.
Tonight is the Spectra Judicium. The event Kaelzar won’t stop grumbling about. Where, he insists, we’re both doomed because I still haven’t shown the ambition to survive.
After another endless set of hours, I fail to summon and control my Decay magic, and Kaelzar’s patience finally snaps.
“You have a choice,” he barks. “Embrace what you are. Or lose.” The wind shifts, carrying the scent of wildflowers, of life. And I wonder, will it really come down to choosing between unleashing my deadly magic… or letting myself perish?
I lift my chin. “What do you care if I lose?” I snap back. “You’ll probably just go back to wherever you were and forget any of this ever happened.”
Kaelzar stills. For the span of a breath his every muscle draws tight. His fists curl, his jaw locks, and his shoulders go rigid.
And then it shifts. A flicker in his expression, small, but unmistakable.
Fear.
It flashes through him like a crack of light, gone almost as soon as it appears. But I catch it. And he sees that I do. His searing gaze lifts and for a moment, it’s not armor he wears, but fury at being seen without it.
“No.” The word is a hiss, venomous and final. His shoulders draw back, his form rigid once more, but the afterimage lingers in my mind, the truth behind the mask. “I won’t let you lose.”
He takes a step toward me, and I flinch.
His face twists, something savage and terrifying flashing across it.
“I will make you win. Even if you’re bleeding out on the ground, tangled in your own entrails.
I’ll drag you across that finish line if I have to.
You don’t get to lose, not while I’m still breathing. ”
The sheer venom in his voice leaves my mind reeling.
It’s as if winning this Trial means everything to him— more than my life, more than his own. My pulse stutters. The raw force in his voice stirs a memory of the mental connection we shared during the first challenge, when every feeling of his became a tremor beneath my skin.
Fragments of our mental connection flood back. His guilt, his desperate hope for salvation, the crushing despair when it was ripped away. And beneath it all, hatred.
So much hatred it nearly drowned me.
But one memory surges forward, blurred but vivid: a gentle hand cupping his cheek, words spilling through his mind. “When evil seeks to break you, remember this—”
I didn’t hear the rest, but I know what those words meant to him. Everything. Just like this Trial. Is he so desperate to win because of her? Because he promised her something that he can’t let go of?
A spark of rage flares through me. I have people depending on me, too. I also know winning is my only option. Yet I don’t treat him like a tool or threaten to drag him to victory wrapped in his own entrails. Who does he think he is, to speak to me that way?
I glare at him. “You know, now that I think about it, I remember feeling your desperation to go home. And I remember you saying that when this is over, when I’ve won, you’ll finally be free of me. A burden, you called me, wasn’t it?”
His lips twitch, as if it takes everything in him not to respond. I see it, but I keep going, unable to stop.
“Funny,” I continue, “because both those things imply you could leave once we’ve won. But we both know that isn’t how a Godbound thread works. The only thing that could separate us is if we lose or one of us dies. Since you’re so set on making me win, you can forget about your home.”
Kaelzar’s eyes burn, gray and storm-bright, but the words are already spilling from me, too quick to recall.
“And whoever that older woman was, the one who touched your face so lovingly, the one waiting for you, rest assured, if I win, there will be at least a century before you’re reunited. Longer, if I can help it.”
His gaze falters for just a breath, but I press on, relentless. “So cheers to your efforts toward my victory. It may be my entrails and blood you’re willing to sacrifice, but it’s your dreams that will be the true prize.”
For a heartbeat, his mouth parts, like he’s about to strike back. Anger flickers across his face, or the impulse to wound me as deeply as I’ve just tried to wound him. I brace for it.
But instead of meeting cruelty with cruelty, he surprises me.
He chooses the most effective weapon to hit back: the truth.
“The woman you speak of,” he says, “is my mother. She isn’t waiting for me to come back, because she’s dead.”
He doesn’t look away as he speaks. His steady gaze stays fixed on me, like a man pushing a blade he knows will cut both ways.
“She was rotted in my arms by the hand of the goddess you’ve chosen to serve.”
Something shifts in his face then, sudden and startling, as if pain—real, physical pain—lashes through him. His eyes widen, and when he speaks again, his voice is low and final.
“You’ll have to do it alone tonight,” he says as he turns away.
“You’re leaving me?” The words break out of me before I can stop them, sharp with disbelief. “Now?”
His back is already to me, his cloak catching the sunlight like liquid shadow.
Guilt floods in, thick and choking. I shouldn’t have said what I did, any of it, but the panic claws through faster than reason.
“Kaelzar, please,” I manage, the plea scraping out between unsteady breaths. “You said you wouldn’t let me lose.” My voice trembles, cracking under the weight of it. “Why would you—”
The rest never makes it out. He steps into the shadow of the nearest tree and vanishes, swallowed whole by it. One moment, he’s there and the next, he’s gone, as if even the act of staying cost him too much.
I stand frozen. My chest tightens, my pulse stumbles into chaos.
I’m alone. Alone with my magic. Alone to face whatever comes next.
And under the fear, regret festers. Because all of it is my fault.
I drove him away with my pride, with my bruised ego.
Instead of trying to understand his desperation, I lashed out at it.
I made his pain a target because it was easier than admitting how much it hurt to see that he cared only that I win, not how much it might break me in the process.
What if I can’t do this with him gone? What if I’m not strong enough? Panicked questions claw through me, leaving jagged edges of doubt in its wake.
How can I persuade the people to pray to my Goddess if I can’t even prove myself worthy? The magic inside me shifts, sensing my unease. A parasite, feeding on my fear.
I see their faces in my mind. The sneers of those who doubt me. The cold, pitying stares of those who think I am nothing more than a cursed girl who should have never been born. I try to swallow the panic, but it burrows deeper. Rust Hollow. The cursed women.
If I fail, what happens to them?
I can pretend I don’t need Kaelzar, but the truth settles like a rock caught behind my ribs.
I need him. I need his guidance like I need air, and he’s not here. My hands shake. My vision blurs with unshed tears. My magic writhes, slipping through the fractures in my resolve.
I try to hold it back. Cage it. But I am already cracking.
And when it breaks free, it doesn’t just leak from my hands. It erupts.
A violent surge of Decay spills from me, rippling outward in a wave of rot. The air thickens, the heady scent of wildflowers drowned beneath the stench of death.
“Coil and settle!” I choke out, grasping for control. “Controlled and contained….”
The last words fade to nothing as the meadow dies.
The once-vibrant grass blackens and disintegrates, crumbling to dust beneath my feet.
Fiery-red flowers wither in seconds, petals curling inward, then falling like brittle husks.
The trees at the clearing’s edge groan, their bark splitting open, revealing twisted, gnarled wood. Leaves shrivel and turn to ash.
My knees buckle and I collapse, fingers digging into the deadened earth. Tears well in my eyes.
A sick, hollow feeling sinks deep into my bones as I stare at the devastation I have wrought. My breath comes in ragged gasps as my magic retreats inside. The world around me is silent. Still.
Dead.
And as I kneel in the wasteland I have created, a single, gut-wrenching thought takes root.
Maybe this is all I am good for. Death and destruction.