Chapter 20 #2
The raw magic pulses within me, as if it’s mocking my inability to act. Pain flares as I try to curl my fingers into fists, the movement too much. I lean closer to the wolf instead, heart twisting with quiet empathy.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
My trembling hand hovers over the wolf’s head, hesitation crackling through me. The magic inside me stirs, coiling in my chest like a serpent preparing to strike.
The wolf lets out a faint, shuddering whimper, its battered body twitching as though it knows what’s coming.
My tears fall freely now, soaking into its matted fur. My fingers brush against the rough, bloodied coat, and my magic surges in response, a primal force demanding release.
I jerk back, bile rising in my throat. I can’t. I won’t.
But the wolf twitches, its body wracked with a fresh wave of agony, and a broken sound escapes its throat. My vision swims. How much longer will it suffer if I do nothing?
Then the wolf cries out, a heart-wrenching sound of pain. A final plea. When I open my eyes again, my decision is made.
The first tendril of decay creeps from my fingertips, dark and alive, slithering over the wolf’s head. It’s subtle at first, almost delicate.
Then the decay takes hold, spreading across the wolf’s body in a tide of blackened veins and ash-like crumbles. The animal’s labored breathing stills, and for a brief moment, the silence feels merciful.
But my magic doesn’t stop. The air turns rancid. Bone turns brittle, muscle shrivels.
A skeletal outline lingers for a breath too long before it collapses inward, crumbling to dust. My breath comes in short gasps, my hand still outstretched, my magic still curling at my fingertips, unsatisfied, wanting more.
I try to pull my hand back, to rein it in, but the magic refuses to obey. It stretches, an insatiable thing that does not recognize restraint. It pours out of me, a torrent of decay surging hungrily over the rocks, desperate for something to consume.
My body shudders, a terrible emptiness ripping through me as the magic seeks anything and everything it can touch.
But the stone is impervious.
The decay writhes across the rocky surface, unable to take hold. It hisses in frustration, like a starving beast denied a meal.
Then it turns inward, curling back toward me, as though searching for another life to devour.
For a horrifying moment, I think it might consume me instead. My breath stalls. Would I be able to control it if it tried?
Then, suddenly, it stops. Not because I command it, but because it chooses to.
The darkness withdraws, slinking back into the depths of my body like an animal retreating to its den. My trembling hand falls limply to my lap.
I stare at the stone floor, now marked with faint scorch-like trails where the decay touched it, and feel the absence.
Then suddenly, the life I took from the wolf bursts within me, somewhere in the center of the churning magic that now slithers patiently against my bones, content, before it dissolves into my body, spreading outward to my wounds.
And yet, I feel no relief. I feel drained, hollowed out, but also free. Like something inside me realigned itself into something new.
Tears still run down my cheeks as I whisper into the silence, “I’m sorry.”
The words taste wrong. Inadequate. As if they could erase what I’ve done. The apology isn’t just for the wolf, but for myself—for what I had to do, for the power I still barely understand. For the choice I thought I’d never make.
I lean back against the wall, my head falling against the cool stone. The pain in my body is gone, replaced by a tenuous calm. I feel lighter, as though releasing my magic has unburdened me of more than just my physical wounds.
By the time I lift my palms, the skin is whole, not even a scar remains from the cuts. I press my fingers to my side, then unwrap the bloody bandage, but there is no trace of the grave injury.
My gaze falls to the spot where the wolf had been, now nothing but a patch of blackened dust. Wrapping my arms around myself, I shiver despite the warmth radiating from my skin.
“I didn’t mean for it to…” My voice breaks, and I can’t finish the thought.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize Kaelzar knew this would happen. He warned me about the danger of holding that magic without a release.
Maybe he meant for me to feel the shock of losing control now, to experience the hunger of my magic firsthand. To finally heed his warnings.
“Good,” Kaelzar’s voice comes from the shadows a moment before his form steps into the dim light. I flinch. Has he been here the whole time? Watching?
He’s wearing his damn cloak again. It’s a reminder that it’s time to return to reality, where he is nothing but my Godbeast and I am his Champion.
But as he steps closer, his gaze flicks. Not to me, but to the scorch-marked stone. To the place where the wolf had been. If there’s anything behind those cold, storm-dark eyes, he doesn’t let it show.
“Now you’re ready to go back.”
I refuse to step back into the shadow world. The memory of its suffocating weight, the uncomfortable charge prickling my skin, and the unrelenting darkness that clung to me like a second skin churns in my stomach.
Instead, I trudge after Kaelzar, the uneven ground of the cave biting into my bare feet with every step.
The cavern where I released my magic is just one part of a sprawling labyrinth—a vast, echoing system of tunnels on the far side of the Birch Forest. Beyond the forest lies Viele, but Kaelzar informed me it would take hours of riding to reach it.
“All night,” he said, his voice reverberating off the stone walls, “or a few seconds through the shadows.”
“I’ll take the night, thank you,” I replied.
Kaelzar didn’t argue. Instead, shadows coiled at his feet, those same living tendrils he now uses to guide us through the maze of curling tunnels.
The paths split and rejoin, arched into massive chambers, then narrow into jagged corridors. The flickering light of luminescent fungi along the walls casts an eerie green-blue glow. It paints Kaelzar’s hulking frame in shifting shadows.
Stalactites hang overhead, dripping faintly, their droplets a rhythmic counterpoint to the echo of my shoeless feet. The blanket I still keep wrapped around myself drags along the ground.
The longer we walk, the hotter my frustration simmers.
He said he brought me to the cabin to help me heal, yet somehow I feel splintered all over again. Then he took me into these caves without asking, without so much as a warning. And when he came across that suffering wolf, he didn’t step in. He stood back and made me do it.
Made me kill it.
Maybe there was a reason behind it. Maybe, in his mind, it was a test. A way to make me stronger. Some twisted version of empowerment.
And maybe, in a way, it worked. But that doesn’t make it right. Because he took the choice from me. No one should have to surrender pieces of their humanity to survive what’s been done to them.
It’s not that I expect to be coddled. I don’t. But there’s a difference between guiding someone through pain and dragging them through it without asking.
My thoughts snag on the memory of how I kissed him, desperate to end his pain then, just as he tried to end mine now. Somewhere in it, there’s a dark irony. I can’t quite make sense of it, but the symmetry stings.
Heat climbs my neck when I think of his aggravated voice telling me there could never be anything between us. I helped him. That’s all it was. I never said it meant anything. I never asked for anything. He’s the one who assumed.
Now we walk in silence, his shadow stretching long ahead of me. Both memories—the stench of the wolf’s decay and the lingering heat of his lips on mine—cling where they shouldn’t. The mix of them is almost grotesque in its intimacy, blurring together until I can’t tell which one hurts more.
I fix my eyes on Kaelzar’s back. He doesn’t show an ounce of regret for either act, just keeps marching ahead as if none of it matters.
Unable to contain my disquiet any longer, I close the distance between us and tug sharply on his cloak.
He stops abruptly and turns, question in his expression.
“This is your one and only warning,” I snap, voice trembling with fury. “Next time you try to force me into doing something, I will order you to back off. I’ll make you drop to your knees. I’ll force you to obey, too.”
With every word, Kaelzar’s body grows taut, his shoulders rigid, his hands curling into massive fists at his sides.
I know I’m being unfair, but the words keep spilling out and I can’t seem to stop them.
Something raw and wounded inside me has its claws out now, and it doesn’t know how to do anything but fight. “Understood?”
He takes a step forward. Just one. Not enough to be threatening, but enough to make my breath stall in my throat. I should take it back. Or maybe I should double down. I don’t know anymore.
“Threaten me all you want, Trouble,” he says, his voice flat and lifeless in a way I’m not used to hearing. “I’ll do whatever I have to—”
“To make me win!” I cut him off, throwing my hands up. “How about doing something that helps us both win? Why is it so hard for you to see us as a team? Why, after everything, can’t you just see us as…” I hesitate, words raw in my throat. “Friends?”
The word slips out, surprising me more than him.
Kaelzar stills. For a moment, he just stares at me. When he speaks, his voice is so low I have to hold my breath to hear him.
“Is that what you want me to be? A friend?”
My chest tightens, my throat dry, but before I can answer, he continues, his tone colder now.
“Well, friend, let me tell you a story. Once, there was a young woman named Mia. She was my friend. And when she was hurt, when she nearly died in a quarrel between gods, I realized she was much more than that to me.”
I freeze, my pulse quickening as his chains rattle, solidifying against his chest before beginning their usual grinding motion.
“Calista graciously offered to chain me in exchange for healing Mia, then ordered me to stay away,” he says, his voice hard. “As if I could. Calista found out eventually…”
Blood seeps over his vest, staining it in a deep crimson, but he ignores it. “She believed I belonged to her, and in her rage, she decayed Mia, and my mother, along with the rest of my village. She left only one of my friends alive, just so I’d still have someone to lose.”
I stare at him. Knowing he chose this leash of chains to save the woman he loved and it was still for nothing makes my heart bleed.
Kaelzar barks a dry laugh, but there’s no humor in it.
“To win back her forgiveness, Calista ordered me to crawl on my knees back to her castle, on a path she littered with shards of broken glass and jagged stones,” he says, his voice tight with restrained anger and pain, as rivulets of blood keep pooling at his feet.
“She wanted it that way, so the ground itself would drink my suffering. Every inch of that cursed trail tore at my skin, stripping it down to raw, bleeding flesh. By the time I reached the castle steps, my vision swam from the blood I’d lost. Glass shards embedded themselves deep into my palms and legs, grinding against bone with every movement.
The only thing that kept me moving, the only thing that kept me breathing, was the thought of my remaining friends. ”
That’s how he got the scars on his palms, I realize, as my fingers curl to feel my own smooth palms.
I remember it, the feeling of the sharp shards beneath my hands when I landed on the crushed glass. The way it sliced into my skin with just one move. I can’t imagine crawling through it. It must have been excruciating.
I swallow hard, wanting to say something, but what words exist for this?
His chains rattle again, the metal biting harder into his flesh as if responding to his words. Rivulets of blood run down his body, but he doesn’t even glance at them. He’s used to it, and that’s the worst part. How easily he bleeds. How little it seems to matter.
“She spelled the trail of my blood from the ruined village to her castle, so it would forever stain the earth, a reminder of my failure and a monument to her dominion.” A mirthless chuckle cuts through his story.
“So, friend,” he drawls, “threaten me again with forcing me to my knees. By all means. After all, I’ve been there before. I know the way.”
Blood gathers at his feet, stark against the stone. He turns sharply, his movements stiff, and stalks ahead, leaving me standing in the eerie glow of the fungi.
For a moment, I can’t move. Can’t think.
Calista’s cruelty is so immense it makes my blood run cold with the regret of ever becoming her Champion.
But as I stand in this cave, now seemingly alive with its quiet light and still shadows, I remind myself: if I hadn’t accepted, I’d be recovering from a severe lashing for refusing to surrender or worse, dead from the kind of injuries that kill so many other women every day.
I don’t know what to do with that thought.
As the scent of iron lingers and the walls seem to narrow around me, once again, I choose to move forward.