Chapter 30
The Shadow Realm is as awful as I remember. Cold. Chaotic. Disorienting. It feels like a thousand unseen hands are grabbing at me, whispering gibberish directly into my bones. My stomach churns violently. I try to focus on Kaelzar, but even he flickers, his presence warping like a mirage.
It feels like hours, but it’s probably only seconds before we stumble into blinding daylight. I drop to my knees, bile rising, stomach rebelling as I clutch the ground and gasp for air. My body feels turned inside out.
Behind me, Kaelzar stands tall, completely unbothered.
“How… how are you so composed?” I manage to croak, wiping my mouth with a trembling hand.
His voice comes soft. “I had decades to get used to it. At first, I walked the shadows alone. Then I started taking others with me.”
I glance up at him, confused.
“Animals,” he adds. “A lamb. Some goats. Eventually an entire herd of cows.”
It’s an absurd idea, almost laughable, yet the image still stops me cold as the reason behind it clicks into place. “That’s how you planned to lead your people away from her?” I whisper.
He doesn’t meet my eyes. Just gives the faintest nod.
All that planning. All that hope. All of it, shattered.
Because of me.
I force myself upright, ignoring the guilt tearing its way through my chest. There’s no time for it right now. Once it’s done, I’ll find a way to help him fix it, I vow to myself, before turning to face Mael’s estate.
The gray, towering marble walls gleam under the sun. Golden inlays shimmer along the edges of the massive archway. The double doors are dark wood, banded with iron. The gardens flanking the entrance are pristine and blooming. I ignore the artificial beauty and press forward.
Guards in polished silver armor block our path, their spears crossed. “Halt! You have no—”
Before they can finish, I uncoil my whip.
It slices through the air and cracks against the packed earth, the metal blades at its tip releasing thin wisps of decay that gouge the ground at our feet.
The marks are long and claw-like. The guards flinch, instinct forcing them a step back.
“Stand aside,” I say, voice cold as ice.
I know I can’t hurt them, not without being disqualified from the Trial, but terror doesn’t remember rules. I know that from experience. The guards hesitate, then slowly retreat.
Kaelzar steps beside me, his shadows crawling forward like smoke come alive. They slip into every crevice, every crack of the estate, searching. He closes his eyes, brow furrowed in concentration.
“My shadows found a gathering,” he says finally, eyes opening to meet mine.
“Lead us,” I say.
Together, we stride inside.
As we move through the corridors, I can’t shake the memory of Peonica’s hesitation when Eva dismissed the idea that the ring Kaelzar gave me could be dangerous. I glance down at the small band on my finger.
He wouldn’t lie, I tell myself. Not after everything.
Still, doubt slips in, sharp like a splinter beneath the skin.
I remember the first time I questioned him about offering the ring.
How he said it would help me to control the magic, only to later explain that it was actually making him aware of when I’d need help. How I’d never questioned it further.
I remind myself that here he is, standing beside me, risking everything without hesitation.
I want to believe that means something. No, I need it to.
We move deeper into the estate. The marble floors gleam, and the sconces cast a soft, golden light. Everything around us seems immaculate, but the illusion shatters when I notice the servants.
Red hair. All of them.
They move quietly, scrubbing, polishing, scurrying around with pots and rugs in their hands. Rust Hollow’s women. The exiled. Each of them wears crude metal gloves, the ones Zyrel demonstrated during the Spectra Judicium.
I halt to a stop, anger flaring like fire through my veins. I grab the arm of a young woman kneeling at the base of a column.
“What are you doing here?” My voice comes out too sharp.
The girl flinches. “Working, my lady,” she says quickly, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Willingly?” I demand.
Kaelzar’s hand brushes mine, a gentle nudge to release the terrified girl. I let go, dimly aware of how unfair I’m being, yet powerless to stop the anger churning inside me.
“We were given a choice, my lady,” the girl says, eyes fixed on the floor. “Stay in Rust Hollow or… come here. Work for free but be fed.” Her throat bobs with a hard swallow. “Many of us chose to serve for food and a bed.”
My fists clench, knuckles whitening as anger eats away at my resolve. I tried so hard to save them. To fight for a better life for them, for the life my mother was denied. And yet here they are, serving, scrubbing. Because they chose to.
Something cracks inside me.
“Work for free?” My voice spikes, sharp and loud. “He made you into slaves. And you’re just going along with that?”
The words curdle on my tongue, bitter and useless. Everything I’ve done in the arena, every promise I dared to throw into the wind, it dissolved the moment I stepped out. Out here, none of it holds weight. At least not to them, it seems.
What else don’t I know? How long has this been happening? How long have they been working here? The girl shrinks back, eyes wide with fear.
“Ryker had to know,” I hiss, bitter heat curling in my bones. “He had to have approved this.”
“Once you are Archpriestess,” Kaelzar says quietly, “you’ll fix it.”
I take a long, deep breath, trying to calm myself. I can’t fall apart now. Not while Peonica’s still missing. So I tear my gaze away from the red-haired women and keep walking, but their images stay with me. Tied-back hair. Iron gloves. Hollow eyes. I see them every time I blink.
Kaelzar’s shadows guide us to a pair of mahogany doors guarded by two armored men.
“Move,” I say, unfurling my whip to the floor. Rot oozes from its tip in slow, sinister tendrils, curling over the rugs in a warning. The guards don’t move.
I tap one red nail against the hilt of my whip.
“Three. Two…” I almost smile, watching them hesitate. I can’t harm them, not directly. But there’s nothing in the rules about touching the things around them.
“One.”
The whip lashes out with a crack, slashing across the doors. Rot explodes through the wood like invisible termites from hell. The frame groans, blackens, and collapses inward on itself.
There’s more magic in me than ever before, and I can feel how different it is now from when my power first awakened.
It spills over in a heavy torrent. Before, it was too thin to sustain for long, burning out almost as soon as I released it.
Now it surges in a dense rush that feels endless, as if it could devour the whole city if I let it.
The doors are gone in seconds, reduced to drifting ash.
I find myself grateful for all the times Kaelzar forced me to practice control, despite my grumbling and stubborn refusal.
Even now, I know I’m far from mastering it, but without his training, this power would have spiraled out of control long ago.
The guards stumble back, terror overtaking duty, and flee. Through the widening hole in the wood, I see them: Mael, Consul Montague and a few others I don’t recognize. A gathering of smug faces and half-filled glasses, frozen mid-sip. They stare at me like I’m a ghost.
Kaelzar steps forward, kicks the splintered remains aside, and gives me a playful bow. “After you, my lady.”
I walk in, whip trailing behind me, leaving delicate trails of rot in my wake. Alistar’s eyes are the first to shift. Not to the rot, not to the shadows creeping in, but to me. And for a single, breathless beat, I see fear. Of me.
But the fear vanishes, smothered beneath that infuriating calm. His spine straightens, his chin lifts. The mask slides back into place, slick with entitlement.
He looks at me the way men like him always do. Like I’m temporary.
“What is the meaning of this?” Alistair demands, stepping forward with the effortless arrogance of a man who believes himself beyond consequence.
Mael looks almost exhilarated, watching me with the sharp interest of someone long weary of his own dull company and finally thrilled by what’s unfolding. He lifts his cup and takes an unhurried sip.
“You have my friend,” I address Mael, my voice cool and composed.
Alistair bristles. “If you believe you can barge into His Majesty’s estate and issue threats without consequence, you’re gravely mistaken.”
Mael idly swirls his wine. “Let’s be fair, Consul,” he says, voice silked with mockery.
“As everyone here now knows, I did barge into her rooms first, and I went a bit beyond threats with our failed queen. I’d say she’s well within her rights to return the favor.
Though one might argue,” he says smoothly, “that spitting into my mouth was payback enough.”
The room stills, and I see it for what it is.
He’s effortlessly folding even that moment of humiliation into a performance.
“Perhaps the decay at my doors was a touch excessive?” he continues, sipping as if this were a lazy afternoon chat.
“They were made of fine wood, Ray. Guiltless, beautiful things. You might show a little mercy. Or is the rot eroding your control as much as they say?”
He’s clever. His words are charming enough to soften the insult just enough to pass as civility. And all of it calculated to make me look unhinged.
“Where is Peonica?” I growl.
Kaelzar’s shadows coil around the edges of the room.
Alistair scoffs and turns toward a large desk near the window. He picks something up, something small and leather-bound, and my heart sinks.
Peonica’s notebook.
“Full of surprises, that one,” Alistair says as he begins flipping through the pages.
I freeze. If I move, I’ll lunge. I’ll tear his smug face apart with my bare hands.
That notebook was her most guarded possession. I wasn’t even allowed to touch it without her hissing like an angry cat. And now his fingers are on it. Smearing filth across her words.
I tear my gaze away from Alistair and find Mael again. “Is she here?” I ask through clenched teeth. “You have no right to hold her.”
“She broke into my library,” Mael says. “A clear case of trespassing, wouldn’t you agree? I had every right. And I was generous. I didn’t keep her a moment longer than the interrogation required.”
Alistair waves the notebook carelessly, like he’s swatting a fly. “She’s exactly where cursed scum like her belongs.”
The world tilts as his words burrow through my thoughts.
Interrogation.
Cursed.
Eyes shift toward me. And if it weren’t for Kaelzar’s hand, reassuring, steadying, warm against my back, I might collapse.
“What did you do to her?” I whisper. Magic slips from my fingertips before I can stop it. Peonica was trying to help me, and I did nothing. Again. I failed her.
“You can’t,” Kaelzar hisses. “If your magic hurts someone now, you’ll lose everything.”
I know that. I know it. But my body doesn’t seem to care. My rage wants blood. I need to leave. Now. Before I decay this entire place down.
“Did your shadows find her?” I ask Kaelzar.
He shakes his head, gaze grim. “She’s not here.”
Alistair laughs. “Neither you nor your feral pet have the faintest idea how deep the current runs.” His eyes gleam as he tilts his head toward Mael. “But I’m sure his Highness would agree that curiosity has always been such a dangerous little habit.”
Mael doesn’t so much as glance his way. He stands motionless, the Consul’s words apparently beneath his attention. Instead, his gaze settles on me, touched with a faint, infuriating pity. As if to say this is all out of his hands now. As if he regrets watching it happen.
But Alistair isn’t finished. He raises the notebook again, holding it aloft like a trophy. “She left something behind,” he says, the words slow and sharp, “and I must admit, it’s quite… illuminating.”
“I want to go to Rust Hollow’s pole,” I say, my voice hard.
One more sentence from him, one more smug little grin, and I’ll snap. Shadows rise at my feet, swallowing the air around us.
But just before we vanish, Alistair lifts the first page of the notebook.
My mind freezes as he tilts the notebook just enough for me to see what’s written there in a delicate cursive.
A dedication.
To Raylane and Peonica.
My beautiful daughters.