Chapter 32
With nothing else left to offer the women who suffered so greatly and whose suffering has only just begun, I drag myself to Micheline’s inn. Kaelzar marches beside me, his gaze sharp and dangerous, glaring at the passersby like he’s expecting one of them to lunge at me without warning.
The rippling shadows slithering across the cobblestones don’t escape my notice. I’m sure they’d rise from the ground in an instant if anyone makes the wrong move too close to me.
He offers to take us through the shadows, but I refuse. I need time. Time to gather my thoughts before I face Peonica.
My sister. The word won’t stop echoing.
A cold part of me whispers it’s a lie, bait meant to unmoor me.
But my heart knows the truth. It clicked into place the moment I saw the writing:
To my beautiful daughters, Raylane and Peonica.
If it’s true, if she really is my sister, then why did she hide it from me?
Why keep it secret for so long? Why dangle that notebook in front of me for years, knowing what was inside?
Knowing how it tore me apart that I was too late to see our mother, too late to hear her side of the story.
Peonica chose silence. And I don’t know whether to call it protection or betrayal.
Those questions burn inside me, feeding the frustration in my gut. I need this walk just to cool my head, to stop the boiling anger from erupting when I see her again. I want to scream at her. Shake her.
Then I remember the image of her limp body hanging from that pole, her back raw and bleeding and the anger melts into something quieter. There will be time to confront her. Time to demand answers. But not now.
Right now, I just want to take her pain away.
“How is she?” I ask Micheline as we step into the bar. The barmaid is wiping glasses with a cloth.
“Sleeping,” she says, nodding to a curvy waitress to take over behind the bar. “I dosed her with enough sleeping herbs to knock out a horse.”
“Thank you,” I murmur, silently relieved that Peonica hasn’t been awake through all of this. Still, it takes effort not to bristle at the mention of the sleeping herbs. I thought only people with secrets or wicked intentions kept those on hand.
When we enter the room, the sight of Peonica grips my chest until breathing feels impossible. She’s sprawled across the bed, scrawny and pale, her mutilated back exposed to the air. Deep, jagged trenches slice across her skin.
Too many. I look away before my brain can turn it into numbers.
But it’s the thin red thread tangled in her white hair that undoes me. Cursed, just like me.
Two daughters. Same blood. Same curse. Our pain is matched now.
Mael’s smug face floats through my mind. He did this to her to get to me. But why? What would hurting me, removing me from the Trial do for him?
I crouch beside Peonica’s bed, pressing my hands to her frail body. The last remnants of Blood magic left in me surge forward, drawn to her pain, flooding into her flesh.
But my magic is spent before I can finish, and two long scars remain—almost symmetrical, spreading wide across the shoulder blades and tapering inward at the ends, one slightly shorter than the other.
Peonica sleeps on. And I’m empty.
“How long will she sleep?” I ask, surprised by the thinness of my own voice. Like something vital has been drained from me, more than just magic.
“Till tomorrow, most likely,” Micheline replies. She steps into my view, arms crossed, forcing me to lift my head. Slowly, I drag my gaze up to meet hers. “What will you do with the survivors?” she asks.
A harsh chuckle bursts out of me. “What will I do?” I spit the word. The I is thick with contempt. All I’ve done is make things worse with every step I take. I caused all of this. “I’m the last person anyone should rely on. All I can do is rot and destroy.”
Kaelzar’s voice cuts through my spiral of self-pity. “You’re this realm’s future, Raylane.”
The sound of my name from his lips hits me harder than the memory of torn limbs and blood. Has he ever said it before with such tenderness? I blink at him, stunned.
“The Crimson Tether may have been thrust upon your people as an undeserved vendetta,” he continues, “but for the first time in centuries, there’s hope. Hope that those who’ve suffered under it might not only survive, but live. Thrive. You bring trouble, yes, but only to those who deserve it.”
He speaks with so much force, so much conviction, it steals the breath from my lungs.
“Fighting by your side made me realize that maybe I was wrong,” he says.
“That maybe running away with a small group I care about, as I’ve planned, wasn’t the right thing to do.
I wasn’t thinking about the others. I thought survival meant escape,” he says.
“You taught me it means staying. Fixing it. For all of them.”
He takes a step closer. “And as I’ve sworn to you many times: I’ll do anything to make sure you survive this Trial. So you can give your people the future you promised them.”
With every word, the desperation bleeding out of me is replaced by admiration.
“That’s not what you swore,” I say weakly, a faint smile tugging at my lips. “You swore to do anything to make me win this Trial. My survival didn’t seem to be much of a priority before.”
He flinches. Just barely, but I catch it. As if my acknowledgment of the subtle difference of his words strikes a nerve he wasn’t prepared to expose. And then, with a small nod, resolve settles across his face.
I catch myself staring, drinking him in. Admiring the sharp angles of his face, the way the lines deepen when he’s thinking. He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them and meets my gaze.
“Give me your hand,” he says, extending his palm toward me.
I’m startled again by how large his hands are, but it’s the scars on them that hold my attention.
For the first time, I think of them as beautiful.
As something unique and fierce and entirely him.
I suddenly want to trace each one, to learn their shapes and commit them to memory.
He opens his fingers wider, an invitation for me to place my hand in his.
I hesitate. Just for a breath. Because something about the way he’s looking at me makes my pulse stutter. Then, mechanically, I place my right hand into his left.
He pulls me to my feet, and just as I rise, a sharp sound cuts through the air. A shadowed blade extends in his other hand.
“Trust me,” he says, then waits.
I nod instinctively, unsure of what he means but finding myself trusting him completely. Then the blade moves.
Before I can react, he slices at his shadow. The blade severs a piece of it, and the second it separates, Kaelzar tenses so violently I think I hear his teeth grind. The veins on his forearm bulge with effort, and yet, the hand holding mine remains gentle.
The cut shadow writhes, snaking its way up his sword, disappearing into his right hand… and then reappearing from his left, the one gripping mine.
I flinch, instinctively pulling away as the shadow crawls toward my skin. But Kaelzar doesn’t let go, not rough, just firm enough to make sure our hands have contact.
The moment his shadow meets my skin, it sinks in. Dissolves into me.
I watch, stunned, as a jagged pattern of dark ink etches itself into my forearm: sharp angles, wild lines. This time, when I pull away, he lets me. My eyes dart to his face. I could swear he whispered something under his breath, but it’s too quiet to make out.
“What is that?” I rub at my arm. The skin feels smooth, untouched, yet the mark is there.
“A protection spell,” he says simply. “My life is now bound to yours. When the time comes for your life to be taken, this spell will redirect the threat to me. It’ll take mine instead.”
I jerk back, then thrust my arm toward him. “Take it back, Kaelzar. Right now! Undo it!” My voice rings sharp and too loud, trembling with panic.
My life is still in real danger. Every breath between now and the final challenge hangs on the edge of a blade.
Calling it a fifty-fifty chance would be optimistic, if not delusional.
I can’t have his life—his actual life—standing in the way of mine.
I can’t let his death become the cost of my survival.
Maybe it’s the Godbeast’s duty to sacrifice for their Champion, but he’s not just—
The thought is so stark, it cuts clean through my mind. He’s not just my Godbeast, is he?
“Please,” I say quieter now. “We’ll get through it together. Trouble and her beast.” I try to smile, as if I can still turn this moment into something light, something that can be laughed off and undone with the right words.
Kaelzar takes my marked arm in both hands, gently, and presses it back against my body. “Once a shadow is severed from its Origin, it can’t return. You carry a part of me now. A part that will protect you. Always.”
His earlier words echo in my mind, how he never knows what part of an Origin transfers with its shadow. What did that part of his shadow take from him to give me? I don’t know. I didn’t feel any new power or trace of his magic. And yet, for all its strangeness, I’ve never felt safer.
Micheline clears her throat and I jump a little, realizing that I completely forgot she was still in the room.
“There are plenty of people who love those cursed by the Crimson Tether,” she says. “They’d give whatever they can to rebuild the settlement. And in the meantime, we could—”
“No,” I cut in, my voice firm. “They’re vulnerable there. Different men will come back and destroy it again.”
“What then?” she snaps, hands on her hips. “Let them submit and live in rubble?” She glares at me, and her voice drops to a bitter whisper. “You’re the one they trusted. And they’re dead. What will you do about it?”
Her tone, despite the harsh words, isn’t accusing but edged with frustration, like she’s been waiting for me to fix this for far too long and her patience is finally running out.