Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Kaelan
My body hurt.
That was how I knew I was alive.
As I dragged in a breath, cold air burnt my lungs. My fingers twitched against stone. Someone was holding my hand.
“Hanna,” I rasped as I forced my eyes open.
She lay there beside me, her hair loose around her shoulders, her face pale and perfect and wrong. Her eyes were open, fixed on my face, but there was no warmth in them. There was no longer the fierce, familiar focus that always sharpened when she looked at me.
When she smiled, it wasn’t quite Hanna’s smile.
“Easy, king,” she said, and her voice was layered. Hanna’s tone beneath something older, smoother, vast. “You’ve only just returned to this world you will now rule.”
Panic surged. I tried to sit up and the world darkened at the edges as pain flared behind my eyes. Strong hands caught me before I fell back.
“Careful,” Dare said, breathless, wild-eyed. “Gods, you look like hell.”
Thorne was on my other side. “Battle’s over. They’re running. Edric’s dead.”
That mattered, but it didn’t matter now. My focus locked back onto Hanna, onto the thing wearing her body. “Hanna. Talk to me.”
Her head tilted.
The movement was too precise. Too curious.
“She cannot,” the Shadow Weaver said gently. “Not now.”
Something inside my chest fractured.
I surged forward despite the pain, reaching for her face, for anything familiar.
Thorne grabbed my shoulder, hard. “Kaelan. Look at her.”
Hanna’s body was breathing. Warm. Solid. But the shadows clung to her like a second skin, pooling faintly beneath her eyes, threading through her veins in dark, luminous lines. Power radiated off her in slow, tidal waves that made the air feel heavy.
“You took her over,” I said hoarsely.
The goddess smiled again. “No. She gave herself to me. For your sake. For your kingdom.”
The crowd surged nearby—rebels shouting, peasants weeping, lords calling orders into a world that had suddenly turned upside down. Someone cheered my name. Someone knelt.
None of it mattered.
“For her kingdom,” Thorne corrected, his voice rough. “Don’t try to place this guilt on him. On us. She served her kingdom because she is our queen.”
“What did she do?” Dare demanded, sounding frantic. “What did you take from her?”
“Hanna wouldn’t—” I disagreed with Thorne, with the Shadow Weaver herself.
“She did,” the goddess said calmly. “To protect you all. To open the door. To slay the monster. She wielded the shadows when it meant giving herself over to them. You saw the cost every time. You had to know she would ultimately lose herself to the shadows.”
I collapsed on my knees beside the Shadow Weaver. My hands shook as I pressed them to my face, trying to breathe past the sudden, crushing weight in my chest. “She promised she’d follow.”
The Shadow Weaver’s gaze softened. “And she told the truth. She followed you as far as she was able.”
I looked up sharply. “As far as—”
“She remains,” the goddess said. “But not as she was. Her magic and mine are threaded together. She is a part of me, and I am a part of her.”
I met the Shadow Weaver’s eyes. “Let her go. Take me instead.”
Thorne stiffened. “Kaelan—”
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t look at Dare. I kept my gaze fixed on the goddess inhabiting the woman I loved. “I was born for this. A king. A vessel. Whatever you need. Take me and give her back.”
The Shadow Weaver studied me in silence.
Then she laughed. “Oh, child. You are already claimed, by crown and kingdom and consequence. Your people need you, and she would never let your kingdom fall for her sake. And besides…” Her smile sharpened. “You would not survive me.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know. That is why she loves you.” The Shadow Weaver reached out to touch me, her hand cupping my cheek in almost the same way Hanna would have. Her gaze was fond, as if she had come to love me, too, for Hanna’s sake. I studied Hanna’s face, trying to understand.
“If no one will worship the old gods,” the Shadow Weaver continued, her voice echoing faintly now, as if the world itself were listening, “then we must endure another way. We must walk through this world rather than waiting in temples. I’m not sure what will happen to me when this body dies, but if this little time is all I can have, then I look forward to experiencing mortal life. ”
Her head tilted again, sharper this time.
She went very still.
The noise of the battlefield seemed to fade, as if muffled by snow.
“What is it?” I asked, dread curling cold in my stomach. “What do you hear?”
The Shadow Weaver smiled slowly, wonder threading through her expression. “Is this your trick? Their prayers?”
My blood ran cold.
I didn’t hear what she was hearing, but I could see the goddess listening, and the joy that lit in her gaze.
Hanna
The shadows loosened.
Not all at once—not ripped away—but thinning, retreating like a tide drawing back from shore. For the first time since the battle, since the darkness closed over me, I could see without looking through her.
The Shadow Weaver stood across from me.
She wore a woman’s shape now, tall and willowy, her hair dark as ink, her eyes deeper still. They were ancient, intelligent, burning with restrained wonder. Power coiled around her like smoky shadows and hovered between us, uncertain.
We stood in a temple.
An old one.
Stone columns rose around us, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of hands and prayers.
The air smelled of ash and beeswax and something green and living beneath it all.
Fresh-cut pine boughs lay along the walls.
Light filtered in through high, narrow windows, illuminating an altar that had been scrubbed clean.
Azora knelt at the altar, her back straight, her hands steady as she struck flint to wick. A candle flared to life. Jaia stood beside her, murmuring words I couldn’t quite hear, her voice low and earnest.
Vizia hovered just behind them, and then Jaia reached back and caught her in her arms. Vizia’s high, childish giggle rang out through the temple, and Jaia smiled like I had never seen her smile before, free and unrestrained.
She pulled Vizia between them and murmured to her to close her eyes.
Their voices blended, the three of theirs.
They were praying.
The Shadow Weaver tilted her head, listening. “Is this a trick? Another snare?”
I swallowed. My throat felt tight, raw. “I don’t know.”
That surprised us both.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The temple breathed around us with the soft crackle of candle flames, the distant drip of melting ice somewhere deep in the stone.
Azora lit another candle.
Jaia bowed her head lower, whispering our names. Praying for Kaelan, Dare, Thorne, and me. As if she didn’t know whether we were alive or dead, and I realized with a sudden ache they didn’t know.
“The battle’s won.” I wished I could go to them. “But they don’t know.”
“Why are they praying to me?”
“Because they’ve been able to see the shadows,” I said. “Because they know you’re a goddess who still has power.”
Her breath hitched. “Do I?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Not if I give you up.” Her gaze was fierce. “Not if I lose your magic. I won’t be able to do anything for them.”
Her eyes flicked to me. Searching. Wary. Hopeful in a way that hurt to see.
The temple door creaked open.
We both turned.
An elderly woman stepped inside, wrapped in a patched cloak, her hands rough and red from cold. She hesitated on the threshold, glancing at the altar as if afraid she didn’t belong here. Then she squared her shoulders and crossed the stone floor.
She knelt beside Azora and bowed her head. “Please. If you’re listening. Help my son. He went to fight in that prince’s war. I just want him home.”
Her words might have been a whispered, desperate rasp, but in the shadow world the goddess and I occupied, those words rang through the temple like a bell.
The Shadow Weaver inhaled sharply. The weight of belief settled into the space between us, warm and trembling and real.
The goddess laughed, a soft, breathless sound. Somehow, it startled all three women at the altar. Azora looked up as if she’d felt something change.
“It’s real,” the Shadow Weaver said, wonder breaking fully across her face. “They are calling to us. To me.”
“Yes. They are.”
Her joy dimmed just enough to sharpen into focus. She turned to me fully now, power gathering, purposeful. “But I cannot leave you like this.”
My heart sank.
“If I step away,” she continued, “if I return to them fully, I will take my magic with me. All of it. The shadows. The strength. The dragon’s gift woven into you. You would live,” she went on, not unkindly. “But you would be as you once pretended to be. Powerless.”
I thought of Kaelan’s hands on mine. Dare’s grin. Thorne’s steady presence at my back.
“Have I ever been powerless?” I asked, the words careless and easy even though I felt as if something precious were being wrenched out of my soul.
Her eyes were kind for once. “I suppose you have not. But you’ve loved that kind of power. You loved flying. You gave up your wings for your sister, and then you gave them up again for your kingdom.”
My kingdom.
“And now the people of this kingdom will need miracles,” she said. “They will need protection. Healing. Justice. I cannot serve them without my magic. I won’t leave you without taking it from you, and our magic is bound up together.”
I closed my eyes. For a few long heartbeats, I felt all the agony of it.
But I also knew Kaelan and Thorne and Dare would be waiting for me.
“Then take it,” I said, my voice steady even as my chest ached. “Take the magic. Let them have you.”
The Shadow Weaver studied me for a long moment, eyes ancient and bright. She lifted a hand to rest her fingers against my forehead, gentle as a blessing laid on a child’s brow. “Goodbye, Little Queen.”
The shadows lifted from my skin like a cloak being unfastened.
The power flowed out of me in a long, shuddering exhale, leaving my limbs weak and trembling. My knees buckled, and I fell hard onto the marble floor of the temple. Cold bit through my bones, grounding me in a body that suddenly felt small.
I curled forward instinctively, palms braced against the stone, heart hammering as the last echo of magic slipped free. For one terrifying heartbeat, I waited for panic.
It didn’t come.
Instead, there was quiet.
The world shifted, the temple dissolving around me as sensation snapped back into place. Cold wind burned my lungs. The scent of blood and smoke and snow filled my senses. I was kneeling in churned ice, my hands numb, my body aching.
I pushed myself upright, unsteady, and looked up.
They were there.
Kaelan stood a dozen paces away, frozen mid-step as if afraid to breathe. His hair was wind-tangled, his armor smeared with blood and frost, but his eyes were bright and fixed on me like the world had narrowed down to this one impossible sight.
Hope broke across his face. “Hanna?”
As I started toward him, I felt the Shadow Weaver’s absence with every step. No shadows curling at my feet. No power humming beneath my skin.
And even worse, no dragon-self curled within. The world felt louder, sharper, heavier.
I didn’t have my magic anymore.
But I had my choice.
And I ran to them anyway.
Kaelan met me halfway.
He caught me as I crashed into him, arms locking around my back, pulling me tight against his chest as if afraid I might vanish if he let go. I buried my face against his armor, breathing him in, steel and smoke and home.
“You’re here,” he said, voice breaking on the words.
“I am,” I whispered.
His hands framed my face, urgent, searching, as if checking for wounds he couldn’t see. “Are you hurt? The shadows—they’re gone—”
“I’m fine.” I pressed my forehead to his. “I’m just…emptied.”
A shaky laugh tore out of him, half-sob, half-disbelief. He kissed me then, hard and fierce and grounding.
Dare threw his arms around us both. “Gods. I knew it. You’re too stubborn to stay possessed or whatever the hell that was.”
I laughed into his shoulder, feeling his arms tighten around us both.
Thorne came last. His gaze searched my face with that quiet intensity that always saw too much. “What did it cost?”
Kaelan stilled then, and Dare’s grin dropped away, fresh horror growing in his gaze.
“My magic,” I said. “The goddess wields it now.”
We stood there together amid the aftermath of war. Cheers were rising around us, banners lifting in a hard, clean wind, the kingdom slowly realizing it had survived.
Kaelan’s arm tightened around my waist, possessive and reverent all at once. “You sacrificed everything for us.”
I looked at all three of them, at the men who had fought beside me, believed in me, loved me not for what I could do, but for who I was. “I didn’t. I have what matters.”
I threw myself into Thorne’s arms then, and his arms tightened around me as he caught me against his chest. For a long moment, the three of us clung to each other. Then, slowly, we separated.
There were bodies to burn and a king to crown.
The ice cracked beneath our boots as the world shifted forward, uncertain and bright.
And this time, I stepped into it without magic.
But not without power.