Chapter 11 Amelia
AMELIA
Iwake to the smell of crushed herbs and old stone. For a moment, I don’t remember where I am. My body feels heavy, as if gravity has doubled overnight. Heat coils beneath my skin, uneven and restless, and when I try to move, pain blooms sharp and bright along my side.
I hiss and go still. The assassination attempt comes back in fragments. Steel flashing. Zeidan’s roar. Shadow and blood and hands hauling me out of the circle as the world fractured around us.
I draw a careful breath. The room is small and warded, carved from pale rootstone that hums faintly with protective magic. Sunlight filters in through a high slit of crystal glass, fractured into soft prisms across the floor.
And Zeidan is there.
He stands near the far wall, arms folded, posture rigid and watchful. His expression is carved from ice, controlled, distant, unreadable. If I didn’t feel him through the bond, I would think he was untouched by what happened.
But the bond tells a different story. It hums low and tight, like a string pulled too far. Beneath his stillness, there is fury, coiled and dangerous. Fear he refuses to acknowledge. Vigilance sharpened to a blade’s edge.
He hasn’t slept.
“You’re awake,” he says.
“I am,” I reply, voice rough. “You look… thrilled.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “You were poisoned.”
“I noticed.”
He pushes off the wall and crosses the room in three long strides, stopping just short of the bed. Close enough that the bond eases, warmth bleeding into the cold ache behind my ribs.
“Don’t joke,” he says quietly.
I study his face. The faint shadows under his eyes. The way his shoulders stay tense, like he’s braced for another attack that never comes.
“I’m alive,” I say. “That’s a win, isn’t it?”
His gaze snaps to mine, sharp. “You almost weren’t.”
The words land heavier than he intends. The bond flares, emotion leaking through before he can seal it away. I feel it then. The fear. Cold and absolute. The kind that hollows you out and leaves something raw behind.
For a moment neither of us speaks. The silence between us isn’t empty. It’s crowded with things the bond refuses to let us pretend aren’t there, his fear still lingering like ice on my skin, my own shock buzzing under my ribs, the memory of his hands on me as he hauled me away from the blade.
I force my voice steady. “You shouldn’t be here.”
His eyes narrow. “And yet.”
“You shouldn't have stepped into the ritual,” I press, even though my heart doesn’t want to. “Now you’re forbidden from hovering over me like a—”
“Like what?” he asks, too calm.
I swallow. “Like you’re… waiting.”
His gaze flicks to my side, to the bandage beneath my linen. “I am.”
The bond hums, a low vibration of agreement I didn’t ask for.
“You could’ve left,” I say quietly. “After you saved me. After you made your point to my council.”
A muscle in his jaw tightens. “It wasn’t a point.”
“Then what was it?” I demand, and hate how small the question makes me sound.
His eyes hold mine. Cold on the surface. Something else underneath. “It was necessary.”
That answer shouldn’t make my chest tighten, but it does.
“You’re being careful with your words,” I accuse.
“I’m being careful with you,” he corrects.
I look away first. The healer returns shortly after, muttering about stubborn patients and reckless magic-users. She checks the wound, murmurs approval at the fading poison lines, and reminds me, twice, not to channel anything more complicated than a candle flame for at least a day.
Zeidan watches the entire exchange like he’s memorizing every breath I take.
He doesn’t touch me. Not since the healer arrived.
But he’s close, so the bond keeps smoothing the edges of my pain, close enough that my magic stops skittering quite so wildly.
I can feel the effort it takes him to hold himself still, like something in him wants to pace, to prowl, to check every shadow for knives.
When the healer presses a hand to my ribs, Zeidan’s posture shifts by a fraction. Protective. Possessive. So fast no one else would notice.
I also notice the faint smear of dried blood at his knuckles, someone else’s, from the attacker, and the way his gaze keeps returning to my side like his mind is replaying the moment the blade found me.
He’s cold and controlled as always, but the bond keeps betraying him.
And it’s hard not to wonder, just for a second, if he would be standing here like this if we weren’t bound. If he would still watch me like I’m something he can’t afford to lose.
When the healer leaves, the silence rushes back in.
“I want to see the blade,” I say.
“No.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“You’re recovering,” he replies flatly. “You’re not dissecting assassination tools today.”
“I need to know what was used on me.”
“So do I. Which is why I’ll handle it.”
“That’s not how this works,” I snap, pushing myself upright despite the protest from my side. “This happened on my land. To me.”
His eyes darken. “And that is precisely why you are not doing this alone.”
The bond tightens, friction sparking between us.
“I don’t need you hovering,” I say.
“I’m not hovering.”
“You’re breathing like you’re waiting for someone to stab me again.”
“It’s my job to anticipate threats.”
Something about that makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with poison.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Then at least let me observe.”
He is watching me, weighing control against inevitability.
“Later,” he says. “When you can stand without shaking.”
I hate that he’s right.
By evening, the pain has dulled to a manageable throb, and the restlessness beneath my skin has grown worse.
My magic feels… wrong. Like it’s slipping sideways when I try to grasp it, refusing to settle into familiar channels. Every breath I take hums with too much potential.
Zeidan notices. Of course he does.
“You’re spiking again,” he says from the doorway.
“I’m sitting perfectly still.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I grit my teeth. “I didn’t ask for the ritual to be interrupted.”
“No,” he says softly. “You didn’t.”
The gentleness throws me off more than anger would have.
Later, when he finally allows me out of the chamber, we examine the blade together. It rests on a stone table in a containment room, wrapped in suppression wards and silver thread. Even dulled and cleaned, it radiates malice.
I lean closer, careful.
“That poison wasn’t meant to kill instantly,” I murmur. “It was designed to destabilize magic.”
Zeidan’s gaze sharpens. “Explain.”
“It attacks conduits,” I say slowly, following the residue with my senses. “Not flesh. It scrambles flow. If I’d channeled any harder, it might have torn something permanently.”
“And the component?”
I frown. “There’s something rare in it. Resin from a dusk-bloom tree. They don’t grow near Velcryn. Or Nytheria.”
“Where, then?”
I swallow. “Southern trade routes. Controlled by Purna houses.”
The air shifts. Zeidan straightens. “That narrows our list.”
“And complicates everything,” I add.
The interrogation takes place at dawn.
The attacker is alive, barely. Shackled in runed iron, slumped forward, eyes vacant.
The silence compulsion is obvious even before I touch the magic.
I can feel the spell on him from a step away, slick and barbed, wound tight around his mind like wire.
It isn’t just a vow of silence. It’s a cage with teeth.
Old compulsion design. The kind meant for hired hands. The kind that protects the buyer, not the blade. If I pull too hard, the spell won’t simply resist. It will punish.
Zeidan stands at my side, a solid presence I try not to lean into.
“This is dangerous,” he says quietly. “Your magic is unstable.”
“I know,” I reply. “That’s why I need to do it.”
He doesn’t argue further. But the bond hums with tension, with worry he refuses to voice. I step forward and place my hand against the attacker’s temple.
The compulsion is brutal. Layered. Designed to shred the mind if tampered with.
Fear crawls up my spine. I breathe. I reach. The spell answers too eagerly. Magic surges through me, wild and bright and terrifyingly strong. I force it into finer threads, coaxing rather than tearing, slipping past the bindings like water through cracks.
Images slam into me. A cloaked figure. Purna robes. A voice distorted by spellwork, offering coin and absolution.
Then the resistance spikes. The attacker screams. Blood spills from his nose, his ears. His eyes roll back as the compulsion collapses inward, rupturing thought and memory alike.
I stumble back as his body goes rigid.
Then still.
Dead.
Silence crashes down. Zeidan’s hand is on my back instantly, steadying me before I fall. My stomach rolls. The air tastes like iron.
I didn’t mean to kill him. I meant to save the truth.
Zeidan’s control slams over the bond like a shield. His hand presses firmer between my shoulder blades, anchoring me before my knees can buckle.
“Breathe,” he says under his breath, too low for anyone else.
I do, because he tells me to. Because my body listens now even when my pride doesn’t. For a terrifying second, I feel his rage too. Not at me.
At whoever built a spell designed to turn a person into a disposable lockbox.
“You saw something,” he says.
I nod, shaking. “It was one of us.”
Somewhere in Nytheria, a traitor is already moving. And I don’t know if my magic, or my heart, will survive what comes next.