Chapter 22 A Flicker in the Veil
Chapter twenty-two
A Flicker in the Veil
-Kael-
In the sparring ring, Kael caught it — the way her strikes landed harder than needed, her mind elsewhere.
The flick of her wrist was off. Subtle. A half-second too slow, a breath caught too long in her throat.
Maris had been getting sharper, more fluid, a blade polished by pressure.
But this morning… she faltered. He landed a hit to her ribs, nothing cruel, just enough to mark where her guard slipped and the sound she made wasn’t just winded.
It was distant. Like she hadn’t expected pain at all. But she straightened quickly — jaw tight — eyes flaring. But she didn’t snap at him like she usually did. No curse. No flared nostrils. Just a haunted silence.
Kael lowered his sword. “You’re distracted.”
She shook her head. “I’m not.”
He could feel it radiating beneath the surface of her skin — an edge of her presence that hadn't been there before, charged with confusion and something else he couldn't name.
Kael took a step forward, testing her tension.
Nothing.
Not the usual bristle of pride or venom.
Just that same faraway, veiled look.
Like she’d seen something in a dream and couldn't to let it go.
By midday, during her spell work drills, the truth became harder to ignore.
What she'd been about to do before was only a shadow of this. It was as if she was gifted a clarity within her magic.
No more steady increments of light. But in bursts, magic leaping from her hands in ragged waves, brilliant and untamed.
She shattered a practice ward that should have taken her another month to master. Her fingers trembled afterward, but she didn’t even seem surprised.
Valea watched with a narrow gaze. Riven crossed his arms beside her, silent as stone.
Kael stood with Corin just outside the circle, unreadable. “It’s blooming,” he murmured.
Corin arched a brow. “Or bursting.”
Dinner came with little appetite.
Maris wore a shade of blue he hadn’t seen before, almost mist-colored, like the skies over the edge of the world or the sea. She looked beautiful. Remote. She hadn’t met his eyes since morning.
They dined in their private chambers just the two of them, as had become their ritual. But tonight, she only picked at her food.
Kael set down his goblet. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m tired,” she said, not unkindly.
“You’ve fought harder and smiled through worse.”
She didn’t look up.
A pause stretched between them like a wound.
Kael leaned back in his chair, the candlelight catching the edge of his fangs as he studied her. “Did something happen?”
Maris glanced up, then away just as fast. “No.”
He let the silence linger. Then, at last, he said lowly, “Astrielle is dead.”
Her eyes snapped up. “What?”
“She was found,” he said, voice even. “Drunk, facedown in a gutter of the capital. Took three guards to drag her ass to the dungeons. She’d been slipping information southeast for weeks. About you. About me.”
Maris’s breath caught.
Kael’s knuckles whitened where they gripped the edge of the table. “She begged for mercy. Claimed she’d been groomed for me since birth. That she only wanted you gone. That you were an infection. A mistake.”
He leaned forward, voice like glass. “She was a poison, and she paid the price.”
Kael had ended her life with his own hand, no hesitation or mercy. Her betrayal still echoed in his mind, but it was her screams — brief and burning — that haunted less than the silence after. He'd cast her body into the pyres himself, watched the flames devour what was left of her treason.
Maris held herself in absolute stillness.
“I tell you this,” Kael said, “because I will not let anyone take what is mine.”
"You say that like love and possession are the same Kael." She said indifferent. "However, I won't lie — I'm glad she's dead."
-Maris-
She’d begun to feel like she belonged.
The thought had crept in quiet as moonlight, unspoken, barely dared but it lived there, curled beneath her ribs like the first spark of spring.
Not long ago, she had been a seamstress’s ghost. A girl lost in soot and sorrow.
Now, her days began with sparring in Kael’s ring, where sweat slicked his skin and their bodies met in controlled violence —fast, fierce, hungry.
The twin generals barked corrections from the sidelines, but Kael sparred with her himself more often than not, matching her movements.
And every graze of skin, every shared breath, left her dizzy.
Afterward, he’d often draw her close, press her against the stone walls or collapse with her across silken sheets, leaving her trembling and worshipped.
The pleasure was not just frequent, it was all-consuming. A ritual between them, wordless and burning. He learned her with his hands. She gave him her body and something quieter, something more dangerous — her trust.
The nights were warm, spent tangled in Kael’s bed. He didn’t say it aloud— the word love had not passed his lips, but he held her like he did —protective and comforting.
Her magic had grown, too. Surged, at times. As if the more she gave herself to him, the more the power within her responded, like a song remembering its melody.
But a dream had ruined it all.
It had stolen her breath with its beauty, not its terror. It was the first time since Kael had claimed her that her sleep was haunted by someone else.
A nigthbound cloaked in light.
Where Kael was storm and stone, he was soft gold and silver flame. His hair gleamed like starlight; his voice was made of music and secrets. Eyes like violets, strange and soft.
He had spoken her name like a vow.
She had woken trembling, not with fear, but with a terrible ache. As if she had found something long forgotten, a new part of herself.
Kael had been next to her that morning, sleeping still. She had touched his jaw to ground herself. Told herself it was nothing. But she couldn’t stop seeing violet eyes behind her eyelids. Couldn’t stop hearing that name.
Veil Breaker.
Her magic had flared stronger since. The one name her magic was desperate to hear spoken into existence.
It came in waves now, like tides pulled by a second moon.
She felt it today, under her skin.
In the ache left from Kael’s training strike. In the cool of the dining hall as he stared her down, asking silent questions she didn’t know how to answer.
Who was he?
Why did he feel… familiar?
Why did he stir something in her chest she couldn’t name?
She clutched her goblet tighter, forcing herself to meet Kael’s gaze.
Gods, she wanted him — still burned at the memory of his hands on her body, the sound of his voice in the dark.
But something had shifted.
And the part of her that had begun to feel safe was now whispering again.
Tread lightly. It warned.
The candlelight danced across the parchment like it was alive, the flame hissing softly with every breath she took. Maris dipped the quill again, staring at the empty page in front of her. The ink clung heavy, ready, like truth waiting to spill.
She hesitated.
Then slowly she wrote:
I dreamed of a male made of starlight. He knew my name before I spoke it.
Not the name I was given, but the one I’d never heard: Veil Breaker.
He called me that as if it meant something.
As if he had been searching for me. His voice was kind.
His presence was warm. Not like Kael’s. Kael is fire and shadow, consuming.
This male felt like — the beginning of something.
A key turning in a lock I didn’t know existed.
But I don’t know what it means. And it terrifies me.
She paused, her hand trembling, then continued:
I should tell Kael because some part of me is afraid he’ll see it for what it is. A shift. A change. Something neither of us can control.
She folded the paper in thirds and slid it beneath the false bottom of a drawer in her writing desk. Safe. Forgotten. Until it wasn’t.
The library tower was quiet when she climbed the spiral steps the next morning, the scent of old vellum and ash clinging to the air. She found Aldwyn seated where he always was— cross-legged on a sunken cushion before the hearth, his eyes covered, his aged hands folded around a thick leather tome.
“Lorekeeper,” she said softly.
“Ah,” he murmured without lifting his head, “The little moth returns to the flame.”
She frowned. “That’s not ominous at all.”
Aldwyn smiled. “You bring questions.”
“I always do.”
“Today, they taste different.” His head tilted. “Heavier. More — divine.”
She blinked. “You taste questions?”
“I do,” he said calmly. “Especially the ones that ripple.”
He gestured for her to sit. She did, folding her legs like his.
“I’ve had dreams,” she began, unsure how much to say. “Dreams I can’t explain.”
“Few dreams worth chasing are meant to be explained,” Aldwyn said, brushing dust from the cover of his book. “But yours are not ordinary, are they?”
She swallowed. “No.”
“Tell me.”
So she did. Slowly. Carefully. Describing the light, the voice, the name spoken like prophecy.
Aldwyn was quiet for a long time.
“Do you think… something is waking within in me?” she asked at last, her voice low. “Magic I wasn’t meant to have? Or — a connection?”
The Lorekeeper exhaled. “I cannot give you the full truth, child. The threads are tangled, and some are not mine to pull. But I will say this…”
He leaned closer, the scent of dry ink and sage thick around him.
“There are dreams that bind. Not all dreams are your own. Some are borrowed. Some — are planted.”
A shiver raced down her spine.
“By who?” she whispered.
“I do not know,” he lied, and she somehow knew it.
“But I will search. Quietly.”
She opened her mouth to speak again, but he raised a hand.
“Not here,” he said gently. "The stones have ears, and your shadow may not be your own.”
A silence stretched between them, long and uneasy.
Finally, he added, “Keep your dreams close. And your words closer.”
Maris rose to leave and as she did, Aldwyn touched the cover of his tome and muttered under his breath. The candle beside him flickered. Then went out.