Chapter 57 Cliffs and Cracks
Chapter fifty-seven
Cliffs and Cracks
-Kael-
He saw them before the ship had docked. From the cliffs of Nerium, where the sea wind carved the stone like teeth, Kael stood cloak whipping in the gale, silver eyes locked on the approaching vessel.
Maris was locked in Alarik's embrace.
Her head tipped toward him. His hand cupping her jaw. The kind of closeness Kael knew intimately, had tasted and bled for.
He watched as Alarik laid claim to her mouth.
It wasn’t cautious. He was offering her a silent plea. Her lips met his like they belonged there. A lover’s kiss and she did not pull away.
Kael felt his pulse shatter. His rage came swift, a roaring wave crashing through the hollow where their bond had once lived. His hands clenched at his sides, shadows hissing around his boots as he turned from the cliff’s edge.
He let fury guide his steps, the betrayal burning like a second sun.
Kael marched with lethal intent through the lower city — merchants barely glanced his way, sensing something wild and wrong in his gait. Past guards who dared not stop him.
As he rounded the last corner he found Zairon waited for him at the outer gates — draped in deep blue. He held no smile, golden eyes heavy with judgment.
Kael slowed only enough to meet the other male’s gaze.
“Move Zairon,” Kael growled.
Zairon’s voice was ice. “You need to think about what you're doing Kael.”
Kael stepped closer. “She’s mine.”
“She was never a possession,” Zairon snapped, stepping in front of the gate.
Kael’s jaw tightened, shadows billowing. His thoughts snapping to Maris pressed against a king with centuries of schemes behind his soft voice and saint’s face.
The bastards friend had the gall to stand in his path like he was the protector now.
Kael stepped closer, shadows rippling off his back like torn wings. “I will not be kept from her.”
Zairon didn’t flinch. His golden gaze held firm, molten and unwavering.
“You can enter,” he said, voice low. “But only if you swear on your own honor that no harm will come to Maris, no force, no threats, no demands.”
Kael’s breath punched out of him in disbelief. “You think I’d hurt her?”
Zairon’s eyes didn’t soften. “I think you’re hurting. And hurt animals lash out.”
Kael snarled. “She’s betrothed.”
“No,” Zairon snapped. “She was your bonded. But you never once let her be. You guarded, and claimed. You call it love, but what kind of love fears her power?”
Kael’s hands balled into fists. The shadows twitched.
Zairon stepped forward now, voice hardened steel drawn from flame. “You will go to her only if you can shut your damn mouth long enough to hear what she wants. If not, you turn around and walk away. Because I will not let you enter these gates just to drag her back with your guilt.”
The words landed like strikes.
Kael’s mind reeled, boiling with everything left unsaid, unacknowledged, undone.
And somewhere beneath it all, shame.
Because Zairon was right.
He had feared her power. Had loved her, yes, but with a leash.
Kael stared at the gates behind the male. Beyond them was everything. Answers. Pain. Her.
He swallowed hard.
“I swear,” he rasped, voice gutted. “No harm. No demands.”
Zairon studied him for a long, brutal beat then stepped aside.
“Then enter, King of Nythra. And may the gods have mercy on whatever’s left of your pride.”
Kael walked past him, each step heavier than the last.
Because whatever waited inside would be of her choosing.
-Maris-
The ship groaned low as it docked, ropes flung and sails unfurled. Sea spray misted the air like an exhale of tension.
Nerium rose before her like a memory, and yet everything about it felt… off. Too still. Too sharp. Like it was waiting to see what kind of creature stepped off that ship — girl, goddess, or ruin.
She stood there moment longer than necessary, her fingers gripping the salt-stained wood. Behind her, the ship was still alive with activity crew preparing to unload, warriors gathered in small clumps, murmuring about the return.
Alarik was somewhere in the mess, he hadn’t said a word since the moment when she’d left him standing beneath the stars.
To her left, Serenya shifted. “You ready?”
Maris blinked, startled by the warmth in the question.
Serenya wasn’t watching the castle or the crowd or the city blooming before them in sea-kissed cliffs and silver stone.
She was watching her.
“I don’t know,” Maris answered truthfully.
Serenya smiled, one side of her mouth only. “That’s the most honest answer I’ve heard all week.”
Then, with a nod to the gangplank, she added, “Let’s face it together, yeah?”
Maris swallowed thickly and nodded, stepping forward.
Her boots hit wood. Then stone. And suddenly she was walking through the port of Nerium, her feet remembering the way though her heart stumbled.
Everything felt closer than before, too many eyes, too many whispers.
The glow in her veins had faded, but she could still feel it curled inside her. The Hollow’s gift.
They reached the base of the winding path toward the castle.
Guards bowed. Servants paused. And still, Maris kept walking.
Step by step.
-Alarik-
He hadn’t touched her since the kiss.
Not since her eyes welled with conflict and her spine straightened like steel, and she’d walked away with the kind of grace that made him ache.
But he walked behind her now, silent and steady, not daring to reach for what still lingered on his lips.
The city of Nerium opened around them, its white stone arches, silver-brushed towers, and cliffs that dropped straight into the sea. Familiar, but sharpened by tension. Too many eyes. Too many expectations. Too many truths they had no time left to run from.
He felt it before the words were spoken.
A shift in the air. A tightening in his chest. A pulse of something ancient and warning.
The guard who waited at the bend in the palace path bowed low, his voice quiet but urgent as he leaned toward Alarik.
“Your Majesty… the King of Nythra waits for you.”
Kael here already.
The gods had a wicked sense of timing.
He looked up toward the towering gates of the palace, the high arched entry glowing with morning light and somewhere within it, the shadow of the male who still held Maris’s past.
Her choice has to be her own, Alarik reminded himself. Even if it breaks me.
But as he watched her climb the final steps toward the place where that past now stood waiting in flesh and fury —
He wasn’t sure how long he could keep that promise.