Chapter 64 One Chance
Chapter sixty-four
One Chance
-Maris-
She dreamed, but not as herself.
She floated, suspended in a sky with no stars, no ground, only the endless shimmer of white light, burning like memory, like creation itself.
Four voices sounded.
Older. Steadier. Terrible in the way only the divine could be.
“Daughter of the woven blood,” said one, a voice like cracked stone and rain. “She rises.”
“Seven days remain,” murmured another, her words like the soft lap of a riverbank. “Then the goddess will try to unmake your world.”
“Her hatred has blinded her, we tried to chain it but failed.”
Shapes coalesced before her, the four gods who had forged her fate in defiance of one of their own. They did not appear in flesh, but as fragments of essence: a flicker of stormlight, a plume of shadowed fire, a silvered river current, and a moon-eyed owl perched atop the air itself.
“You must find the sword, the godkiller.” they said in unison.
“It lies in the borderlands of your continent, where the Veil frays but has not yet split. She buried it in fear. Hid it to keep you from the final piece needed for her demise.”
Maris tried to speak, but her voice was stolen. Her limbs frozen.
“With your sigil bound to its blade, you will have one chance. One strike to break her flesh. It will not kill her, only unmake her power long enough for you to end her in mortal form.”
“We will aid you through battle. But we are bound. We cannot kill our own, we can only keep the terrors at bay.”
Then the owl’s eyes flared, silver stars burning white-hot.
“This is why we made you.”
The sky shattered.
-Kael-
He didn’t remember crossing the threshold.
One moment he was pacing the hall outside her chamber door, unable to sleep, unable to think and the next, he was kneeling beside her bed, her name a sharp whisper on his lips.
“Maris.”
She was thrashing beneath the sheets, breath caught in her throat like she was drowning. Sweat beaded on her brow. Her lips parted in a silent cry, and her fists clenched at the blankets as though resisting something unseen.
“Maris,” he said again, louder now. “You need to wake up.”
His hands found her shoulders, firm but careful, and the second he touched her, her body stilled.
Her eyes flew open, wild and glowing faintly, like starlight flickering through frost. Her breath shuddered.
“Kael,” she gasped, voice raw.
He nodded, not trusting his voice.
She sat up so fast he had to catch her by the elbows, grounding her. “They spoke to me,” she said, already reaching for his wrist, anchoring herself. “Not Eiren. The others. The four gods.”
His blood ran cold. “What did they say?”
Her eyes searched his, frantic, as if she were still waking from the vision. “It wasn’t like before. Not memory, not some riddle or symbol. A warning.”
She swallowed hard, voice trembling. “Eiren will come in seven days. Six as of morning.”
Kael didn’t speak. He didn’t breathe.
“There’s a sword,” she continued. “One the gods forged. Meant for me. It’s hidden in the borderlands. Eiren tried to erase it, to weaken me. But if I find it… and I bind it with my sigil…” Her gaze drifted, haunted. “They said it can sever her power. Long enough for me to kill her.”
She shook her head, as if trying to shake the weight off her shoulders. “They said they can’t kill their own. Only I can.”
Kael reached out, brushing a damp strand of hair from her face. “Then we’ll find it.”
She looked at him and something in her expression softened.
Her lip trembled. “I shouldn’t ask . . . gods, but . . . ” She trailed off, visibly struggling.
His hand didn’t leave her cheek.
“Ask,” he said, voice low. “Anything.”
She leaned forward then, resting her forehead against his chest like she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.
“Will you sleep beside me?” she murmured. “Just for tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”
He exhaled slowly, like the question had loosened something locked deep in his ribs.
“Of course,” he said.
Carefully, he removed his weapons and shifted onto the mattress beside her, settling with a kind of sacred caution.
When she curled into him, it was with silent permission.
Her cheek pressed to his chest, his arms wound gently around her, stroking her hair lightly in the way he knew brought her comfort.
The storm beyond the windows faded to a distant whisper. They fit perfectly together.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak again.
She just breathed. Slowly. Shakily.
And Kael held her like a prayer. Scared to breathe too loudly for fear she would cast him out.
For several hours, the room was quiet.
Just the slow inhale and exhale of her breath, the weight of her curled against him, and the whisper of the wind dragging through the curtains.
Kael didn’t sleep. He didn’t even try.
Instead, he lay still, one arm beneath her, the other draped lightly across her waist. Maris had relaxed sometime in the early hours, her body melting against his like she’d finally found a safe place to land. But sleep didn’t offer him the same mercy.
His thoughts wouldn’t let him.
The gods had spoken to her again. A sword buried in the borderlands. Seven days. With the rise of the sun, they would be down to six.
He’d known the clock was ticking, but now he could hear every second of it. Every beat of her heart, pressed to his chest. Every tremble of breath. Every fraction of borrowed time.
The first thread of dawn began to seep through the chamber window. Pale and gold, catching in the waves of her hair where it spilled over his shoulder.
She shifted faintly in her sleep, one hand tightening in the fabric of his tunic. Her lips parted but no sound came.
Kael watched the sunlight climb the wall.
“Kael?” she offered a sleep-blurred murmur against his skin.
His chest ached with the sound of it.
“I’m here my love,” he said, voice low.
She tipped her chin up just enough to meet his eyes. Her lashes were heavy, her face still drawn with the remnants of exhaustion, but there was something else there too.
Reluctant serenity.
Like this one moment was a stolen reprieve from the world that would come tearing down the doors any second.
His fingers moved without thinking, just the lightest touch, tracing the bare line of her spine beneath the thin linen of her nightdress. He followed the curve gently, as if she might vanish if he pressed too hard.
She closed her eyes at the sensation.
“I forgot,” she whispered, “that the world could be quiet.”
His hand stilled.
He let the silence stretch before answering. “So did I.”
They didn’t speak after that.
There was nothing else to say.
Just the slow, steady breathing between them. The soft hush of sunrise. And the memory of all they’d lost and all they might still lose, carved into every fragile second they held.
Kael shifted first, barely more than a breath, his fingertips grazing her jaw to guide her gaze back to his. There was no urgency in his touch. No fire.
Maris looked at him, and for once, there was no war behind her eyes. Only stillness. Sadness. And a quiet kind of trust that undid him more thoroughly than any battlefield ever could.
Her hand slid up, fingers curling at the nape of his neck. “If this is all we get…” she whispered, “I want to remember being only yours.”
He kissed her without rush. A gentle press of lips that lingered more than moved, like a promise too delicate to be spoken aloud. Her breath hitched, a tear slid down her cheek, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned in instead, parting her lips with a vulnerability that broke his heart clean open.
They undressed each other without ceremony.
Not in heat, but in care, tugging silk, linen, and leather aside like they were peeling back armor neither of them needed here.
Kael’s hands trembled only once, when he bared her completely.
She was all pale light and shadowed curves, more moonlight than mortal, and yet still his.
He kissed her collarbone, the inside of her wrist, the hollow at her hip. And each time, her breath stuttered like she was learning how to live in a body that had known only pain.
When he finally eased into her, it wasn’t sharp or wild.
It was slow.
Measured.
Sacred.
They moved in rhythm with the morning, the hush of wind, the glow of dawn, the soundless ache of two souls clinging to a past that may never resurface beyond this stolen moment.
Maris curled around him, her eyes closed but her hands restless, roaming his back, his chest, as if memorizing the shape of him. He whispered her name like a prayer, kissed the edge of her brow, the swell of her cheek, and held her like he might never again.
And maybe he wouldn’t.
But in that hour, time stilled. The war outside the walls faded. The gods fell silent. And all that remained was the softness of skin on skin, the ache of breathless closeness, and the quiet, aching truth of two hearts.
Afterward, they didn’t speak.
Maris curled into him once more, her head tucked beneath his chin, her legs tangled with his.
Kael stroked her hair as the sun climbed higher, warming the room with fragile gold. He pressed a kiss to her temple.
And for just a little while, they let the world wait.