Chapter 10 Roots of the Forgotten
ROOTS OF THE FORGOTTEN
She was barely strong enough to run, but she was planning to do it anyway. That last encounter with Jakobav had lit something restless within, a renewed sense of purpose that unsettled her. His presence lingered even after he was gone, and she was beginning to hate him for it.
At least she had a reprieve for now, a brief absence from his incessant and unexpected appearances, thank the gods, but still, curiosity gnawed at her, whispering its poisonous questions. Where had he gone? If Dravaryn was suffering from Threadshifting, was he out dealing with a breach?
She cursed herself for caring at all. Her focus had to remain on saving her own kingdom, on finding the relic, because sitting in his chambers like some obedient guest wouldn’t bring her closer to the object that demanded to be found.
If anything, it only risked exposing her to too much of him, and already she caught herself questioning the rumors of his ruthlessness and doubting his reputation for cruelty.
And yet those rumors frayed the more she looked at him. The very fact that he’d kept her alive, that he’d hidden her intrusion, was proof of some concealed mercy.
But why? And what else was Prince Jakobav capable of?
It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay here. The scent of scorched amber still clung to the air, filling her lungs like smoke, sharp and suffocating.
Then, without warning, power stirred in her veins. Strange, yet dangerously familiar.
Ella had always been taught that no two gifts were the same, that power was as singular as a fingerprint, stitched into blood and bone, and hers had always been fire, only fire. But this current rolling through her did not feel like the flame she knew.
She was going to try anyway.
She would listen to that power, seize it, bend it to her will. If she could only reach it, maybe she could make progress toward her plan: find the artifact and escape. So she tried her usual routine: focus, anchor her intention, and burn.
But her body didn’t listen.
Nothing happened at first, and then her magic surged, reckless and desperate, clawing its way upward as if it might tear her open to save her. Ella gasped and thrust her hand toward the hearth. Heat flared across her palm, but what came was not fire, not in the way she knew it.
For one glorious second, the air around the fireplace rippled.
Not flame, not even heat, but the stone and fire bent like the surface of a pond struck by a falling drop, the image warping as if the world itself had been tugged sideways. Her chest seared over the hidden Orchid sigil, a sudden burn that pulsed in time with the ripple.
Ella froze, heart stuttering, eyes wide as she blinked hard, but the distortion vanished, the fire crackling as though nothing had happened.
“Burn,” she whispered anyway, her voice breaking the silence.
The flames flickered, a single hitch in their glow before they dimmed.
“Seriously?” Her voice rasped, raw and furious.
Gods, she missed her fire.
Back in Orchid, she’d been known as the strongest flame-wielder in generations, proud not just for producing fire but for the way she could manipulate any she touched, which was almost unheard of.
She had not only commanded her own flames, but could reach for any nearby and make them hers, a secret she and her parents had guarded, saving it for after what would’ve been her coronation.
She could steal, amplify, twist, even smother, and years of practice had made it effortless.
Now, with her gift buried beneath foreign soil, it was like slamming her fists against locked doors—feeling the fire behind them, but never being allowed in.
Her magic had always come so easily that the sudden silence felt like a betrayal, and the more she reached for it, the further it slipped.
She had expected her flame to die here, knowing fire born of Orchid soil would not burn on Dravaryn ground.
But the more her hidden mark pulsed and flared when it shouldn’t, the more it felt like a cruel kind of hope—one she couldn’t afford.
Ever since she crossed the cursed wards at the castle, the burn would pulse when she least expected it, a throb that felt like it was trying to drag her attention somewhere, whisper something she wasn’t ready to hear.
Fuck, this was maddening.
Exhaustion slammed into her, sudden and brutal, leaving her dizzy. Weak. A word she despised.
“Shit.” Her vision swam, her fingers twitched, and for a razor-thin heartbeat, the air shivered in the corner of the hearth, as if some unseen door had almost opened before slamming shut again.
“Great,” she muttered at the embers. “You’re just like the rest of this kingdom. Moody, unhelpful, and full of misplaced superiority.”
The shadows stirred, a ripple so slight she might have dismissed it, but then the darkness thickened and something stepped forward.
Ella blinked once, twice, and her blood went cold. A figure stood at the edge of the firelight, solid and undeniable. Not a phantom, not a trick of fever or smoke, but real.
He was tall, close to seven feet if not more, and his presence carried a sense of inevitability, as if he would find her if she hid, catch her if she ran, smother her if she screamed.
It was not the brute force of a soldier nor the crude menace of a cutthroat, but something quieter, honed to a lethal grace.
Ella’s body locked, her throat closing like a fist. For one frantic heartbeat, she nearly yelled for help, but she didn’t know if anyone in this gods-forsaken castle would hear her, and she feared she didn’t even have the breath to scream.
She stood there, every muscle frozen, as if she were watching her worst nightmare step out of the shadows and take form.
Her instincts finally broke free, and she stumbled backward. The backs of her knees struck the edge of the bed, and she toppled onto the mattress with a gasp, scrambling until her spine pressed against the headboard, chest heaving as if her lungs could not keep pace with her fear.
Still, he didn’t move to follow.
No blade gleamed in his hands—at least none visible—only the unnerving stillness that he wielded like a weapon.
He was dressed in tailored black trousers with a silver buckle, a dark collared shirt open at the throat, its sleeves cuffed neatly at his forearms. The cut was severe yet elegant, the fit impossibly bold, as if he belonged not to one place but every room at once.
His style was timeless, imperial, the kind of authority that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
Across his chest, just above the sternum, hung a pendant that caught the firelight like a secret, gleaming with a slow, pulsing shimmer.
The pendant itself was an oval of obsidian wrapped protectively around a violet stone that seemed to breathe with its own faint light.
The moment she saw it, her chest flared in answer, her hidden sigil burning hot beneath her skin. She couldn’t look away.
She remembered that pendant.
Gods, his features were too perfect to be real—square jaw, strong nose, high cheekbones.
His hair was clean-cut at the sides, darker than night, the top left just long enough to fall in loose, intentional disorder.
A single curl slipped across his forehead, as if the wind had styled it just to please him.
His pale skin caught the firelight and glowed gold along the outline of him.
When his eyes met hers, she felt stripped bare, as if every lie she had ever told was peeled back and laid open. He didn’t smile, only studied her, his gaze cool and unhurried, as if she were something rare he intended to savor.
Her pulse thrashed, wild and uneven, but reason steadied her. If he’d meant to kill her, he would’ve done so already. She forced her voice into something that almost sounded like defiance. “Who are you?”
The figure tilted his head, considering her for a moment that felt eternal. Then he spoke, his voice deep and resonant, thunder wrapped in silk.
“Ah,” he murmured, amused. “So this time, you speak first.”
She swallowed hard. “This time?”
Fuck. She did recognize him, though her mind rebelled against it. Denial coursed through her; she had convinced herself that the vision was only a fever dream, a trick of pain and exhaustion. But the sight of him here in Jakobav’s room had shattered that fragile lie.
He stepped forward, slow and unhurried, and the shadows recoiled from him, bending back as though even darkness feared his touch. His gaze swept across the chamber once, and his mouth curled in quiet disdain.
“This place reeks,” he said, his tone laced with contempt. His eyes turned to her, darker now, gleaming with something unreadable. “Is this where you’ve been hiding? In another man’s bedchamber?”
Ella’s mouth went dry. Her heart stuttered once, twice, before finding a painful rhythm. “What are you?” she managed, her voice a thin thread of defiance.
He closed the distance between them until only a few feet remained, and up close, he was impossibly more beautiful and infinitely more dangerous. The pendant brushed lightly against his chest with each breath, catching the firelight as if it were alive.
His gaze softened, barely, just enough to make her doubt what she saw. “You’re asking the wrong question,” he murmured, stepping closer. “The question you should fear is not what I am—but what you are.”
A chill traced the length of her spine, but she swung her legs over the far side of the bed anyway, finding her balance. She rose as smoothly as she could and forced her chin up.
“I know exactly who I am. And I know where I belong. You’re the one intruding.”
And she did know where she belonged, though not in this room, not in this castle, not in this cursed kingdom. But he didn’t need to know that. Who was this man to walk in here and act as if he already understood her?
With a face like his, he was probably used to getting whatever he wanted. That, however, would not do.
His eyes glinted, amused, as though he had plucked the thought straight from her mind. “Do you know where you belong? Or have you only ever been told where to go?”
Her stomach lurched.
The words struck too close, and the blood drained from her face.
Because he was right. She had been following the paths others chose for her.
First her parents, then the fates, and recently, she’d been obeying the orders of an enemy prince.
Every step she’d taken had been for someone else’s purpose.
His words had dragged her truth out of the deep, hidden place where she’d buried it, a part of herself she thought no one else could ever touch.
Fuck him.
She clenched her fists to hide the tremor, nails biting into her palms.
The faintest curve touched his lips, not quite a smile but dangerous and satisfied, like he knew he’d struck a nerve.
“Not all roots are buried,” he said, his voice softening into something intimate and uncomfortably certain. “Some reach for the surface. Some ache for light. And some are only waiting for you to remember them.”
Her stomach twisted so violently, she thought she might retch.
The heat in her chest wavered as her fury fractured, his metaphor about roots leaving her bereft.
His pendant glowed once, briefly, as if answering her. Her Orchid sigil flared in reply, gone before she could even look down, as though calling her out from within, urging her to figure it out.
“What does that even mean?” Ella demanded. She was getting whiplash from this conversation, but gods help her, she couldn’t stop herself from wanting answers.
He stepped closer, closing the space with unhurried certainty until the air between them pulled tight like a snare.
“It means you were never meant to kneel for them,” he murmured, low and opulent as dusk.
Ella straightened. “You don’t even know who I am.”
“But I do,” he said, his voice more verdict than reply. “You carry her fire. You move between veins. You dream of ash and bloom.”
His tongue dragged slowly across his lips, a gesture so intimate it felt like intrusion, and his hand lifted as if to touch her face.
Ella jerked sideways, catching her foot on the rug and nearly stumbling onto the bed, but she refused to fall. Fear clawed at her ribs like talons, but she stood her ground.
And then he vanished.
No sound or motion, only the fire, crackling as if it had never been disturbed, though the air still vibrated with something ancient brushing against her blood.
Her gaze locked on the empty space where he had stood, on the echo of his voice, on the phantom violet glow of his pendant seared into her sight.
A ragged sound tore out of her before she could swallow it back. She clutched her temples, digging her nails into her scalp as if she could hold herself together, tether her soul back inside her skin.
What in the gods-forsaken realms was that? Another fever dream born of exhaustion? She wanted to believe that, but her mind whispered otherwise.
It was real.
She was grateful no one else was there to see her like this: stripped bare, rattled to her core, undone by a stranger’s words.