Chapter 25
WHERE THE PROPHECY LIES
Ella collapsed onto the narrow bed in the loft above the tavern without even tugging off her boots, her body folding into the thin mattress as the past days closed in from every side.
The impossible magic she’d provoked into being, Jakobav’s brutal display of power, and the whispered news of her mother’s illness collided inside her until she could hardly separate one from the next.
Not to mention the look of care and concern written on Jakobav’s face in the aftermath.
She’d been too distracted, too consumed by Orchid’s looming shadow to truly take in the way Jakobav had tempered himself with her.
He’d followed her cues, matched her silence, and offered steadiness where she expected command.
She loathed how much it unsettled her, that his restraint chipped at her defenses, leaving her more aware of him than she had ever wanted.
The bed shifted beneath her as Jakobav lay down, and her senses went rigid in wary recognition of his nearness.
She pressed her eyes shut against the dull ache in her temples, grateful when sleep claimed her quickly.
Even in dreams she felt him there, his steady breathing brushing the quiet.
Long into the night, she thought she had felt the soft graze of his hand find hers.
Morning came too soon. Ella woke to Jakobav’s rough voice cutting through the gray light.
“Up. We need to move.”
She blinked against the haze of sleep, eyes adjusting to the muted light spilling through the loft window.
He was already on his feet, dressed and packed, her satchel in hand, as though he’d been waiting for her to stir.
Gods, it was infuriating how the morning seemed to conspire with him, chiseling the line of his jaw, highlighting the black ink scrawled across his skin, gilding the darkness of him until he looked devastating despite having slept only a handful of hours.
She felt like ruin, but he looked as though the dawn had been created for him alone, and it was an injustice she couldn’t help but notice.
“Ready?” he asked softly, his eyes scanning her face as though searching for fractures she might be hiding.
She rubbed at her eyes and pushed herself upright, nodding as she followed him toward the stairs. “You know, you’re annoyingly awake and irritatingly good-looking for someone who drank enough ale last night to knock out a horse.”
A slow, dangerous smile spread across his mouth, unhurried and self-assured. “You don’t look so bad yourself, Princess, especially considering what we’re about to do.”
Ella rolled her eyes, though the tug at the corner of her lips betrayed her, a smile threatening to form. “Let’s just get this over with. And after that, you and I are going to discuss last night.”
A teasing smile curved his lips farther. “Ready when you are. Unless you’re too scared to let me in again.” His tone carried both challenge and the faintest glimpse of humor, cutting through the shadow of the night before.
Ella shoulder-checked him as she slipped past, satisfied by the grunt it dragged from him. She took the stairs quickly and entered the morning without a backward glance.
Their horse waited in the chill air, breath misting faintly as it pawed at the ground.
Ella swung into the saddle first, and Jakobav mounted behind her with practiced ease.
They set off down the narrow road that cut into the trees, the rhythm of hooves steady beneath them.
And though she sat straight-backed in the saddle, Ella couldn’t quiet the turmoil twisting inside her.
The ride from the tavern was brief, yet it stretched on endlessly for Ella.
Mist clung to the trees, their blackened trunks rising like a charred warning of what had once burned here.
The forest’s stillness pressed close, broken only by the steady rhythm of hooves and the quiet shift of Jakobav’s breath behind her.
Her thoughts tangled like brambles.
What if the so-called seer was nothing more than a charlatan and this entire errand a waste? What if it was a trap, and Jakobav had only pretended to soften, care, and help her? Gods, where was her blade?
She steadied her breathing.
Everything will be okay.
Thane’s dagger was still strapped to her thigh and ready.
Jakobav had brought her here instead of preparing for his own Claiming ceremony, whatever that entailed, and that had to mean some small part of him cared. He had, after all, kept her alive when he didn’t have to. The thought steadied her enough to stay upright in the saddle.
The closer they drew, the more their surroundings seemed watchful.
The seer’s home rose from the forest floor as if the trees had bent to her will. Wood and stone twisted together into a small cottage, ivy spilling down its walls in ghostly green cascades. It looked less built than summoned, alive with secret knowledge.
Ella climbed down from the saddle, Jakobav steadying her with one hand, warm at her back. She started toward the door, her fingers brushing the dagger strapped to her thigh, and she lifted her hand to knock. Before her knuckles met wood, the door creaked open on its own.
The seer was waiting in the doorway.
Small, hunched, white hair tumbling like spun silk down her bent shoulders, yet her gaze was knowing. Her lips turned in something between amusement and accusation.
“Well, well. The royalty has finally arrived.”
Jakobav’s eyes narrowed, his voice wary. “You knew I was coming.”
“I wasn’t talking about you, Prince.” Her voice rasped, dry as parchment dragged over stone. Her head tilted, eyes gleaming with something too perceptive. “Never thought I would get to invite the Queen of Orchid into my home.”
Ella froze. “I’m not the queen. I’m—”
“Oh, semantics.” The seer waved a clawlike hand. “You’re the lost heir who wasn’t so lost after all, were you? And it could be any day now, dearie. You’ll find yourself taking the throne whether you want it or not.”
A shiver lanced down Ella’s spine, but the seer only smiled wider, candlelight dancing behind her. “Come in, come in. Close your mouth and hurry along. The creatures in this forest tolerate my antics, but they don’t know you.”
They crossed the threshold, the door closing behind them with a slow groan.
Inside, the air felt heavy, thick with the tang of herbs and smoke. Shadows warped and stretched with every waver of candlelight, and the room looked more like a ritual chamber than a home.
Jakobav stayed close to Ella, watchful and tense, one hand already brushing the hilt at his hip as though he didn’t even trust the walls around them.
The seer drifted to the center of the room, her bent frame haloed in trembling light.
She tilted her head, her eyes rolling back until only white remained, endless and terrible.
The air seemed to lurch, pressing tighter, and before Ella could draw a breath, the seer convulsed violently, then went utterly still.
When she spoke, the sound was not her voice at all but something vast and resonant, ancient as the rock beneath their feet.
"When realms entwined by fate’s desire,
A child shall rise through smoke and fire.
A queen will fall, her time undone,
The daughter crowned beneath the red sun.
She’ll thread the Veil that none may cross,
Restore what kingdoms thought was lost.
But when she seeks what’s locked away,
The relic found shall hold no sway.
For what she seeks lies not outside,
But in the blood that realms divide."
Ella stood frozen as the last echoes of the words faded, her heart pounding with a force that seemed to reverberate through her entire body. They struck her like a faultline breaking open beneath her feet, sudden and irrevocable.
She’d never spoken them aloud, never trusted another soul with them, yet here they were, words she’d carried alone for years, pulled into the open as if the seer had stolen them from the compass of her soul.
Nothing in the prophecy had ever frightened her more than hearing it spoken by someone who shouldn’t have known it at all.
Beside her, Jakobav stiffened, his gaze glancing between her and the seer with guarded suspicion. It wasn’t only Ella’s fate he seemed to be measuring, but what those words might mean for his people, for the Claiming that loomed over him, and likely for Dravaryn itself.
A sudden flash pierced her mind as if the seer’s voice had cracked through stone, unearthing what she had buried long ago.
A memory surged with startling clarity.
Her parents whispered by firelight when she’d been a child too young to grasp meaning, their voices urgent, their faces shadowed by fear. “Threadwalking,” her mother had said in a tone that carried both respect and dread. “Will either mend the realms or break them entirely.”
The memory hollowed her. Gods, where in the hell had that come from? She shouldn’t have been old enough to understand any of it, much less recall it now.
An ache bloomed in her chest where breath should have been, a fierce, impossible longing to see her parents again, even for a single heartbeat. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her as though that faultline had deepened, her vision blurring until the room dimmed into encroaching darkness.
When her eyes fluttered open again, she was on the floor, cold stone seeping through her clothes while Jakobav held her upright, his hands firm on her shoulders as if anchoring her to the world.
“Ella?” His voice was tight with worry. “You okay?”
She nodded slowly, veins thrumming under his touch, and he didn’t immediately release her. He only eased her to sit, the space between them narrow, his attention fixed on the seer, the focus of a man who measures threats before he acts on them.
He helped her up to stand, then took several steps away, giving her space. “Stay upright this time.” The words were quiet, almost an order, the command undercutting the concern.