Chapter 25
The world blurred past in shades of gold and amber as she stumbled out of the tavern. Ellaryn wanted to forget the last twenty-four hours. Hell, she wanted to forget the last fifteen years.
The brown liquor didn’t erase the pain, but it dulled it—rounded the sharpest edges, just enough to breathe. Enough to move.
She was meant to see Xander again, but time pressed close, relentless.
She’d felt the Defier’s presence the moment she stepped inside the tavern, its attention crawling up her spine.
Lyon felt it too. Their conversation had been strangled—half-words, hurried glances.
A short visit. A quiet race to see how much numbness they could swallow before it became dangerous to stay.
One of the Defiers had waited outside, head tilting with every drink she took. The King’s reminder. Nothing happens in this city without me knowing.
It was, however, hard to see the shadowed sentinel through the smoke as she made her way back through ash and embers toward the castle, but she felt it—close, constant, watching.
She needed it to believe she was returning to her chambers. Needed it convinced.
The King didn’t care for subtlety.
By the time she reached her door, the Defier was nearly on top of her—close enough that, if it still had a mouth, she might have felt its breath.
She stumbled inside and shut the door, gracelessly, the liquor weighing her limbs and blurring the world.
The bottle was still in her hand. She’d taken it straight from the barmaid, left a silver on the counter, and walked out.
The burn down her throat was welcome. The blur, necessary.
Anything was better than feeling like the King’s pin cushion.
She flinched at the thought and drank again.
She didn’t need sobriety to know the Defier would stand guard outside her door all night. Another quiet cruelty. Another claim.
She was his.
Another swallow.
Warmth spread through her chest as she drew on her black cloak and slipped open the balcony doors. For once, she was grateful for the King’s taste—marble moved silently beneath her hands. She stepped into the open air and looked down, the drop threatening to drag the liquor back up her throat.
She’d survived worse.
Much worse.
Ellaryn swung one leg over the railing and began her descent, fingers digging into the ivy clawing up the castle walls. The bottle settled safely into her cloak pocket as she climbed, ash drifting around her like falling stars. Her breath came in shallow, quiet gasps.
Scornszar was perched on the Spire of Souls, eyes shut, still, like a dormant statue.
He often sat there at night, as if he were guarding that tower with his life.
She could tell by the way his heavy breaths disturbed the cinders that he was sleeping, and hoped—more than anything—to keep it that way.
She planned her journey through the darkest alleys and quietest streets, head bowed, hood pulled low over her face, moving with practised quiet, each step deliberate—only the faintest stumble betraying the liquor coaxing her legs into disobedience.
When she reached the crate, she didn’t hesitate.
The lid creaked softly as she lifted it, the sound swallowed by the crackle of distant fires. Ellaryn slipped inside and drew it shut above her, darkness folding around her like a held breath.
She didn’t see Xander right away.
He peeled himself from the shadows instead, his glamour slipping loose like fabric sliding from skin. It was subtler than before—careful. He was learning, finally, to stay hidden even when the dark felt empty.
Ellaryn faltered on the last step, the dull heaviness in her legs betraying her despite her best effort. The drink had softened her too much.
Xander’s mouth curved into a smirk at the sight, but she didn’t rise to it, she just brushed past him, pushed the jutting brick and made her way through Cinder’s underbelly.
She didn’t give the enchanted wall a second glance; she just passed through like she were made up of air and sank onto the mattress.
She wanted this done quickly. Cleanly. The thought of enduring any more pain tonight ached in its own way. Her fingers tightened around the bottle as she sat, counting on it to steady her, to be the thing that dulled the fire that was soon to burn low in her chest.
Just enough, she told herself.
Just enough to get through this.
“You shouldn’t have come the other night,” Ellaryn slurred. “To the cells.”
Her voice was low, steady, at odds with the warmth that still lingered in her veins at the memory of him there. Of his hands. Of the relief that had followed them.
“It was too dangerous,” she continued, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You could have been seen.”
“But I wasn’t.”
Xander’s reply was quick; his smile was soft—easy—but something heavier lingered behind it. He was looking at her like that again, the way he seemed to catalogue every fracture she tried to hide.
“That’s not the point,” she said sharply. “I had it handled. You didn’t need to come for me.”
“You were in pain,” he replied simply.
Ellaryn scoffed, though the sound lacked its usual bite. “I’m always in pain.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Xander didn’t answer right away. His expression shifted, something quieter settling into it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered. “Like I don’t give just as much pain as I take.”
Xander didn’t look convinced.
“That’s not the same thing,” he said quietly.
Ellaryn’s eyes narrowed. “Pain is pain.”
“No,” he replied. “One is survival. The other is suffering.”
Silence stretched between them.
“And which one do you think I’m doing?” she asked coldly.
His gaze held hers, unmoving.
“I think,” he said gently, “you’ve been surviving for so long you’ve forgotten how to do anything else.”
His words made her look at him. Somehow, he had a way of making her see herself more clearly. For some reason, he didn’t see her for the monster she thought herself to be and, in a quiet way, she liked that.
Their gazes held, lingering, as he traced her features with his eyes—down from the heart-shaped curve of her face to the slight upturn of her nose, then the fullness of her lips.
Then he spoke again.
“That boy you asked me to heal…” he said, lowering himself beside her, careful and unhurried. “Who is he?”
Ellaryn’s jaw tightened. She didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to give shape to the truth—that he was here because of her, that his childhood had been swallowed by stone and cold because she had failed him once already.
She straightened abruptly and reached for the clasp of her cloak, letting it fall. Then she pulled her shirt over her head, baring the lattice of scars beneath. A deflection.
“Just someone I want out of this place,” she snapped, more bite in her voice than she’d intended. “So, can we hurry this up?”
Xander’s gaze lingered on her for a moment before he forced it away. Then with a nod, his hand settled against her chest again, warm and steady, his gaze lingering briefly over the damage written into her skin.
“Alright,” he said quietly. “Hold on as long as you can. Just… try.”
Ellaryn nodded once and shut her eyes tight.
Then the burn bloomed—bright and unforgiving—and she braced herself against it, her jaw clenched, refusing to make a sound.
The fire surged too fast this time—hotter, sharper—like her chest had been split open, packed with kindling, and struck with a match. Ellaryn found her fingers clawing into the mattress, her knuckles whitening as she forced the breath to stay in her lungs.
Xander felt it immediately.
His jaw locked, eyes darkening as the magic flared beneath his palm.
It shifted—more heat, more pull.
Hooks sank into her memories, dragging them up and piercing her mind and soul. She gasped as images strobed behind her eyes: streets drowned in ash, the King’s smile, the first time his dagger slid between her ribs.
The pain bloomed anew, vicious and intimate, as if Xander’s hand had become the blade itself.
She couldn’t stop it. She screamed, twisting her face into the mattress like a different angle might blunt the agony.
She saw him—felt him—as if he stood in the room again. The sick patience as he chose his instrument. The shackles biting as she was held still. The way he made her swear her life to him between broken gasps.
Xander cursed under his breath, but Ellaryn couldn’t speak, couldn’t see or think past the pain. It swallowed everything. The liquor hadn’t dulled it enough. Tears streamed unchecked down her temples, soaking into the mattress as sweat prickled across her skin, every nerve screaming.
Blue.
So many flashes of blue.
So many souls taken so soon.
She writhed and bit her tongue.
Then the faces came—not strangers. Not shadows.
The people she had slain.
Sailen’s family rose first, sharp and unforgiving. She had taken them the same way the King had taken hers—on his orders, with his magic tightening around her ribs like a vice. Her sword at a man’s throat. The cry of a woman cut short.
And then—
The child.
Sailen.
So small. Too small.
She saw it again with brutal clarity: her blade hovering at his neck, her hands shaking, her chest splitting open with something that felt like defiance.
She swallowed hard, unable to finish it.
Instead, she scooped him into her arms and ran—hid him away in her chambers like a sin she couldn’t erase.
A tear slipped free as the pain worsened, somehow finding new paths through her veins, grinding along her nerves like broken glass.
She had wanted to save him.
But saving him meant disobedience.
The memory shifted, and the pain followed—daggers driven into her flesh, each thrust echoed now in her nerves as if the steel were sinking into her all over again.
Chains bit deep into her wrists, the burn of iron so real she could smell it.
Rope scorched into her skin, tightening, tightening, until mercy itself felt like a mistake she paid for in blood.
The fire roared brighter, merciless, and Ellaryn broke beneath it.