Chapter 26
Kael
The seats are leather. I know this because I run my hand over the armrest and the texture is unmistakable—animal hide, tanned and treated until it’s soft as silk. But the shape is wrong. Too precise. Too uniform. Like someone poured the material into molds instead of cutting and stitching by hand.
Everything in this aircraft is like that.
Smooth where it should be rough. Silent where it should creak.
The engines hum at a frequency that makes my teeth ache, but there’s no wind screaming past. No rush of air against scales.
Just this contained, climate-controlled space hurtling through sky that should be mine.
I’m sitting near the rear. Away from the others. Vex is further back—strapped down, sedated, his face slack. Aurora’s medics administered something after the interrogations in Romania went nowhere. Some Syndicate failsafe scrambled his mind when capture seemed inevitable.
He’ll be transported to Aurora headquarters. Better facilities. Better chance of breaking through whatever was done to him.
I should want answers. Should want to extract every scrap of information about the Syndicate’s plans.
Instead, I’m staring at my hands.
They look the same. Calloused. Scarred in places I don’t remember earning. But when I close my eyes, I see them wearing rings. Heavy gold bands on three fingers. Ceremonial. Binding.
Symbols of a crown I never asked for.
The memory sits heavy. Not like recalling something distant.
Like remembering yesterday. Council chambers that stretched the length of city blocks.
My voice echoing off stone pillars carved with dragon-wing motifs.
Warriors kneeling in formation. Their trust pressing down on my shoulders until breathing hurt.
I was competent. The memories don’t lie about that. I made decisions that shaped centuries. Saved thousands. Killed hundreds.
And I hated every moment of it.
Across the aisle, Dorian scrolls through his phone. The device glows in his hands, images appearing and vanishing at his touch. He catches me watching and holds it up slightly.
“Want me to show you how it works?”
I shake my head.
He shrugs and goes back to scrolling. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t press.
I’m grateful for that.
Caleb sits forward, hunched over a screen, murmuring into a speaker. His voice is low but urgent. Coordinates. Asset movements. The aftermath of the facility raid and what comes next.
He hasn’t asked my opinion. Hasn’t sought my counsel beyond confirming Vex wasn’t just spouting rhetoric.
Also grateful for that.
Three rows ahead, Mara’s shoulders are rigid. She hasn’t looked at me since we boarded. Her screen is open on the tray table, reflecting blue light across her face. Working. Always working. Making sense of whatever details flood this always-on world she inhabits.
The bond pulls.
Not painful. Not demanding. Just… present. Like a rope stretched between us, anchored somewhere behind my ribs. When she shifts in her seat, I feel it. When she winces—trying to hide the pain from injuries my fire has been suppressing—I feel that too.
She needs me close. Not wants. Needs.
The distinction matters.
In the tomb, when the memories came flooding back, I looked at her and thought—
No. I won’t lie to myself.
I looked at her and felt relief. Sharp and immediate. Because she wasn’t Lyria. Wasn’t some cosmic replacement offered by cruel fate. If she had been, I’d have hated her for it.
But Mara is nothing like Lyria.
Lyria spoke in poetry. Mara speaks in code and conspiracy theories and references I’ll never fully understand.
Lyria died in my arms four centuries ago.
Mara survived flaming wreckage and called me K before she knew my name.
They’re not the same.
So why does Lyria’s face keep surfacing every time I close my eyes?
A screen near my seat flickers. Just a bright flash that normalizes almost instantly. But fire surges through my veins before I can stop it. Defensive. Instinctive.
Heat radiates off my skin. The air shimmers.
I lock it down. Jaw clenched. Hands pressed flat against my thighs.
Dorian glances up. Notices. Doesn’t comment.
But Mara turns.
Our eyes meet. Hold for three heartbeats.
Then she stands and moves down the aisle. Slides into the seat beside me without asking.
“That screen spooked you.”
Not a question. Statement of fact.
“The light was unexpected.”
“It’s just the monitor resetting. Happens at certain altitudes.” She gestures toward the display. “Nothing magical. Just trapped electricity.”
Trapped.
Like me, in this metal box in the air.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I’m adjusting.”
“Yeah.” She leans back, arms crossed. Mirroring my posture. “That’s one word for it.”
Silence stretches. Not comfortable. Not hostile. Just loaded. The way it has been since that conversation after the battle. The one where I had no answers for her. No comfort to offer.
“The memories came back,” I finally say. “All of them.”
“I figured. You stand different now. Like you remembered how to wear a crown.”
Always so perceptive.
“I wore one for a long time. It didn’t fit well.”
“Most don’t.” She shifts, and I catch the wince she tries to hide. Still injured. Still held together by fire I’m feeding into her without conscious thought. “You planning to take it back?”
“No.”
The answer comes immediately. Certain.
Her eyebrows rise. “That was fast.”
“I don’t need time to consider what I already know.”
“So what happens when we get to Seattle, and people start looking at you like you’re supposed to have answers?”
I exhale slowly. “I’ll disappoint them.”
“Good.” She nods, approval clear. “You were kind of a dick in the tomb. All the fire and the disintegrating and the kingly bearing. I prefer K.”
“I prefer him too.”
Her smile is small. Genuine. The first real one I’ve seen since the tomb.
Then it fades.
“We should probably talk. About the bond. About what happens at headquarters. About—”
“Later. When we have privacy.”
“Right.” She stands. “Later.”
She moves back to her seat, and the distance feels like it hurts.
I watch her go. Watch the way she settles back into her work, fingers flitting across keys. Too fast to track.
We’re opposites in every way that matters.
And I can’t imagine not having her in my life.
In a world that feels alien, she’s the only connection who feels like… home.
I sit back in my seat and shut my eyes, letting the odd atmosphere of the aircraft wash over me. It feels like a lifetime before the voice of the pilot has me snapping back to awareness. We’re about to land. I stare out of the small window.
The descent over the city makes my breath catch.
Seattle, they called it. Where Craven headquarters are based. Aurora nearby.
Buildings scrape the sky. Glass and steel reach heights that would have been impossible in my time. Lights everywhere—even in daylight, they glow. Streets grid the landscape in perfect geometry. The water beyond—someone says Puget Sound—is dotted with vessels nothing like the ships I remember.
Four hundred years compressed into a single view.
I was gone. Sleeping. While the world transformed into this.
The wrongness intensifies. Not fear. Something deeper. The bone-deep knowledge that I don’t belong here. That I’m a relic animated by accident.
We land at a private airfield. More security than I’ve seen since the facility—Aurora personnel everywhere. Some in tactical gear. Others in clothing so ordinary they’d disappear in a crowd.
A tall, silver-haired man approaches as we disembark.
Rough-hewn features and a milky eye that only adds to the raw strength of a face that I recognize from recent video calls.
Viktor Parlance. His expression is carefully neutral, but I see the calculation.
He’s weighing me. Deciding how to proceed with a resurrected king who just returned from the dead.
“My lord Kael.” He offers his hand. Modern gesture. I recognize it from observation. “Welcome to Seattle.”
I take it. Firm grip. Brief. “Thank you.”
“We have quarters prepared at headquarters. Facilities for Vex. Briefing rooms—”
“I go where she goes.” I don’t look at Mara. Don’t need to. “There is a healing bond that requires proximity.”
He nods. “Understood. Caleb explained. We’ve arranged adjoining rooms.”
Adjoining. Close but separate.
The bond doesn’t care about walls. We’ve learned that in the past twenty-four hours.
The vehicles waiting are sleek. Black. Nothing like carriages or horses. We’re divided among them—Mara and I share one with Viktor and two guards whose names I don’t catch.
The drive into the city is surreal.
Towers of glass everywhere. Streets thick with vehicles, all moving in coordinated chaos. Lights that change color at intersections—red, yellow, green. A system I grasp immediately. Signs in English and other languages. People on sidewalks, most staring at devices in their hands.
No one looks up. No one notices the sky.
Mara catches me staring. “Culture shock?”
“Is that what this is called?”
“That’s what it’s called. You’ll get used to it.”
Will I?
But I nod anyway. Arguing seems pointless.
The drive takes us beyond the city limits through pastures and finally to the foothills of a mountain range, where Aurora headquarters tries not to be noticed. Beyond what looks like a deserted mining site, gates lead to an entrance hidden in the side of a cliff-face.
Camouflage. Hiding in plain sight.
Inside is different. The lobby gives way to corridors that pulse with barely contained power. Wards. Protective enchantments. Magic woven into the foundation.
They react to my presence. Recognize me and flex.
“Easy.” Viktor’s voice is quiet. “The wards know who you are. They won’t trigger unless you force them.”
I hadn’t realized my hands were glowing.
I force the fire down. Focus on breathing. On walking forward, instead of burning everything within reach.
The elevator is another wrongness I accept without comment. We rise to the fourth floor. The doors open with a soft chime that makes me want to flinch.
Viktor leads us to a room furnished with a long table surrounded by chairs, much like the war rooms I remember from my time as king.
Caleb stands near the windows, arms crossed. Dorian beside him. Several others I don’t recognize, all dressed in that strange casual-professional hybrid.
And across the room—
Two women.
One younger. One older. Both with dark hair, though the older woman’s bears a striking silver streak. Both with eyes that shift between gray and something deeper.
Rossewyn eyes.
My chest constricts, and the world slips off its axis.
The younger one meets my gaze. Recognition flashes across her face. Not of me. Of what I am. Who I was.
Caleb steps forward. “Kael, this is my mate. Elena Ross.”
She inclines her head slightly. “I’ve heard a lot.”
Her voice. The cadence. The way she holds herself—chin up, shoulders back, refusing to show weakness.
Lyria stood exactly like that when she was tending to the sick. When wounded men needed healing.
The older woman moves up beside her, and I fight the urge to suck in a sharp breath.
She has Lyria’s coloring. The exact shade of dark hair. Eyes the same stormy gray. The set of her features—different in details, but the underlying structure, the bones beneath—
It’s like seeing a ghost wearing someone else’s face.
“This is Lila Ross.” Caleb’s voice comes from very far away. “Elena’s mother.”
Both women. Standing together. Rossewyn witches.
Lyria’s bloodline.
I knew. Some distant part of me always knew Tavain survived. Knew Lyria’s brother continued the line. Knew her sacrifice meant something beyond just saving the Heartstone.
But knowing and seeing are different.
These women exist because Lyria died.
Elena smiles—just a small expression, warm and genuine.
The image catches. Pulls at memories I’ve been trying not to examine.
Not the same. Not even close.
But close enough to hurt.
“Kael?” Caleb’s voice. Concerned now. “Are you—?”
“I need air.”
I move toward the door. Not running. Not fleeing. Just moving. Before I do something I’ll regret. Before the fire answers the turmoil building in my chest.
“K—” Mara’s voice follows me.
But I’m already gone.