Chapter 18
Dagan
The Rooted Marches
The tremor hits like a fist to the spine.
Not in the stone beneath my boots—deeper.
In the marrow of Nightfall itself.
I straighten from the war-table, my grip tightening on the carved edge.
The roots woven through the floor flare faintly green, then sickly yellow. A warning.
“Stone’s Edge,” I say, the words coming out a growl. “The village on the eastern escarpment—do you feel it?”
Kael’s head snaps up.
Alaric goes very still, gaze going distant like he’s listening to the high currents.
Thorne’s flame-ink ripples beneath his skin, reacting to the same distant pressure I feel.
“Something just cracked,” Alaric murmurs. “Like a note gone off-key.”
“Not something,” I bite out. “Someone.”
I close my eyes and reach down—past the stone pillars and vaulted ceilings of The Barrow, past the bedrock of the Rooted Marches, deeper into the bones of the realm.
The earth answers.
Heat. Strain.
A shudder running along an old fault line toward the escarpment.
A ripple of wrongness spreading out from a single sharp point.
And beneath it, like a dying ember struggling in wet ash—fear.
“SoulTakers,” I snarl, eyes snapping open. “They’re attacking at Stone’s Edge.”
Alaric curses softly. “That’s a small settlement, isn’t it? Clinging to the cliff face?”
“Yes,” I say. “One of the old Dreamwright outposts.”
Thorne’s gaze narrows. “There are still weavers there?”
“One,” I answer. “A retired Dreamwright from the Verdant Sanctum. Masielle.”
Kael swears under his breath this time. “If Idris takes her—”
“He wouldn’t just take her,” Alaric cuts in grimly. “He would break her. Tear every pattern she’s ever held out of her mind.”
“And with it,” I finish, rage grinding through my jaw, “the hidden routes into the inner sanctums. The back doors to the forges. The emergency conduits only the elder weavers know.”
The room feels smaller all at once.
I can see it in my mind too easily.
SoulTakers swarming Stone’s Edge, shadow-bodies pouring through narrow streets carved into the cliff.
Masielle standing her ground with nothing but old wards and older bones between her and Idris’ madness.
“If he gets her,” Thorne says, voice low, “he won’t need to claw at the Vein and sanctums from the outside anymore.”
“He’ll know where the joints are,” Kael murmurs. “Where to crack the shell.”
My vision tints red.
“Not while I still draw breath,” I grind out.
The zareth bond pulls tight in my chest, a pressure behind my sternum that has nothing to do with SoulTakers and everything to do with the woman above us.
Alina.
Her presence is a warm weight at the edge of my awareness—steady as bedrock, curious as new growth.
The earth at her feet has already begun to hum to her touch.
The Barrow has wrapped itself around her like a second skin.
For once, she is safer here than at my side.
It does not make leaving any easier.
“We can’t all go,” Alaric says, breaking the silence. “That’s what we just agreed. Idris wants us scattered.”
“He’ll have to be content with three,” Thorne rumbles. “The Broken Plains can spare me. The Ember Vein’s wards hold for now.”
“The Eyrie is fortified,” Alaric adds. “Jules would gut me if I abandoned her libraries again, but she will understand a tactical strike.”
Kael’s mouth flattens. “Castletide is guarded. The tide wards are set. If Stone’s Edge falls, none of that will matter anyway.”
They all look at me.
Because it is my land. My call.
“The Barrow stays manned,” I say at last, voice like grinding stone. “The Crown remains here. I will not leave it unguarded, not when Idris is probing every flank.”
“You want one of us to stay,” Alaric guesses.
“Yes,” I answer. “One Lord, with our viyellas to anchor The Barrow. The wards will answer you almost as they do me, Alaric. You’ve worked them before.”
He grimaces, then nods. “Jules is nearly at term. I won’t drag her into another battle zone. We’ll hold the Crown and The Barrow. You three—”
“We go to Stone’s Edge,” Thorne finishes, embers burning hotter in his eyes.
Kael inclines his head.
“The cliffs are not my favorite, but I can keep SoulTaker fire from spreading to the lower terraces.”
“It is decided,” I say.
The roots beneath us thrum in agreement.
It should be satisfaction that fills me. A clear course. A clean strike.
Instead, there is only that pull.
Upward. Inward.
To her.
“I need a moment,” I mutter.
No one tries to stop me as I turn on my heel and stride from the war table.
The corridors of The Barrow part for me, stone rearranging subtly, opening the shortest path to the solar where I know she’ll be.
Earth likes her.
It is already learning her steps, her weight.
Mine, it whispers, in its own way.
Ours, I correct silently.
I find her by the high window overlooking the Verdant Strata—terraced fields glowing softly under the strange daylight of the Marches.
She has one hand on the stone sill, fingers splayed, eyes distant as if she’s listening to something only she can hear.
Maybe she is.
She turns before I speak, as if my footsteps are louder to her than anyone else’s.
“Let me guess,” she says softly. “You’re about to tell me you have to go.”
I exhale slowly. “Stone’s Edge is under attack. SoulTakers. You remember Masielle? The Dreamwright there.”
“Of course.”
“She is an elder. If Idris takes her, he will gain knowledge we cannot allow him to have.”
Her throat works as she swallows. “So you’re going.”
“Yes.”
“With Thorne and Kael,” she says, not a question.
She must have felt the shift through the bond or the stone. Or both.
“Yes,” I repeat.
She looks back out at the terraces. For a moment, she is quiet.
The urge to touch her is a physical ache.
To hold her.
To hide her in the deepest vault I can carve.
Instead, I force my hands to remain loose at my sides.
“The Barrow is safe,” I tell her. “Its wards are older than I am. Alaric and Jules, Phoebe and Delia will all stay. The Crown is here. The SoulTakers will not breach this place easily.”
Her mouth quirks, humorless. “Trying to convince me, or yourself?”
“Both,” I admit.
She turns fully then, dark eyes finding mine.
There is fear there.
Of course, there is.
Only fools walk unafraid into war.
But beneath it—beneath the tremor of worry, the sharp spike of potential loss—there is something else.
Resolve.
“You hate leaving me,” she says quietly.
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation. “Every stone in this place hates it too. They’re loud about it.”
A breath of a smile ghosts across her lips.
“I don’t love it either, Lord of Dirt.”
Heat flickers through my chest at the teasing title. I should growl. I nearly do.
Her gaze softens.
She’s still talking, but all I can hear is the echo of her fear under the words.
“But I get it,” she says, voice steady in that way that makes my chest ache. “People are in danger. That Dreamwright? She’s like the one person with the password to a very important, very magical mainframe. If Idris gets into her head, it’s game over.”
“Game over,” I repeat, tasting the phrase.
Trust Oona to turn the fate of Nightfall into something about machines and passwords and systems.
Somehow it makes more sense that way.
“Earth phrase,” she adds with a faint, crooked smile. “But yeah. I understand. You have to go.”
The zareth between us sings—one sharp, aching note.
Like a string pulled too tight.
She closes the distance without hesitation, pressing her palm flat against my chest, right over my heart.
Everything goes quiet.
The Barrow.
The Marches under my boots.
Even the restless roots in the walls.
My entire domain holds its breath as if waiting to hear what I’ll do.
“I have to go,” I say, because there is no use lying to her. “And you must remain safe.”
She snorts. Actually snorts. “You know that word safe is going to be a problem for me, right?”
If I were a different male, I might laugh. As it is, my mouth curves, just a little.
“It is important you understand that I know I do not deserve you,” I murmur instead. The truth scrapes my throat on the way out. “Not your courage. Not your faith. Not this bond.”
She huffs, the sound softer this time, almost pained. “That’s not your call to make, Rock Boy.”
Gods.
I catch her hand before she can pull away, curling my fingers around hers, and bring her knuckles to my lips.
The same small, reverent kiss I gave her the first night I called her Oona.
My Oona.
“I do not want you in the path of this,” I tell her, forcing her to see it in my eyes. The fear. The resolve. All of it. “Not yet. Not when Idris is playing with forces even I cannot predict.”
“So I stay,” she says slowly. “Here. With Alaric, Jules, Phoebe, Delia. In your fortress with the grumpy roots and the smug walls that keep rearranging doorways when they think I need a shortcut.”
“Yes.” A corner of my mouth lifts despite the dread coiling in my gut. “The Barrow has adopted you. It will fight for you.”
“Good.” Her jaw tightens. “Because if it lets something happen to me, I’m haunting it for eternity.”
“I will chisel that into the foundation as a threat,” I promise.
Her smile fades. Her eyes go dark and bright all at once.
“It’s too soon for me to feel like my heart will break if I lose you,” she whispers.
The words are blade-sharp and trembling, and they cut clean through the armor I’ve worn since Aurel fell.
“But I do feel that way. And I hate it. And I… I don’t want to pretend I don’t.”
“You never have to pretend with me,” I tell her.
That deep, grinding pressure in my chest tightens.
The same dread. The same wild, unfamiliar hope.
“I will come back to you, Oona,” I vow. The Marches hum under my feet, sealing it. “On my soul, on my land. I will come back.”
“You better,” she says, but her voice cracks on the last word.
She rises onto her toes, fingers curling into the front of my tunic like she’s anchoring herself, and drags me down into a kiss.
It is not chaste.
It is not careful.
It is desperate and fierce and real, our mouths crashing together with all the things we do not have time to say.
She tastes faintly of the fyrran she drank this morning, and more strongly of sweet stubbornness and something else I am terrified to name.
The bond surges—no, it slams—through me like a tectonic shift, like plates grinding and locking into a new shape that can never go back to what it was before.
I kiss her back like a dying man fighting for breath, one hand cradling the back of her neck, the other splayed over her spine, memorizing the exact curve of her, the exact heat.
If stone could pray, this is what it would feel like.
When she finally pulls away, we’re both breathing harder.
Her eyes are bright. No tears. Just that stubborn, unshakeable fire.
“I’ll see you later, viyen,” she whispers. “That’s not a request. That’s an order.”
I rest my forehead against hers for a beat, letting her steadiness sink into my bones.
“I will move mountains to obey, Oona,” I vow. “And if Stone’s Edge falls, it will not be because Dagan, Lord of Earth, stayed his hand.”
She swallows. “Take care of Masielle. Dreamwright or not, she’s our neighbor. Our friend. Someone’s family.”
“Someone’s hope,” I add quietly.
“Exactly.”
I step back before I change my mind and lock us both underground until the world ends.
At the doorway, I pause and look back one last time.
She stands framed by the window, Glowworm light painting her in soft gold, hand resting on the stone sill like it belongs there.
She does.
She belongs in my hall.
In my land.
In my life.
She belongs with me.
“Alina,” I say.
She lifts her chin. “Yeah?”
“I feel the tremors less when you touch me,” I tell her. “Remember that. When the ground shakes—your presence steadies it. You are not just in Nightfall now. You are part of what holds it together.”
Color rushes to her cheeks.
“Then you’d better hurry up and come back so I can keep doing my job.”
A grim smile pulls at my lips.
“As you command.”
The Marches rumble below, impatient.
The SoulTakers are already at Stone’s Edge.
I turn away from my viyella and stride toward the war waiting in the bones of my realm, every step a promise.
To Masielle.
To my brothers.
To the countless worlds that sleep and dream, never knowing how close they came to losing both.
And most of all—to the woman in the window, who asked me to come back and made it sound like a certainty instead of a wish.
I will not let Nightfall crack.
Not while there is still stone to shape.
Not while there is still one heartbeat in my chest echoing hers.
I can’t allow anything to happen to the people and places I love.
Then it hits me harder than an avalanche.
I love her.
And just like that—sentiment is set in stone.
I love her.
And I will tell her that myself when I return.