Chapter 27
Alina
The Last Battlefield, The Rooted Marches
I don’t know what to expect when we crest the ridge.
I tell myself I’m ready.
I tell myself I’ve seen disasters—collapses, sinkholes, buildings folding in on themselves like paper.
I’ve stood at the edge of ruptured earth and felt the ugly hunger of gravity.
But this?
This is the end of a world trying not to die.
The battlefield sprawls beneath us like a wound ripped open and left to fester.
Stone is split into jagged plates.
Fire rains in sheets.
Water slams into the ground hard enough to crack it.
Wind shrieks through the broken terrain in knife-edged spirals, carrying screams and soot and the metallic tang of blood.
And threaded through everything—like oil spilled into clean water—is Idris.
His magic is wrong. Not elemental. Not alive.
It oozes.
It clings.
It stains the air a sickly green-black, like the sky itself is being poisoned from the inside out.
Where it touches, the earth doesn’t just burn or flood or shatter—it rots.
It crumbles into gray sludge that steams and writhes as if it wants to crawl.
My stomach turns.
And then I see them—the Lords of Nightfall, our viyens.
Dagan is a wall of stone and storm at the center of it all, wings spread wide, obsidian feathers ragged at the edges like they’ve been shredded by claws.
His skin is streaked with blood—dark against the pale gold glow of his eyes.
He’s holding the ground together with pure will.
Thorne is an inferno that keeps trying to go out and refuses. Fire lashes around him in furious bursts, then gutters as if something is drinking it down.
His bone-mask is cracked. His shoulders are heaving.
Kael stands near the western line, water churning around him in a tidal ring that slams back SoulTakers again and again—but even from here I can see his hands shaking.
He sways. He steadies. He pushes.
Alaric—half Dragon, half man—dives out of the smoke with a roar that hits my bones like thunder.
He lands hard, claws tearing trenches through the earth, and for one terrifying second he falters.
They’re losing.
Not because they aren’t strong enough.
Because every time they strike, something steals the strike from them.
Idris’ ritual is a siphon.
A net.
A parasite latched onto the spine of Nightfall itself.
The corrupted Ember ore he carved from the earth using maps stolen from Masielle’s mind. shards hover around Idris like a crown of broken teeth, each one pulsing with trapped screams.
His disciples ring him, chanting, eyes glassy with devotion. SoulTakers slam into our men’s defenses without care—bodies that burn, drown, shatter, and keep coming anyway.
My throat tightens.
I should be terrified.
I am.
But the bond in my chest burns hotter than fear.
It’s Dagan.
It’s the pull of him—raw and furious and aching—and for a moment it’s so strong I stumble.
Jules catches my elbow. Delia’s hand clamps on my shoulder. Phoebe swears under her breath, eyes bright with the same panic I feel.
We all feel it.
Our mates’ pain.
Their weakening.
The way the world keeps reaching for a Prime that doesn’t exist anymore.
The crown.
It thrums against my palms even now, heavy in a way metal shouldn’t be.
Not weight—pressure. Like holding a live fault line. Like holding a living choice that doesn’t want to be forced.
It doesn’t want us.
It wants one.
It wants the old way.
But we don’t have time for the old way.
“Now,” I whisper, and my voice shakes like I’m standing on the edge of a quake.
Jules steps in beside me, body soft and tired from hours of labor and delivery, but her chin still lifts like she’s daring the universe to argue.
Phoebe’s fingers lace with mine.
Delia’s hand slides in, warm and steady.
Four women. Four bonds. Four stubborn New Jersey hearts who refuse to sit quietly while the men we love bleed out for everyone else.
We move as one.
Down the ridge.
Into the wind and ash.
A SoulTaker sees us first—head snapping around, jaw splitting too wide, teeth like broken glass.
It lunges.
A blast of wind knocks it off-course.
Alaric. Even half a battlefield away, his protection finds Jules like instinct.
Kael’s water whips across the ground, a slick wave that trips two more attackers before they can reach us.
Thorne’s fire flares in warning, a wall of heat that forces a path open.
And Dagan—Dagan turns.
He’s so far, but the moment his eyes lock on mine, the world narrows into a single line of connection.
Green-gold.
Fierce.
Terrified.
Furious.
Mine.
His wings twitch, like he’s about to launch himself toward me, like he’s about to break every order he ever gave me and wrap me in stone until nothing can touch me.
I lift the crown higher so he can see it.
So he can understand.
Trust me.
I don’t say it out loud.
I don’t have to.
The bond carries it.
His jaw flexes.
Then, slowly—like it costs him everything—he nods once.
Yes.
Go.
The crown fights us the moment we stop running and plant our feet.
The air around it thickens. The metal vibrates in my hands like it’s trying to shake free. A low hum builds into a pressure that makes my teeth ache.
Jules winces.
Phoebe’s eyes squeeze shut.
Delia sucks in a breath, shoulders tensing.
It’s not just resisting.
It’s testing.
Like it’s asking us, “Do you have any right?”
My knees threaten to buckle.
The crown is ancient.
Sentient.
A relic of a Prime who is gone.
And it does not want to be broken.
“Hold,” Delia bites out, voice tight. “Hold, Alina!”
“I’m holding,” I gasp, though sweat breaks along my spine.
“No,” Jules says, voice suddenly calm in that way some women get right before they do something insane and brave. “Not like that.”
She shifts, presses her palm to the crown—then closes her eyes and reaches for Alaric through the bond like she’s grabbing him by the soul.
Her gaze snaps open, silver-gray and blazing.
“You want a Prime?” she murmurs to the crown like it can hear her. “Fine. But you don’t get one anymore.”
Phoebe’s hand tightens on mine.
“I’m so over monarchy,” she mutters, and somehow the sarcasm makes me breathe easier.
Delia’s laugh is a rough, breathless thing. “Same.”
I swallow hard.
My mind flashes—earth science, fracture planes, stress lines, controlled breaks.
A geode doesn’t shatter at random.
A fault doesn’t split wherever it feels like.
It breaks where the lines already exist.
And when I look at the crown—really look—I see them.
Natural seams.
Hairline fractures.
Ancient stress marks that have been there all along, hidden beneath the shine.
The crown isn’t a single piece.
It never was.
It was held as one.
By will.
By tradition.
By a story someone insisted had to be true.
My hands stop shaking.
I lift my chin into the wind.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Then we break you the way you were always meant to break.”
The crown screams—no sound, but a psychic pressure wave that hits my skull and makes stars burst behind my eyes.
I almost drop it.
Almost.
Then Dagan’s presence surges through the bond like bedrock rising beneath my feet.
Stone. Storm. Steady rage.
Oona.
The nickname hits me like a hand to my heart.
And I hold.
Jules’ bond flares—air crackling, wind wrapping around us like a shield.
Phoebe’s bond follows—cool water sliding through the pressure, soothing the burn.
Delia’s bond ignites—heat like a hearth, controlled fire, not destruction.
And mine—mine is earth.
A deep pulse from the Marches themselves, responding to Dagan, and responding to me.
We don’t just push magic into the crown.
We pour ourselves into it.
Our love.
Our fear.
Our refusal to lose them.
Our insistence that Nightfall will not be ruled by a single lonely burden again.
The crown’s resistance falters.
For one breathless second, it’s quiet.
Then—it happens all of a sudden.
CRACK.
A sound like stone splitting.
Like a fault line finally giving.
The crown fractures along those natural seams, opening like a geode breaking apart—revealing light inside.
Not white.
Elemental.
Blue for water.
Gold for fire.
Silver for air.
Green for earth.
Shards float up between our hands, hovering in a circle as if the crown has stopped fighting and started choosing.
Phoebe gasps. “Oh my god.”
Jules laughs through tears. “It’s working.”
Delia’s eyes shine, her voice a whisper. “It’s accepting.”
The pieces begin to shape themselves, responding to us.
To our bonds.
To who we are.
One shard stretches into a sleek torc, silvered and airy, light as breath—made for Alaric.
One tightens into a ring, smooth as river stone, pulsing with tidal glow—Kael’s.
One becomes a bracer, dark metal edged with ember light—Thorne’s.
And the last—the last piece in my palms is heavier than the others, warm like sunlit rock.
It reshapes into a thick pendant on a chain that looks like braided roots and hammered stone.
Earth’s anchor. Dagan’s.
My fingers curl around it, and I feel the Marches answer—humming approval beneath my skin.
We don’t hesitate.
We run.
All four of us, sprinting down into chaos with artifacts burning against our palms.
SoulTakers lunge.
Wind shoves them back.
Water sweeps their legs.
Fire clears a path.
Earth rises into stepping-stones beneath my feet like the world itself is helping me reach him.
The closer I get, the louder Dagan is inside me.
Pain. Fury. Fear.
And then—relief so sharp it almost drops me to my knees.
He sees me.
“Alina—NO—” he bellows, but his voice breaks on my name like it hurts.
“I’m here,” I shout back, throat raw. “I’m not letting you do this alone!”
A SoulTaker swings at me.
Dagan’s stone spikes shoot up and impale it mid-leap.
His eyes never leave mine.
He’s bleeding.
He’s exhausted.
His magic flickers around the edges like a storm running out of sky.
Idris is already turning toward us, realizing—too late—what the crown has become.
His face twists.
“No,” he hisses. “You can’t—”
“Oh yes, I can you sonovabitch,” I snarl under my breath, and I’m shocked by the sound of it.
The ferocity. The certainty.
Because the earth under my boots agrees with me.
I slam into Dagan’s space like a collision.
His hand catches my waist—too tight, too desperate—like if he lets go I’ll vanish.
I lift the pendant.
He stares at it like it’s a miracle and a weapon in one.
“Oona,” he breathes, voice wrecked.
“Trust me,” I whisper.
Then I press it to him.
Not just to his skin.
To mine, too.
My palm on his chest. The pendant between us.
A shared conduit.
A bridge.
The moment the artifact touches us both—touches all four Lords and their viyellas—Nightfall answers.
Power detonates through the bond like a quake finally releasing.
Green-gold light erupts from Dagan’s chest, racing across his tattoos and into his wings, turning every obsidian feather into a blade of living stormlight.
The ground beneath us locks into place—fault lines sealing, stone knitting, roots surging up like a living army.
Dagan’s gasp tears through me.
Not pain.
Relief.
Strength.
Connection.
He’s not alone anymore.
Not carrying the Marches on his back by himself.
I feel the other surges too—like four suns igniting at once.
Jules reaches Alaric—silver torc to throat, her hand to his heart—air and illusion becoming something truer than either.
Phoebe reaches Kael—ring to finger, palm to palm—water roaring clean and powerful, tides singing.
Delia reaches Thorne—bracer to forearm, her hand to his jaw—fire stabilizing, controlled, devastating.
Four conduits.
Four bonds.
Four pieces of the crown fused into love instead of duty.
Idris screams as his siphon snaps.
The corrupted ore ring around him shudders—then fractures—souls inside it shrieking as the power he stole is ripped out of his grasp.
“What have you DONE?” he roars.
Dagan’s wings unfurl to their full span, blotting out smoke and moonlight both.
He looks down at me, eyes blazing, and I feel his awe like a tremor.
“You came into war for me,” he whispers.
“I will go anywhere for you,” I whisper back, voice shaking. “You came to New Jersey for me. So, it’s mutual, apparently.”
His mouth twitches—almost a smile.
Then he turns, slow and lethal, toward Idris.
The earth rises with him.
Not just stone.
Not just roots.
All of Nightfall this time.
And for the first time since this nightmare began, I don’t feel our bond flicker with fear.
I feel it lock into place like bedrock.
Because now?
Now we’re not fighting as four lonely Lords scrambling for a silent crown.
We’re fighting as us.
Together.
And Idris finally understands what he’s up against.
Four Lords of the Elements.
Four zareth bonds.
Four living Primes.
And one realm that has decided it will not break ever again.