Epilogue
THORNE
The containment ward hums low, almost like a breath. Ancient stone pulses along the outside of the walls, locking me in a cage woven of light and silence.
But silence never lasts.
Bootsteps echo.
General Vaylor steps into the viewing window, long coat sweeping behind him, expression unflinching beneath the flickering glow. He stops just outside the perimeter of the nullifying stone and wards, hands clasped behind his back.
“Come to gloat, General?” I ask. “Or just making sure the mess you created doesn’t bleed too far?”
He doesn’t blink—only his mouth moves, curling with contempt. “You really fucked this up, Thorne.”
I chuckle—a low, charged sound—as I lean back against the cold stone wall, chains rasping faintly when I move.
Vaylor’s ice-blue eyes flick to the ward-stone. Then to the containment lattice. Then—finally—to my face.
“You failed,” he says, without heat. “You were supposed to bring her in willingly.”
I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
He sighs, almost bored. Like I’m just paperwork, a form that needs filing. He flicks a speck of dust off his otherwise pristine uniform. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says, smoothing his cuff. “The contingency plan is already in place.”
My hands clench into fists, but I don’t let him see. Because I know what kind of man he is. What he is capable of.
Celeste still believes love is a choice. But that is exactly the lie that will break her—because love makes people walk straight into a cage if it means keeping someone else out of it.
Vaylor leans in closer to the glass, voice dropping to something almost gentle.
“You were right about one thing,” he says.
“She wasn’t ready.” His smile is small. Controlled.
“It was a good idea to give her someone she could trust,” he murmurs.
“Someone who could train her, steady her, and steer her straight to me when the time is right.”
The air thins—oxygen siphoned with the same quiet precision that I used to kill Selric on that dock. The general’s doing, since my magick is all but dead within these walls. Vaylor reminding me that everything, even the air I breathe, now belongs to him.
She thinks I am the monster in her story.
Turns out I was only the gate.
And Vaylor has already found the key.