Chapter 43
The voices had been driving Ellaryn mad.
She had reduced herself to rocking back and forth, hands clamped over her ears, eyes pinched shut in a futile attempt to block them out.
It didn’t help. They found a way in anyway—seeping through the cracks between her fingers, through skin and bone, as if they were matter.
They settled in her mind until she could no longer tell where the whispers ended, and her own thoughts began.
She didn’t know how long she’d been down there, only that it felt endless.
Her injuries were healing more slowly than they should have. The King’s marks always did that—his magic sank deeper, lingered longer, like rot embedded in flesh.
“Ellaryn.”
The word cut through the rambling haze.
She flinched but didn’t look up. Darkness swallowed most of her vision; one eye was swollen shut. She kept rocking.
“It’s not real,” she whispered to herself again. “It’s not real.”
“Ellaryn,” the voice came again, quieter.
She froze.
She knew that voice.
“Xander?” she muttered, but hope twisted instantly into fear as reality snapped back into place. It couldn’t be him. It wasn’t him. The dungeon fed on hope, twisted it into weapons. Xander was hope, and hope wasn’t strong enough to break through stone soaked in the King’s magic.
“Get away from me,” she shouted, scrambling backwards, holding her side as pain detonated within her.
“Ellaryn… it’s me,” he said, careful, slow, like a rider approaching a spooked horse.
“No.” She shook her head violently. “You’re not real.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes tighter. She wouldn’t open them. She wouldn’t watch him warp like the others—his smile stretching too wide, his eyes filling with hate.
She couldn’t bear to see Xander like that.
“I’m real,” he said softly, stepping closer. “I’m real, Ellaryn.”
His voice was gentle—too gentle. It wrapped around her, warm and steady, and for one dangerous moment she wanted to sink into it, to lie down inside his words and sleep.
Her sobs broke free, echoing off the stone.
And then—silence.
The screams stopped. The whispers vanished. The accusing voices evaporated like smoke.
Only Xander’s voice remained.
He moved closer and crouched beside her. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m real.”
When his arm slid around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest, Ellaryn jolted, but the warmth was undeniable. Solid. Human. She sagged against him, clutching at his shirt as she cried.
He rocked her gently, murmuring the same words over and over. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
Ten minutes passed before she dared open her eyes.
He was still there.
Really there.
Xander studied her face, then sucked in a sharp breath, his fingers hovering before carefully tracing the swollen skin around her eye.
“I’m okay,” she said quickly, jaw tight against the throbbing in her skull.
“No,” he replied softly. “You’re not. Let me heal you.”
“No—you can’t.” Ellaryn’s voice cracked, panic rising sharp and sudden in her chest. Her fingers curled weakly around his wrist, trying to stop him. “The King… he’ll know you were here. He’s looking for you.” Her breath hitched. “You need to go.”
The King would return soon, once the knights had finished searching the Temple and realised Xander was not there.
Xander’s jaw tightened, his thumb hovering just above her wound, afraid to touch it and afraid not to. Regret darkened his expression. “I can’t just leave you like this.”
“You have to,” she whispered, though the words tasted like betrayal. “Just find out how to kill him. He has Sailen.”
He hesitated.
She could see it—the conflict tearing at him, the helplessness he hated.
“Dammit.” His gaze didn’t waver. “Let me heal you, Ellaryn. I know how to kill him.”
She blinked hard.
With those words, the world seemed to tilt.
“What?” She breathed in a trembling exhale.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’ve known for a while. Spell reapers can only be killed by a weapon their own magic has forged.”
The confession hollowed her out.
“My sword?” she whispered, disbelief thick in her voice.
He nodded regretfully.
The one thing she had carried every day—her constant, trusted companion—had the power to end him. The realisation made her stomach twist. She could have killed him. So many fucking times. And she hadn’t.
She had been too afraid. Too sure he couldn’t be killed.
Her voice dropped, thin and shaking with shock. “You knew… and you let me suffer like this?” Her breath hitched. “You let Sailen suffer?”
Pain flickered across his face. Real pain. The kind that didn’t ask for forgiveness because it knew it didn’t deserve it.
“I was trying to help you.” He sighed, his eyes averting her gaze.
“How long?” she asked, her voice trembling.
He didn’t answer.
Her stomach sank.
“How long have you known?” she demanded, louder now, colder, her words breaking like glass.
“A few days,” Xander said quietly, head bowed.
The words cut deeper than any blade.
Days.
Days of fear.
Days of pain.
Days of watching Sailen fade while she tore herself apart, battling something she barely understood.
Her vision blurred. She turned her face away, blinking rapidly, but the tears came anyway—hot, unrelenting, betraying her.
“Days,” she whispered in disbelief, the word barely audible. “Days.” Her throat tightened. “No… you’re lying. You wouldn’t do this. You wouldn’t leave me with him if you didn’t have to.”
“Ellaryn… I’m sorry,” Xander murmured.
“You know what he does to me. You know what he makes me do… Gods, do you just like watching me suffer? Do you get off on it or something?”
“No,” he snapped. His voice was hoarse. Fragile. “It wasn’t that.”
She didn’t look at him.
“I was trying to unbind your soul,” he continued, each word sounding like it cost him something. “So you wouldn’t die when we kill him.”
Her head snapped toward him.
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” she whispered, the words barely more than breath. “People are dying, Xander. Every day we wait—”
“I know.” The words tore out of him, raw, unsteady. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Then why?” Her voice splintered; grief and anger tangled together. “How could you do this? How could you put my life above hundreds of others?”
He flinched like she’d struck him.
“Because maybe I’m selfish,” he said, this time with less regret.
She stared at him.
“Maybe I think you deserve to live.” His voice dropped, thick with something dangerously close to breaking. “Maybe I want you to live.” He swallowed, throat tight.
“Maybe I don’t want to live.” She said with conviction, though her voice cracked as it hit the damp air. “Maybe I don’t want to be saved.”
His head jerked up. “That’s not true. Everyone wants to be saved.”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes shining—not with tears, but with belief.
“No,” she said. “Not if saving me costs everything else.”
Silence followed.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Unforgiving.
He stood there, close enough to touch her.
And farther away than he had ever been.
“Please just let me heal you.” He finally said, and Ellaryn did not respond, but she didn’t fight him when he took her hand and felt his warmth spread within her.
“Ellaryn,” he said softly.
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t be angry with me.”
Her shoulders rose and fell in a quiet breath. “Angry doesn’t even begin to cut it,” she said at last. “You lied to me.”
He hesitated.
“If I’d told you when I realised how to kill him,” he said, “you never would’ve given me the chance to try and save you.”
Something flickered across her face. Pain. Understanding. Resignation.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “And he’d be dead right now. The city would be safe.” Her voice faltered, but she forced the words out anyway. “Sailen would be safe.”
“But you wouldn’t be,” Xander shot back, words coming out rough. “Godsdammit, Ellaryn, you wouldn’t be safe.”
Silence crashed down between them.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t speak.
She just stared at him, disbelief spreading slowly across her face.
His voice wavered despite himself. “We could run away together. Escape the wall. I could take you to my aunt’s village.” The words caught in his throat, a tightrope he had been holding back but decided to walk nonetheless.
“What? No.” Ellaryn shook her head. “He has to die. Cinala—the people—they’ll suffer as long as he’s alive.”
Xander’s breath hitched. “Gods, you really don’t get it, do you?”
Her head snapped toward him. Her gaze locked onto his, sharp and searching.
“I’ll suffer if you die.” He yelled louder than he meant to. “I don’t want you to die, Ellaryn,” he whispered quietly. “You haven’t even had a chance to live.” His words were fueled by rage, frustration and something that resembled longing.
“That’s not the plan, Xander.” She swallowed hard.
“Fuck the plan.” He bellowed, pacing towards the wall.
“What?” She couldn’t believe the words he was saying. “I don’t understand… this was your idea.”
“I know, but that was before—” Xander’s voice echoed off the damp walls.
“Before what?” She quickly interrupted, her braid sticking to the sweat on her neck.
“Before I met you.” His head bowed slightly. “Before I saw you… the real you.”
She dipped her head now as well.
“Before I loved you.”
He crossed the room towards her, and Ellaryn’s breath left her in a slow, trembling exhale.
“You don’t love me. You barely know me.”
“But I do. All those memories, all your thoughts; I’ve seen them. Lived them. You think that because of everything he has made you do, you don’t deserve to be loved. But I love you.”
The words landed softly and violently all at once.
“And that night we shared together wasn’t a mistake—Gods, if that’s what a mistake feels like, I want to die making them, over and over again.” He breathed, his voice faltering.
She closed her eyes.
For a heartbeat, she let herself imagine a world where they weren’t here. Where stone walls didn’t cage them. Where blood and fear weren’t stitched into every plan they made. A world with sunlight and open skies and Sailen laughing somewhere nearby.
But this wasn’t that world.
This was far from a fairytale.
She opened her eyes again and met Xander’s gaze.
There was no bravado there. No cleverness. Just truth, raw and unguarded.
Her hand tightened around his.
“Xander…”
He swallowed. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just—” His voice cracked. “You got under my skin. You’re brave in ways I don’t understand. You still care when everything in this place is trying to crush it out of you, even without pieces of your soul.”
Her throat burned, the weight of his words pressing behind her eyes.
She lifted her other hand and cupped his jaw, her thumb brushing over the faint scar near his eyebrow. He leaned into her touch without thinking, like it was instinct now.
“I’ve done horrible things,” she whispered. “The people I’ve killed… You saw it firsthand.”
“And still,” he said quietly. “Still, I can’t stop myself from seeing the good in you, from wanting to protect you, to hold you… Tell me if I’m wrong,” he murmured, searching her face, “but I think a part of you wants me too. To live.”
“I don’t get to want things,” she said, her lips trembling. “Not like that.”
His brow furrowed. “Ellaryn—”
“I’ve wanted to run,” she admitted. “Every day since the King stole me, I’ve imagined what life could be like if I could just take Sailen and disappear into some quiet corner of the world.”
Her laugh broke through her tears, soft and fragile.
“And then you came into my life.”
She shook her head, breath trembling.
“And suddenly it wasn’t just about Sailen and me anymore. The life I imagined became bigger than anything I’d ever allowed myself to dream of—because it had you in it.” Her voice cracked. “I wanted a world with you.”
His breath hitched.
“But if we don’t do this” she continued, voice barely steady, “he keeps hurting people. Children grow up afraid. Cities burn. And everything we’ve survived means nothing. Your family will not be avenged. Cinala will remain Cinders forever.”
Tears slid down her cheeks unchecked.
Xander leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers, their noses brushing.
“I hate that you’re right.”
She let out a soft, broken laugh. “Me too.”
His arms wrapped around her then, slow and careful, mindful of her healing injuries. She sank into him, resting her forehead against his shoulder, breathing him in. He smelled like smoke and magic and something uniquely his.
For a moment, she let herself be held.
Not as a fighter. Not as a weapon.
Just as Ellaryn.
His hand traced small circles between her shoulder blades.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he whispered into her hair. “Love someone and still walk them toward danger.”
She pulled back just enough to look at him.
“You’re not walking me,” she said. “I’m choosing it.”
Their eyes locked, a whirl of emeralds and indigo.
She reached up and brushed away a tear she hadn’t realised had escaped him.
“I’m not afraid to die,” she said softly. “Just promise me you’ll look after Sailen.” She smiled as she said his name, slow tears rolling down her cheeks.
His breath stuttered hard.
“Of course.” His eyes danced over hers as if he were in awe of every part of her.
“And take him somewhere warm. Somewhere with open water and loud birds and too much sunlight.”
She could envision it in her mind, see him laughing. A sound she hadn’t heard from him before. A genuine laugh. “Teach him how to swim.” She smiled widely.
He nodded, his eyes catching the low light as he leaned in before he could overthink it. Their lips met in a gentle, tentative kiss—more promise than passion. It was brief and careful, like they were both afraid the moment might shatter if they pressed too hard.
But it was real.