Chapter 32 Realize You’re in Love
(at the Exact Moment You Become Her Greatest Threat)
Kazimir
The skull of a dead god made for an interesting conversation piece.
Even for me—a man who has witnessed demons tear themselves apart and watched a necromancer puppeteer an entire village with nothing but a flute and some creative finger movements—the sight was impressive.
“Do you think it can still hear us?” Arabella asked, tilting her head for a better look. We’d arrived early to the ritual chamber so I could assess the space without the Alchemist’s watchful presence.
“If it can, I imagine it’s thoroughly bored by now.
” The massive cranium hung inverted from the ceiling of the chamber, its eye sockets large enough to sail a ship through.
Teeth the size of pillars formed a jagged crown around the top of the room.
Whatever this entity had been in life, death had not diminished its grandeur.
More importantly, it was the closest we could get to the metaphysical ley line nexus without actually swimming through solid rock.
“Centuries of villain monologues and dark rituals. We’re probably just background noise at this point. ”
Arabella didn’t laugh, but I caught the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth.
She hadn’t told me where she’d disappeared to after breakfast, and I hadn’t asked.
Now, I sensed a strange calm in her—not the brittle peace of suppressed anger, but something more settled.
Whatever she’d needed—air, space, or just time away from my spectacular failure at emotional intelligence—it seemed to have helped.
I caught her glancing at me from the corner of her eye, her gaze lingering on my jaw.
I’d forgotten to shave and hadn’t remembered until we were halfway here.
I never forgot. My appearance was as much a weapon as my magic, carefully cultivated to project power and control.
The Dark Lord didn’t have stubble unless he chose to have stubble.
But after a night wrestling with those damned whispers in my head, with the memory of trying to compel my own wife, personal grooming had been the last thing on my mind.
When Arabella’s eyes traced the line of my stubble again, I allowed myself an arrogant smirk. At least she’d never minded the rougher look. If anything, the way her pupils dilated slightly suggested she more than didn’t mind it.
Small victories.
“I didn’t ask,” I said quietly. “Are you up for this?”
She arched one perfect eyebrow. “Are you?”
Classic Arabella. Never backing down, never admitting weakness. Whatever else lay broken between us, her competitive nature remained intact. She’d focus on the task at hand because failing wasn’t in her vocabulary any more than it was in mine.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I murmured.
“The Alchemist is late,” Arabella observed, examining the runes we’d prepared yesterday. Her fingers traced the edges of a particularly complex sigil.
“Dramatic timing,” I said. “Can’t have the mysterious advisor arriving early like some eager apprentice.”
The temperature dropped suddenly, and the Alchemist materialized from the shadows as if they’d been there all along.
“Shall we begin?” they asked without preamble. “The corruption spreads even as we speak.”
I bit back a sarcastic response about their tardiness. We needed this to work, to buy time to gather the other heroic bloodlines. As much as it galled me to follow someone else’s plan, the alternative was watching the Shadow King’s essence poison all magic in the realm.
And I didn’t need any competition for world domination.
The ritual itself was straightforward enough, though not something I’d ever attempted before.
It was an ancient ritual that the Alchemist insisted the Weavers had guarded for centuries.
Because of its simplicity and elegance, I had hope that Arabella and I could master it even with our problems with the Heirloom.
We’d spent yesterday preparing the runes and enchanting the chamber. Today was about execution. I gestured to the runic circle we’d carved into the bone floor. “I still say we could have used more conventional binding symbols in the third quadrant.”
“Conventional thinking is what allowed this problem to fester,” the Alchemist replied smoothly. “Sometimes one must think like a god to fix what gods have broken.”
Arabella moved to her position across from me, the circle between us.
“Remember,” the Alchemist said, taking their place at the edge of the circle, “you’re not trying to destroy or redirect the ley lines permanently.
Simply convince them to take a detour. The nexus beneath us connects to all major confluences in the realm.
If you can shift the connection between here and Solandris, the corruption will be isolated. ”
“Convince them,” I repeated drily. “Because ley lines are known for being reasonable.”
“Would you prefer I said ‘wrestle them into submission through sheer magical dominance’?” the Alchemist asked. “I thought that went without saying, given present company.”
Arabella snorted.
I shot her a look, but there was amusement dancing in her eyes.
“Whenever you’re ready,” the Alchemist prompted.
If they wondered how we were going to perform this ritual without the Heirloom present, they didn’t ask.
Arabella had been correct—they already knew it was fused to her in some way.
Perhaps, if all went well later, they would have ideas about removing it.
I placed my hands on the carved symbols, feeling the familiar burn of my runes responding to the magical current. Across the circle, Arabella mirrored my position. The Heirloom pulsed once, twice, syncing with our heartbeats.
The incantation was older than most kingdoms, pulled from texts that predated even the First Hero.
The Alchemist had told us that the Weavers had been schooled in ancient magic from the time they could walk.
As the words spilled from our lips in unison, the air in the chamber thickened.
Reality grew soft around the edges, malleable.
I closed my eyes and reached.
The ley lines appeared in my mind’s eye like rivers of sunlight, flowing beneath the surface of everything.
The nexus directly below us was a massive confluence, streams of power converging from every direction.
Most were thin like spider silk, but here, beneath the God Spire, they converged into a massive lake of raw magical potential.
I could feel them all—threads stretching to Skyspire, to the Golden Rose Fields, to a thousand other places of power.
Through our shared bond, I felt Arabella’s consciousness alongside mine, her presence a warm, golden light in the darkness. Together, we traced the flow of energy, searching for the main artery that led toward Solandris, beneath the Eastern Sea.
A pulsing channel of power, thicker than the others, stretched away from the nexus toward the distant kingdom.
There, I thought, pouring my will into the working. Arabella’s power joined mine, bright where mine was dark, healing where mine sought to dominate. Together, we grasped that line.
Moving a ley line was like trying to redirect a river with your bare hands.
It wanted to flow where it had always flowed, following grooves carved by centuries of use.
But we were nothing if not stubborn. Inch by inch, we pulled.
The line resisted, thrashing like a living thing.
Sweat beaded on my forehead as I poured more power into the working, my runes screaming in protest.
And then—
It moved.
The ley line snapped away from its original path, curving back toward the Spire in a loop that bypassed the corrupted nexus entirely. The shift was so sudden I nearly lost my grip on the magic, but Arabella’s presence steadied me.
We did it.
I felt her elation, fierce and bright. The sheer headiness of it—the power we’d just wielded, the fundamental force we’d just altered—made my blood sing. This was what we were meant for. This was—
The magic curdled in my stomach.
One moment I was riding high on our success, the next I felt like I’d swallowed acid. Rage, sudden and inexplicable, flooded my system. Not the cold, calculated anger I typically wielded, but something primal and destructive.
MINE.
The thought wasn’t mine—or at least, it didn’t feel like mine.
It carried an ancient weight, a possessiveness that went beyond mere territorial instinct.
I clenched my jaw, forcing my expression to remain neutral even as my runes began to burn like brands.
Arabella’s eyes found mine across the circle, a question in their depths. She’d felt the shift.
I gave her the slightest shake of my head. Not now.
The Alchemist was saying something about the successful separation, about how we’d bought ourselves time, but their words seemed to come from very far away.
The world tilted. The ley lines’ power still sang through my bones, and with it came something else—something that had been sleeping.
One moment I was standing in the ritual chamber, the next I was on a battlefield littered with the dead. The sky above was the color of old blood, and the air tasted of iron and ash.
I stood atop a mountain of corpses, shadow stretching around me. Below, armies fled in terror from my approach. This was before Soriven, before the golden rose, when I was whole and terrible and—
“Kazimir?”
Arabella’s voice snapped me back to the present. I blinked, finding myself still in the ritual chamber. Both she and the Alchemist were staring at me with concern.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, though my hands were trembling slightly. “Just aftereffects from moving the ley line.”
But even as I spoke, more images flooded my mind. Not visions this time, but memories.
A woman with eyes like stars, carving runes into a child’s bones.
Skyspire, but different. Built with my power when the world knelt at my feet and I was—