Chapter Twenty-Four
ELYSSARA
The world spits me out.
Light fractures. Cold bites. My knees hit dirt.
For a heartbeat, I think I’m still in Kryntar—because the air tastes the same: blood, smoke, death.
Then the wind shifts and I realize I’m somewhere else. Tucked between sheer rock faces.
Cold coastal air knifes across my skin.
I’m safe.
Safe.
The word doesn’t land.
It slides off me, slippery, meaningless.
A lie.
My chest convulses, breath shuddering.
My ribs seize as if my lungs have forgotten how to open.
I can’t draw air deep enough. My body’s still waiting for pain. For the next strike. The next violation. The next loss.
Everything in me vibrates—like my nerves are trying to crawl out of my skin. Like my body is uninhabitable. Broken.
Kael’s voice cuts through the static. “El—”
I flinch so hard my vision whites out.
He stops. I can feel him watching me, but I can’t bear it. If I look, I’ll come apart.
“Go away!” I hiss.
The dress clings to me, heavy with blood and sweat and lies.
It’s still there—he’s still there. The smell of wine and iron, the slick heat of his breath. My throat closes.
“Take it off,” I whisper, clawing at the silk.
The words scrape like broken glass.
“Now!” I beg, panic gripping me like unyielding fingers.
I claw at the ribbons, nails splitting, skin burning. The fabric won’t give.
“Take it off. Take it off. Take it off.”
It’s too tight. I can’t breathe. I can’t—
The panic comes fast. Floods me.
The world tilts; sound folds in on itself. My heartbeat becomes a war drum against my skull, shaking everything loose.
I slash and tear at the silk. Desperation climbing up my throat like some starved beast.
Hands reach for me.
Kael’s.
“Let me—”
“Don’t touch me!”
The scream rips straight from somewhere animal. Raw, feral—like something I didn’t know could live inside me.
Everyone freezes.
The gown finally tears under my nails—threads snapping, seams shrieking. I rip it off like it’s burning me, stumbling backwards, half-naked in the cold.
The air hits my skin, and I still can’t breathe. My body doesn’t know it’s free.
I dig my fingers into my arms, trying to feel something that’s mine.
“You’re making yourself bleed, El. Stop. Please,” Kael’s voice is a desperate plea, and he reaches for me again.
“No!” I screech. “Not you. Not you.”
My nails come away red, blood seeping under them in the shape of crescent moons.
Kael pulls back.
But he crouches—careful, voice barely a sound. “You’re safe now.”
Safe.
That lie again.
“Don’t say that,” I choke. “Don’t—say—that—”
Because the body doesn’t care about words. The body remembers.
He pulls off his cloak. Steps closer. Slow. Deliberate.
“Here,” he murmurs, handing it to me. “Please.”
I shake my head, stumbling back.
“Not you,” I murmur again.
I can’t wear anything that smells like him. Reminds me of him.
Daelen’s cloak lands around my shoulders instead—rough wool, smoke and sweat. It scratches, it weighs, it anchors.
My knees give. The ground rises to meet me.
The silence stretches thin, tight enough to split.
The first sob is silent.
The second isn’t.
It claws its way out, tearing my throat raw.
It wrenches out of me like a death rattle—ugly, shaking, unstoppable. I curl into the dirt, hands over my head, as if I can hold myself together by sheer will. But the tremors come anyway. Every nerve firing, releasing. Every held scream spilling loose.
Kael sits across from me.
He doesn’t reach for me.
He just stays. The night sky coils around him like breath, patient, waiting for me to remember how to exist.
I press my palms into the earth until the grit embeds in my skin.
“I’m here,” I whisper to no one. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Each word smaller than the last. Less convincing.
The wind moves through the pass, cold and clean.
For the first time since Kryntar, the air doesn’t smell like Kael.
But I’m still shaking.
And I know—I’ll keep shaking until my bones believe I’m free of him.