Chapter Twenty-Seven
KAEL
My hollow thud on Rubi’s door anchors me to the present moment. Her quarters are tucked into the trees on Thornewood’s edge—a calm contrast to the chaos in my mind. But the reek of brask and voidroot travels on the air, giving them away—I know this is where Elyssara is.
No one answers the door, but I hear the rustle of clothes and the scuff of feet. I know she doesn’t want to see me, but Seren’s right—I need to help her, even if it means her hating me. Even if it means pushing her. Better hate than indifference.
“Open the door, Rubi. I know she’s in there—I need to talk to her,” I bellow through the thick oak.
Rubi swings the door open, her disheveled hair and crumpled skirts blocking my view into the room.
“She doesn’t want to see you, Kael. Just let the woman grieve, get a little wild, numb the pain.
I’ve seen you do it, you know?” she sighs in exasperation, and she’s right.
I’ve numbed the ache of lost family and friends more times than I can count.
I’ve escaped the pain through drink, elixir, and touch, but that was before her.
Before Elyssara ruined me for anything and anyone else.
Before the only place I could escape into was her.
“I’m not in the fucking mood, Rubes. I’m coming in—get out of my way,” I command in a tone that I reserve for Council Hollow.
She exhales, shrugging her shoulders in indifference, and waving her hand to let me in. She blows a ring of smoke in my face, “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya, Your Majesty.”
The door swings closed behind me, and through the haze of smoke, dirty clothes, and half-concocted potions, Elyssara is draped across Rubi’s bed in nothing but a white tunic that barely covers her ass.
The dark peaks of her nipples are visible under the tunic, and my mouth goes dry at the sight.
I know she hates me, but my love for her has never wavered.
Neither has the way I crave to touch her.
“Elyssara,” I begin, and her eyes drift to me, glazed and only half here.
She takes a swig of brask from Rubi’s flask. “Come to grovel?” she croaks, voice strained from the smoke.
Fuck. I don’t know what’s worse—her numbness or contempt.
“I’ve come to help, Elyssara. We’re all here to help,” I venture, knowing that my words are coming out empty and lacking.
She barks a loud, humorless laugh. “In the same way you helped me through Maldrak’s Gateway of Threads? Or have you got something different in mind this time?” she snipes, tone twisted by cruelty. “Perhaps torture? Starvation? Or something else equally as fun?”
I suck in a deep breath, clenching my jaw at the bitterness coating her words. I knew it would get worse before it got better.
“Duskae, no. The plan to swap you existed before I knew you—I made the only choice I could that allowed both you and Nalya to live.”
Her fierce gaze remains, but it wavers. I see the way she draws back, confused, perhaps even shocked.
“We were played. What we had, Duskae, it was real. All of it,” I breathe, and I hope she can feel the truth. I won’t tell her everything. Not while she’s like this.
She pauses for a heartbeat, eyes analyzing, deciding if her curiosity or her hurt will win.
“Yeah, well, forgive me, but I’ve lost trust in what’s real, Kael,” she says, the words hollow, broken and sinister. As if she’s lost trust altogether. I suppose hurt wins over curiosity. But something in her body changes—loosens, gives up, hurts too much to hold on to the loathing.
So, I do the only thing I know to do when I get an edge: I push.
“What does that mean, Duskae? What exactly did they do to you?” I demand, catching sight of the scars that peek out from under her tunic and cleave through her Lightborne mark.
She doesn’t speak.
The room fills with a silence that presses in on me.
A stray tear spills from the corner of her eye, falling to the pillow resting beneath her head, and somehow, it kills me more than if a river of them fell.
I knew she was tortured, tormented physically—but not all scars are visible.
I know she doesn’t want to speak to me, but her mouth opens and closes, trying to get the words out. To purge them.
“They used my weaknesses,” she murmurs, “to distort reality, to fracture my mind, and fill it with memories—I can’t figure out if they’re mine, conjured. I don’t know what’s real.” She whimpers, voice breaking under the pain.
I try to keep my face soft, tender, but merciless thoughts of vengeance swallow me whole.
Thoughts of extinguishing every inhabitant of Kryntar Castle and reveling in the sight of watching the light leave their eyes.
I don’t care if they personally hurt her or not—they were there and did nothing to stop it, and that warrants pain that follows them into the afterlife.
I shove the rage down, swallowing it like poison.
“I’ll help you sift through them, Duskae. Every one of them. I know I’ve lost your trust—I fucking deserve that! But I want to help you heal, too,” I plead, unable to keep the desperation from my voice.
She turns to me, then. Rage and pain clashing in a battle of the head and heart. “You want to help? But you are all I see! You are the distortion,” she snarls. “Saving me, betraying me, loving me, hurting me, and all I see when I look at you is him,” she breaks.
Maldrak. And the instinct for violence bucks wildly in my chest again.
Her chest heaves, breath coming too fast, too hard. She sits on the edge of the bed, auburn hair framing her face with strands of gold that steal breath from my lungs.
“You are everywhere. You are my dreams, my nightmares, my solace, and my ruin—all of it, all at once. I cannot bear to meet your gaze for fear you’ll strip me of all I have left. The only end to you is at the bottom of a flask,” she sobs now, her body shuddering under the force of them.
My heart shatters. Because she cannot trust any part of me—my words, my intentions, my love, my vows—not even my presence now. But it’s all I have to offer.
“It is my vow to you, Elyssara, that I will only give to you. I will not take that which you do not wish to give freely. I only wish to see you rise. To be the queen you were born to be,” I beg, dropping to my knees before her. I’m not above it. For her, I’ll do it. “Let me help.”
I place my palm tenderly on her outer thigh, but she flinches under my touch. And something in me breaks. I know I lost her trust, but whatever happened at Kryntar Castle has extinguished any salvageable shred.
She recoils slowly, “The only way you can help me, Kael, is by allowing me to live without you. I can’t bear to look at you, think of you, speak of you.
I just… can’t.” Tears run freely across the freckles of her cheeks, now.
The freckles I laid kisses upon. The cheeks I’ve cupped in my hands. The tears I never want to cause.
I want to give her this. I do. But she’s my Starbound—I won’t let Maldrak’s cruelty take her from me, no matter what that makes me. A selfish bastard. An asshole.
“I can’t do that, El. I’m sorry, but I will not abandon you when you need me most,” I defy boldly, trying to keep some softness in my tone but failing.
“You’re always with me, Kael—that’s the problem,” she murmurs, closing her eyes.
And I realize—
“The brand.”
“Yes! The brand! Your family crest!” she rasps, fists clenching at her sides.
“I have to live with you branded into my fucking flesh, as if you hadn’t already branded me and possessed my heart, anyway!
You are so thoroughly under my fucking skin and in my bones that not even slumber will rid me of you! ”
She rolls onto her side, curling her legs and arms into herself like a child, and I can see her ribcage shuddering with grief and pain.
I set a knee on the mattress, but stop. “May I?”
She doesn’t speak—just gives the smallest nod. Only then do I fold myself around her, a barrier against the world I helped break. As if I can shield her from the world’s monsters. But, I know, to her, I am the monster.
She doesn’t push me away, so I hook my forearm around her waist, pulling her into me.
Her body stills, but not in peace—in anticipation. Of what, I’m not sure. Probably pain.
We lie like this for a while, letting her take even small comfort in my presence.
She stops shuddering, and I think I’ve made progress, but the mask of cold indifference slips back into place when she edges out of my embrace.
“As Seren said, I like to drink and fuck the pain away, Kael. So, unless you’re going to top up my drink or find me someone to fuck, get out.”