Chapter Thirty-Two
ELYSSARA
I wander aimlessly through Thornewood, making friends with the vines and conversation with the trees that shimmer in the night. The canopy blots out the bright, round moon, and the only light left is the bioluminescence that flares underfoot and runs like veins through the trees.
The small clearing, just out of eyeshot of the soldiers’ camp, gives me what I’ve so desperately craved: solitude.
The night is still, and even so, I search it for answers.
I don’t know where to go.
The Hollow cleared out—every council member dispersing with haste to enact duties and tasks for their king before the journey to The Underbelly. But me? My role is undefined, my tasks unclear. An acolyte of the unknown, just as Duskae would have it.
I’m going home—back to the slums of Virellin.
But for the first time, it doesn’t feel like home at all.
It feels like stepping into the shadow of a place I once knew, familiar yet foreign, its heartbeat out of rhythm with mine.
Not because Virellin has fundamentally changed, but because I have.
Because the vantage point from which I view the city—the world—is different.
Thalmyr is not just an oppressive ruler, he’s a dictator.
He’s telling a false history that supports his own agenda.
He’s beating out disobedience with force or coercion.
And he’s turning the people against each other in exchange for rewards he’ll never deliver.
But starvation and fear can drive a person to do the unthinkable.
That’s all it takes; remove everything that makes a person free—coin, strength, food, choice, knowledge—and then keep it just out of reach with a promise of ‘soon’. And just like that, freedom becomes a cage.
Virellin is the only place I’ve ever called home. But now? The veil has thinned to nothing and I see it for what it is: a lie.
The tether snaps taut, pulling me out of my mind and into the moment.
“You trying to get away from me, Duskae?” Kael’s low timbre rumbles through the night, and my heart kicks into a busy flutter of its own accord. His hesitation and amusement mingle together through the tether and I feel the way he doesn’t know how to be with me.
A sigh escapes me, and I turn to his broad frame.
“Kael, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I can’t outrun you. You are in my thoughts, in my breath, in the marrow of my bones. My heart answers to you, whether I will it or not,” I breathe the truth like an incantation. Like an inevitability.
He tips his head back, gazing up to the Stars, and the light glints along his sharp, angular jaw. And despite myself, all I can think is: my Starbound. Mine.
I hate that he can command me without a single word. The way he can make me pliant under his gaze. The way the scent of him can make me yield. After a lifetime of sharpening my edges and blunting my vulnerability, he is the blade that cleaves through it all.
He lets out a long, loud sigh, and drags those godsdamned ocean eyes back to mine. “You’ve bewitched me, Elyssara. It’s only you. Always you.”
His words do something to me—they mend a small corner of my heart.
I wish I hated him. I wish I could fortify the walls around my heart and mind, and cast him from my body. But I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that, and that’s what hurts the most.
He is my weakness.
The chink in my armor.
The one place I can’t fight my way out.
No, with him, I yield.
With him, I know where to go.
Because he is home.
He takes a step forward, slowly, deliberately. “Can I touch you, Elyssara?”
My body tenses at the question. Because touch is the enemy. Touch is where nightmares form. Touch is where minds are controlled. Touch is where the danger of safety resides.
“Yes,” I answer, as if my body cares not for the fears of my mind.
Kael closes the distance between us. His muscled chest inked with constellations peeking above the unlaced collar of his tunic at my eyeline.
I swallow thickly, because gods help me, but my fingers ache to trace every inch of it.
He looks down at me with his sharp jaw, hypnotic eyes, and parted lips that draw me in like a bee to honey.
I’m swept into the vortex of him, his intoxicating pull making me lean in and wrap my arms around his neck before my mind has a chance to register I’m moving.
“You will be the death of me,” I breathe, collapsing into his strength.
“It is my vow to be the making of you, Elyssara,” he counters, and gooseflesh rises on my skin in response to the truth. His arms curl around my lower back, and I relish the comfort.
“How do I sift through the parts of you that are real and the parts of you that are conjured?” I murmur into his tunic, asking him the question that I’m unable to answer.
“I’ll make new memories with you until who I really am is etched into your soul like scripture,” he promises, before lifting my chin so my eyes meet his. “My queen.”
My queen.
The words churn my stomach. The idea of being chained to another feels suffocating—and like a weakness that can be exploited.
“I am not your queen, Kael. I am no one’s queen,” I say with a coldness that stills his hands on my back.
He pauses, taking me in, reading me. I feel the prickle of his presence at my mind through the tether.
Unlike Maldrak’s cold, bony fingertips that pried my mind open, Kael’s presence feels patient, respectful, curious.
He removes his right hand from my back, drawing it slowly towards my face.
I hold my breath, but he lands it so gently on my cheek it almost feels like the breeze.
“Elyssara, you are not my queen because you are bound to me, nor because you serve me,” the words come out disdainful, as if he’s sickened by the idea.
“You are my queen because you are the one I bow to. The one to whom I pledge my allegiance. My loyalty. My blood. I am yours to command,” he says with reverence.
Oh.
“I can’t trust myself around you, Kael. I forget everything when I’m with you, and it’s terrifying,” my voice breaks, and I shake my head, wanting to push him away. Because he’s dangerous in the same way a blade is—it can maim, but it can also save, and with him, it feels like the same thing.
“Maybe you need to forget for a while so you can create new memories, Duskae. Replace the ones you don’t want to carry forward,” he says, and the steady rhythm of his voice soothes me like a lullaby.
“So, tell me, do you want a night to forget, Elyssara?” His loaded question hangs between us, and cracks open my memories in a heartbeat.
Memories of us. Skaedor’s Crest and that night in the tent ambushes my thoughts, and I stare up into those same dangerous eyes, and I know.
“With you, I only want nights to remember,” I breathe. Because with him, it is everything or nothing. All of me, or none of me. And despite everything, there is no time, space or reality where we are nothing.
I rise on my toes to claim his mouth in mine—
But his hands swing behind my knees and back in less than a heartbeat.
He sweeps me into his arms, and cradles me to his chest.
His lips press into the top of my head, and muffled, he says, “Then I’ll give you what you need. I am yours to command.”
Kael carries me in silence through the night air that bites at my exposed skin like a warning. But warnings have never dissuaded me.
I’m reckless.
The veins in his neck strain under my weight; his chest swells with effort, but his breathing stays steady. His heart beats behind his ribs like a war drum—but is it the beginning or the end of war?
Without looking down at me, he says, “Rest into me, Duskae. You don’t have to fight anymore.”
The words press against the last threads keeping my strength intact.
“I will always have to fight, Kael,” I whisper the words, too scared to embolden them.
Because despite this fragile truce, I am still the Lightborne.
I am still the prophesied savior or ruin of the known realms. I am still hunted for what I represent—a tipping point.
“Darling, this is love, not war. I am the one place where you don’t have to fight.” He pulls me in tighter to his chest, and the warmth of him sinks into my flesh, but doesn’t quite make it to my bones.
“With you, Kael. They’re the same thing,” I murmur, but I let myself take from him. I close my eyes, and let my body relax in his arms, because for now, this will do.
He climbs the steps to his room cradled in the trees of Thornewood, and I feel him kick the door open with the toe of his boot.
The scent of vanilla and sandalwood awakens my senses, and I open my eyes to his simple, pared-back space.
A four-poster bed adorned with blankets, furs and pillows presses against the far wall, and memories of Zak cut through my fragile peace like a blade through silk.
My breath hitches, my body tenses, and I bite down on the urge to revisit the night in graphic detail. I squeeze my eyes shut with the effort of blocking out Zak’s snarling mouth, his cold touch, his misguided assumptions. Kael feels me still.
“New memories, El. Stay here with me. He does not get to own your memories,” he grits out, venom on his tongue.
He places me down gently on the bed, the plush furs meeting my skin in an embrace.
“Incense, candles, furs—just like the night at Skaedor’s Crest. The night we chose each other, El. Come back to me,” he pleads, desperation splicing through his voice, making it raw.
Come back to me.
His words gut me. Because they’re a choice: the past or the present?
“I’m here,” I murmur, gripping the furs in my clenched fists to anchor myself here. “I’m with you,” I promise.
“I’ll hold you,” he offers, sitting on the bed next to me, gently squeezing my leg.
“I want a night to remember, Kael. I can’t let the past own me. Will you give that to me?” I ask, conflicted and broken.
“Always,” he promises.