Chapter Forty-Six
ELYSSARA
“How long do these Shards shield our magic?” I murmur to Kael as the grit crunches under our boots in the narrow back street to Veil & Vine.
“Three days—you’re fine,” he reassures simply.
But I don’t feel reassured—I’m reminded of the fact that he doesn’t have to worry about it. Because he sacrificed his magic for me, and the thought of it makes my chest ache.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“I’d do it a million times over if it meant getting you back, El. I don’t regret it,” he says in answer to the question I didn’t ask but so clearly wore on my face.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, “that I never said thank you for sacrificing so much. For getting me back, no matter the cost.” I tug on his arm, forcing him to stop in the long shadow of a rot-stained building.
His ocean eyes meet mine, and I swear to the gods I could drown in them.
“Thank you for staying when I was cruel and ungrateful. You had every reason to give up on me, and you didn’t.
You stayed,” the last words break on my tongue, raw and unrestrained.
His gaze washes over me like a tide that will always return, no matter how many times I try to send it away. But behind it all, I can see the truth: there are tempests in them, rolling beneath the blue.
“You are forever for me, Elyssara—I will stay through it all. But you don’t owe me your fucking gratitude.
I am the reason you were taken. I deserved every last cruelty you gave me.
My sacrifice was penance, not generosity.
You owe me nothing,” he snaps gruffly, though I know it’s directed inward—at himself.
“Your choices saved us all—I know that now. And I’d suffer it all again if it meant coming back to you,” I rasp, voice hoarse from emotion.
Kael closes his eyes, tilting his chin up to the dusk sky.
“I cannot live in a world without you in it, Elyssara. Please,” he begs, “do not thank me for staying when it is the bare minimum you should expect. My love will outlast your hatred, your rage, your grief, your loss. I am yours,” he vows, voice broken.
His hands tremble under the force of his declaration. His eyes pin me in place—a storm and a safe harbor all at once. He closes the gap between us, pulling me into his chest and branding me with a kiss to my forehead.
“And I am yours,” I breathe into his chest, and the words feel like confession.
Forceful hands clap me on the back, and Ronyn’s head wedges between us, his shaggy mop of hair and lop-sided grin but an inch from my face. “Blah, blah, blah, he loves you, you love him. Very nice. Can we get a fucking drink yet?” he says with an impatient sigh.
Kael’s smirk lifts up his mouth. “First round’s on me,” he says, voice low and unassuming.
“That’s the spirit,” Ronyn says, clapping us both on the back again. “Does the first round also include some roasted meats, by any chance? I’m famished.”
“You just fucking ate at The Tainted Veil,” Therion snaps, exhausted, but he shakes his head and I don’t miss the small smile pulling at his lips.
“I told you all you think is about is your belly,” Jax taunts with a devilish expression, and she boots open the door to the tavern.
“Categorically untrue, and you know it,” Ronyn counters, chasing after her.
“I’m really not sure about those two,” Seren says, shaking her head in concern.
Honestly, neither am I.
“You all make me sick,” Rubi jabs with disdain, brushing her knotted hair out of her face with a flourish, before taking a long drag from her flask and booting the tavern door open.
The thick haze of smoke billows from the windows, along with the acrid tang of old, spilled liquor and sweaty bodies.
I pull my hood forward, shielding my face from view, and push through the doors to the tavern.
The Veil & Vine swallows us whole.
The air is thick with pipe smoke and the sharp tang of spiced wine.
Lanterns swing from black-iron hooks, their light catching the glint of knives strapped to boots and the sheen of sweat on foreheads.
Laughter rings out over the scrape of tankards, the floor sticky with old ale.
Vines—real ones, threaded with tiny glass beads—trail across the rafters as if someone tried to dress the place in finery and failed spectacularly.
On the surface, it’s just another tavern: crowded, loud, ordinary. But I know better.
Kael leads us through the press of bodies to the bar. The barkeep, a thick-bodied man with sleeves rolled to his elbows, eyes us without a word. His cloth is dirtier than the mugs he’s pretending to polish—I know a man who deals in secrets better than anyone.
“We’re looking for Signis,” Kael says evenly.
The barkeep tilts his chin toward a narrow vine-carved door at the far end of the counter. No words, no flourish. Just a silent invitation.
We push through. A stairwell yawns below, cut deep into stone. The door creaks shut behind us and the noise of the tavern dulls to a muffled hum. Cool air rises from below, damp and tinged with candle smoke.
The descent is quick but heavy, boots crunching on grit, shoulders brushing the narrow walls, and the glorious sound of the fiddle traveling on the air. When we step into the room at the bottom, the world shifts.
Candles gutter on every ledge, dripping wax in rivulets down black stone walls.
Maps and banners are tacked up in uneven patches, scarred tables lined with rebels who look up at our arrival with suspicion first, recognition second.
Dice clatter. A fiddle squeals in the corner.
The air smells of steel and meat and the rough bite of home-brewed spirits.
The rebels in the space push from their chairs, and drop to their knees. Their fingers press into the inverted triangle I’ve come to know so well.
“To taking back what’s ours,” one of the leather-clad rebels announces, and the room erupts in cheers, clinking tankards, and the hilts of blades pounding into table tops.
Kael returns the symbol, nodding graciously, and never breaking stride as he approaches the bar.
Ronyn claps his hands together. “I have a very good feeling about this place,” he declares, already eyeing the nearest cask.
“You have a good feeling about every bar,” Seren teases, a devilish glint in her eyes.
“Bars have never done me wrong, Seri. Only plied me with drink and made me even more charming,” Ronyn counters, dropping into a low mocking bow for dramatic effect.
But Seren waves him off, “You’re fucking insufferable.”
“There’s plenty of evidence to support my point, Seri,” Ronyn says, pausing for a moment. “You all fell for my charms. Even Jax—none of you have been able to crack that nut, but she’s weak at the godsdamned knees for me,” he says with an arrogant smirk.
Therion’s face is a mask of indifference, but his shoulders shudder with silent laughter.
But the moment is broken when Kael leans on the bar towards a stout woman with an exasperated expression. “We’re looking for Signis,” he says evenly.
“You have her,” she spits back without looking up from the dirty dishes she’s stacking.
“King Kael Thorne,” he says with an air of authority, nodding in greeting.
She looks thoroughly unimpressed—almost inconvenienced—as she stares him down. “Gellesk’s paid your tab for the night. Help yourself to the casks. Roasted meats will be served soon,” she explains, and turns on her heel, unfazed by Kael’s title or presence.
“I suppose she’s of the belief that titles are inconsequential, then?” Ronyn jabs, leaning over the bar and grabbing a tray of tankards. “Humility is a virtue, Your Highness,” he adds sarcastically.
Kael jerks around, incredulous and gobsmacked. “Ronyn, you wouldn’t know humility if it pierced you right through the heart,” Kael counters.
“Even fatal wounds can’t stop me, Kael—you know that,” Ronyn strolls away in lazy arrogance.
“You see, there are those of us who are born to wield our charms—me, for example. And there are others who are born to succumb to them—you, for example. Humility just isn’t on the cards for me.
” The grin that spreads across Ronyn’s face is feline—antagonizing.
Kael shakes his head at Ronyn’s blatant attempts to bait him, steals a tankard from his tray and swaggers toward an empty table on the far side of the rebels’ bar.
He takes the seat at the head of the table and stares Ronyn dead in the eyes.
“I only have one question,” Kael drawls, “how the fuck have you not been smothered in your godsdamned sleep already?”
A laugh rips from my throat—a hearty laugh that surprises me. I look around to see the rest of the group doubled over in the same gut-shaking laugh.
Ronyn laughs, too. Propping a boot on the farthest chair from Kael, and resting an elbow on his knee.
“A fair question, given my uncanny knack for pissing people off,” he allows, but his face drops slightly.
Enough for the dynamic to shift. Enough for the others to notice.
“My charm is a survival skill, really. Saved my hide more than any arrow ever has. It’s the only reason I’m still standing today,” he admits in a rare show of sincerity.
Seren’s arms wrap around his torso, pulling him into her.
Because despite his flagrant obnoxiousness, there’s a man who bleeds red like the rest of us.
A man who’s lived the same life of survival as the rest of us.
We’ve all developed methods of coping—distancing ourselves, vices, fury, timidness, sarcasm.
Really, we’re a group of people who hurt just the same.
Therion clears his throat, cutting through my thoughts.
He raises a glass of potent liquor—Rubi’s brask if I had to hazard a guess.
“To charm, humility, and pissing people off!” he roars, and we each raise a tankard in agreement, before swallowing down the liquor that burns all the way to our bellies.
“Now, let’s drink until we have to find the old bat and get the fuck out of this shithole,” Rubi declares, and it earns another eruption of cheers from our group.