Chapter Sixty-Four
ELYSSARA
The stench of piss and unwashed bodies hits me first. Discarded moldy scraps rot against the stones, and the soft patter of vermin scratch through my mind like insidious nails.
Lillath chains still hang from hooks, and hardened, dried blood crusts on the slick floors—my blood. Images of Vessira and her blade of nightmares flood my mind in an overwhelming attack on my senses.
But none more than the nightmares she forced into my mind. The torment of not knowing the difference between dream, hell and reality.
I’m in Kryntar.
I’m back in fucking Kryntar.
The realization stuns me, seizing my mind, and stealing the air from my lungs.
But Kael notices. He always notices.
My love, I am with you. I will fight by your side. If I must, I will burn this place to the fucking ground when we’re done so you never have to look upon it again. You command the Sky. Kael’s words rush down the tether, laced with both reverence and brutality.
But Teddy stumbles through the Gateway before I can respond.
Ronyn.
Jax.
Morrathys.
Lesara.
Seren.
They’re all here.
“Caeloria is already here. They haven’t breached the outer walls yet. But they will within the hour,” Teddy snarls, his eyes darting, and his ears twitching in the way he does when his Aetherstride magic is activated.
Kael curses under his breath.
“Then we still have time,” he says, voice sharp and calculating. Kingly. “Teddy, Seren, Morrathys; find Maldrak. Do not let his hands touch your skin—he’s a powerful Runewright, and he will stop at nothing.”
They all nod at their orders, unsheathing their weapons.
“Jax, Ronyn, Lesara; there’s an underground chamber used for prayer that lives below the throne room. Get to it. Cull anyone who stands in your way. This is where the binding was performed, and we need it clear and ready to use.”
Jax and Ronyn nod, brows furrowed with the promise of vengeance. My mother only stares at me, forlorn and heartbroken, but my heart can’t access empathy. Not now. Not after so much of my own heartbreak.
“What about you two?” Teddy asks, voice a cutting command.
“I want the fucking Arcanist,” Kael growls, vengeance personified.
“Where do we start?” I ask, checking the weapons at my belt and thighs.
“The Arcanist’s chambers are always connected to the king’s chambers,” Kael says. “We start there.”
“Execute your orders. We meet in the prayer chamber,” Teddy finalizes, his jaw clenching, his grip tightening around the haft of his axe.
We’ve fought before. But nothing this final. Nothing that fundamentally changes the realms.
Kael’s jaw is a stone thing in the dim light; the lines of his face cut the gloom like a blade. He moves with that terrible efficiency of a man who’s had to plan violence a thousand times—the same hands that cradle, the same hands that can break. My chest tightens at the twin knowledge of both.
“I don’t care who comes at you,” he breathes, muscles coiling, “you fucking end them.”
Seren swallows audibly, her nerves palpable. “What of the maids? The cooks?”
“Consider them a casualty of war,” he answers without hesitation. The way he doesn’t hesitate. The way he does what must be done, no matter the cost; it’s terrifying. And undeniably magnetic.
“In war, Seri, it’s us or them,” Teddy explains, his voice like rough gravel.
She nods apprehensively. She understands, I know she does. But she doesn’t like it. Her heart is too pure.
Elyssara.
My name comes through the tether like a small, hot mercy.
Kael—always Kael—always noticing. I want to answer, to tell him to slow, to tell him that my bones are made of glass here, that Kryntar remembers me and wants me knelt.
But the smell of old blood has already dug nails into my stomach. There’s too much to do to be tender.
I’ll lead you until your vengeance does. His words strike me in the chest, because he knows the fury that lives in every scar, the vengeance that waits in every sinew and tissue. And he can see the way terror beats it all into submission.
“Move out!” he commands, leading us up the cracked and filthy steps of the dungeons.
Teddy and Ronyn follow him without question. Their king.
“Brothers—we take the guards,” Kael snarls, quiet and low.
He withdraws a small dagger from his belt, and I know why: a small, silent, fatal blow.
Kael pads to the landing, and the lock yields under his boot as the heavy oak swings inward with a groan. We step through, knives ready, and the world beyond the dungeon’s throat holds its breath.
He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t give them the mercy of an argument.
One step, one breath—his dagger is a whisper, a paper-thin flash that finds the hollow at the jaw.
The first man’s laugh chokes into a ragged sound and dies.
Teddy’s hand clamps over the second guard’s mouth, crushing the air out of him until his eyes roll white and the body goes limp.
There’s a bitter, clinical economy to it: no theatrics, only purpose.
My stomach drops and rises with each small, sharp motion.
Not because it scares me, but because it jolts me out of my past in this place.
The tether tightens, thrumming against my ribs like an anxious butterfly.
I taste copper at the back of my throat—not the blood yet, but the memory of it, the echo of every time Kryntar thought it could make me fear the dark.
The halls fall silent save for our breaths.
We fracture like the light does through glass—splitting into the paths we’re all made for.
Kael’s hand tugs on mine, and I follow, the vengeance in my bones rising like a sleeping god.
“The Arcanist,” he growls, like the violence that betrayal made finds its way into his throat.
Kael moves low and I mirror him, our steps a careful rhythm of leather and breath.
The corridors of Kryntar stretch ahead—narrow, glistening, half-lit by guttering sconces that spit smoke instead of flame.
Our shadows crawl along the walls like ghosts too tired to haunt.
Every stone remembers me. I can feel it: the weight of eyes in the cracks, the way the cold presses against my scars like it knows where to find them.
Kael’s hand hovers near mine, not a touch, just presence—enough to anchor me in this world instead of the one that still bleeds inside my skull.
We move past doorways where whispers hiss and chains sigh.
Somewhere above, the castle groans under siege, the sound of war muffled by layers of stone.
He glances back once, and the blue of his eyes catches the torchlight like a promise of safety.
“No magic. We need them alive,” he breathes.
And we keep crawling through the belly of the monster that once devoured me, two blades of the same intent—one forged in shadow, one in light.
We round corners of obsidian, boots pressing into gleaming marble floors—the opulence a lie.
Every guard we come across meets a swift end—a knife to the throat and a blunt thud to the marble floors.
He culls the guards without thought, without effort. Just necessity.
“One more turn,” he murmurs.
And I ready myself for the unknown.
The ostentatious doors ahead are Maldrak’s. I know it. Maldrak doesn’t just want authority, he wants power, obsession, adoration. The kind that announces a man before he enters the room.
The heavy, thick doors are framed in ornate gold filigree, and robust handles that require two men to pull them open. Not just a door, but a symbol of adulation.
“This could be a set up,” Kael breathes. “Be ready.”
And then—
He kicks the door open.