Chapter Sixty-Eight
ELYSSARA
The silence after destruction is almost worse than the noise—pregnant with potential for good and evil.
Ash drifts like snow through the fractured corridors, catching in my lashes, tasting of smoke and endings. The roar of cannons still rumbles like thunder, and the castle still bleeds—cracks spidering through the stone as if the very bones of Kryntar Castle are giving way.
We descend what’s left of the stairwell, the air growing colder, heavier.
Kael pretends he’s hurting less than he is, though his labored breathing and uneven gait gives him away.
Ronyn is clothed in ill-fitting leathers and too-big boots, though his zarethite arrows and bow still sling from his shoulder, and any signs of Tarrakai are tucked away inside his chest.
And me? I’m ready for a reckoning.
The scent changes the further we sink into the castle’s labyrinths—the smell of sulfur giving way to the tang of old magic, to incense trapped in the stones since the dawn of kings. The prayer chamber waits below, ancient and alive, humming like something half-awake and listening.
By the time we reach the carved archway, the others are already there. Teddy stands guard at the threshold, face streaked with soot, barking orders to Morrathys as they prepare the chamber for a ritual of ancient witches.
The chamber opens into cavernous darkness—sconces on walls illuminate the slick stone floors, their flames dancing with levity like they’re not bearing witness to a ritual that will rebirth Zerynthia. The realms.
Seren kneels, eyes closed in preparation, her hands trembling but steady.
And in the center of it all—bound, bloodied, and furious—Maldrak.
The flesh of his left eye is still scarred and raw from Duskae’s magic, the deep slice across his cheek and the burnt skin of his hand serve as reminders of my survival.
Repulsion blends with hatred, and it all coalesces into the only emotion I’ve ever trusted: vengeance. I stalk toward him, his limbs bound, mouth bleeding, and King Aurius’ zarethite sword hanging from the belt at his hip.
“What in the fucking Stars happened up there?” Teddy grumbles, his axe still gripped tightly in his hand. Always ready.
“That would be my doing,” Ronyn chimes in. “Tarrakai was feeling left out.”
But no one laughs—we’re all staring at Jax.
Her chest heaves with ragged breaths, lost to her own rage. Her own guilt.
Elandor’s chamber in Nymeris crashes through my mind. The crushing guilt Jax felt.
Her sobbed words: I let him into my heart, my body.
Gods—she loved him.
And I can see the way the guilt has festered, eroding her insides until all that’s left is venomous rage.
I’ve hated her.
I’ve resented her constant pessimism.
But I can’t fault her.
Not for this. Not for the way she guards her heart. Her people.
Everything I’ve thought about her flips and reverses instantly. I’ve despised her chronic skepticism, but I see it now for what it is: protection.
Anger for guilt.
Coldness for preservation.
Distance for fear.
For the first time, I understand Jax Dewhirst.
She’s not so different from Kael; hurt and repentant.
She wields a small dagger in her palm, muttering curses and self-deprecating remarks under her breath, tracking up and back across the chamber as if she’s gone mad.
Teddy eyes us warily, as if she’s been doing this for a while.
Kael’s eyes snap to Maldrak, but what he sees is unsettling; a gleefully smiling Maldrak.
The kind of smile a madman wears.
The kind of smile someone with a plan wears.
But Jax doesn’t care.
She moves.
She doesn’t speak. She just strides forward, grabs a fistful of his collar, and drives her dagger into the flesh between his neck and shoulder.
Maldrak’s scream rivals that of the cannons. A thunderous, chaotic thing.
But Jax doesn’t want his screams; she wants his pain.
She jabs her fist into his jaw, once. Twice.
Because some wars are fought with swords. And some require a woman’s bare, shaking hands.
The crack of splitting bones and rattling teeth rip through the chamber. He spits blood onto the stone, laughing through the pain, and it’s that sound—that laugh—that shatters whatever restraint Jax had left.
“I fucking loved you,” she hisses, voice shaking with grief and fury. But she’s not just unleashing her fury—she’s emptying herself of a decade of pain and guilt. She’s ridding herself of every fucked up thought, every time she’s missed him, every regret, every memory.
And I understand.
Kael doesn’t stop her. None of us do.
“I should’ve died with them,” she whispers. “It would’ve been a mercy compared to living with the guilt of helping you—of loving you.”
Jax’s words hang there, trembling between us, and the chamber goes utterly still.
Even the flames in the sconces seem to recoil, shrinking low as if ashamed to bear witness.
Maldrak’s blood drips onto the stones, each drop echoing like a clocktower counting down to something holy or damned.
Kael’s jaw locks. Teddy’s hands go white around his axe.
No one speaks.
Because grief that old doesn’t need an answer—it just needs to be seen.
And in that silence, I realize Jax isn’t trying to punish him anymore.
She’s trying to forgive herself—and gods, that might be the hardest war any of us ever have to face.
Ronyn’s arms wrap around Jax in the kind of embrace that heals. The kind of embrace that says a thousand words. I see you. I don’t judge you. I accept you. I’m here for you.
Ronyn has always loved with his whole heart—big, loud, unflinching in the face of darkness.
Her body shakes and trembles with the grief of it all, her dagger still slick with blood.
“You can’t end him, Jaxxy,” Ronyn murmurs into her hair, pressing a kiss there. His hand wraps gently around hers, stilling the trembling hand that craves blood.
Her shaky exhale breaks into a sob against Ronyn’s chest.
“Always so predictable, Jaxxy,” Maldrak croons from the stone floor, blood smearing his teeth giving him an unhinged, maniacal expression. “Those emotions of yours—so passionate, so explosive. So easy to twist to my every whim, my darling.”
I suck in a sharp breath at his taunting, baiting words. We all do.
But Jax narrows her eyes, tilting her chin up to meet Ronyn’s gaze.
“Let’s fucking finish this,” she snarls through gritted teeth, harnessing her grief into primal, unadulterated rage.
“That’s my girl,” Ronyn says low and deep through his lop-sided smirk.
And the chamber takes its first breath in what feels like an eternity.
“I’m ready,” Seren announces with a voice that doesn’t sound like hers. Not meek. Not mild. Powerful. Ancient. Otherworldly.
Cannons still boom around us, shattering walls that have stood for centuries, and the shouts of soldiers close in.
“We need to hurry,” my mother says in a low hush, her eyes on mine with a weight I can’t quite name.
Seren rises slowly from her knees. The Lunar Codex laid before her—its spine splitting light, the parchment breathing as if alive. Sigils inked in silver crawl across the open pages, shifting and rearranging into words older than gods.
When she speaks, it’s not Seren’s voice that fills the chamber.
It’s the language of something other.
Each syllable hums through the stone, reverberates through my bones.
The sound of something unbinding.
“By the hands that bound, we unbind.
By the blood that silenced, we recall.
Let the light return to what was stolen.”
Seren’s hands ignite—thin white lines fly from her palms, etching themselves into the floor, weaving around the chamber in an intricate web of light and shadow.
The air crackles. The castle groans. As if the spell is set in motion.
But then—
Maldrak laughs.
A low, rasping sound that slides through the chamber like oil.
“You really think I didn’t prepare for this?” he croons, his blood-slick teeth glinting under the flickering light. “Do you think I’d come here without assurances? Without safeguards?”
The air tightens. The web of Seren’s spell flickers.
She falters, her hands trembling as the Codex’s light dims.
But I see the way his nostrils flare—his telltale sign that he’s not getting his way. Because as much as I want to forget my time in Kryntar Castle, the details are etched into my mind like holy scripture—permanent, undeniable.
The subtle flare of his nostrils, his eyes a half-shade darker than Kael’s, the way he drums his fingers on the table when he’s trying to keep himself calm.
He’s bluffing. I send my thoughts through the tether, sharp and hot.
“Keep going!” Kael commands, his voice cutting through the dread.
Maldrak’s grin widens, manic. “My dear nephew… my assurances are written in blood. Perhaps all of us of the Thorne family are tied together. You, me, Nalya. And of course our lovely Elyssara.”
Teddy doesn’t wait. He strides across the chamber in three quick paces, and launches his boot into Maldrak’s ribs with a sickening crack that I relish.
A wheeze escapes Maldrak, before he explodes into riotous laughter.
Twisted and unnerving. “I never got the chance to tell you, Therion…” he rasps, clutching his ribs.
“Taali was a fighter. Kept begging me to spare the child even after she knew she was bleeding out. I tried to cut the babe out, and well… you saw the outcome. I told her mercy is for the living.”
The chamber stills. No breath. No sound.
Even the Codex seems to hesitate—like magic itself recoils from his words.
And then Kael moves.
He lifts Maldrak up by the collar, a feral, animalistic growl rips from his throat like wrath incarnate.
His fists land on Maldrak’s face in a sickening crunch, but he doesn’t let up.
He hits again.
Again.
Again.
His knuckles split into a bloodied mess, but he descends into calm with every strike. Like he’s reclaiming a part of himself with every one.
“HE IS MINE!” Morrathys commands in a voice that shudders the stone.
Come back to me. I whisper down the tether, because I can see that he’s lost to it. Do not let Maldrak take you from me. You kill him, you kill us both.
And somehow, it reaches him. He stops, breathing ragged and broken.
Teddy stands wrecked and raw by Maldrak’s barely alive body, and he does the only thing he can do—he spits on him with such violent disgust, and retreats to the side of the room.
The shouts of soldiers are closer still, traveling to us on the wind.
“We need to keep going—hurry!” Seren urges in hushed chaos.
“Do it!” I command.
“Bring the altar!” Seren signals to Teddy, and he lifts the heavy stone altar I saw in my Obsidian Crown vision. The one carved with runes.
“One rune by a Runewright,” she begins. “Maldrak must trace the rune in reverse—it’s the lattice between planes that allows him to draw Death’s power.”
But Maldrak is unconscious. And even if he wasn’t, there’s no way he’d trace it for us.
Fuck.
I look to the others, but no one knows what to do.
Kael, Teddy, Jax—they’re broken. And Ronyn and me? We have no idea.
But Lesara moves to me. “Recall your vision, Little Star. You are our only hope,” she breathes, reciting the last words she said to me before she was taken.
And they gut me.
I kneel beside Maldrak, resenting the closeness, lifting his terrifying hand that scratched through my mind like entitled claws.
The altar stares back at me, appearing clear and unhindered. But I know better.
I close my eyes, taking myself into the vision from Starlit Grove, reliving the vision of Maldrak killing King Aurius. Remembering. Recalling.
And then—
The vibrant green of the spell from the vision forms in my mind.
I drag his finger into a twisting shape, trying desperately to cling to the vision in reverse.
Playing the vision over and over in an attempt to retrace it.
I twist, flick, carve until the shape from my memory is complete.
I drop his hand like a dead weight, staring at the altar.
Waiting.
Hoping.
Dreading.
The room closes in, the others converging on the altar.
Until—
A plume of green flares, glowing vibrant and alive on the altar.
I fucking did it.
“You’re brilliant,” Kael approves from behind him.
But Seren presses on. “One seal—royal blood spilled by the murder of kin.”
And my fucking heart stops.
I look to Morrathys, pleading, desperate.
“Break the bargain,” I beg, pushing to stand, surging towards him. “Let Kael kill him. Please.”
His godly face looks down at mine, stoic and unmoving. “No.”
My heart lurches in my chest.
Disbelieving of the wrongness. The imbalance. The missing piece.
My mother’s voice carries on the chamber’s air like a lullaby. “It’s okay, Little Star,” she soothes.
Her presence is felt beside me.
Warm, nurturing, and for once, I let myself feel it. I let her soothe me.
“It’s not,” I sob, my shoulders slumping forward, my Starforged Blade going slack in my hand.
But Kael’s large frame wraps around mine. My Sky.
“I’m sorry, my love,” he breathes into my ear, his voice full of regret.
“Wh—”
But my words are cut off.
His hand finds mine.
I don’t have time to turn before he guides my arm—firm, unyielding—driving the blade forward.
There’s a heartbeat of silence.
A single inhale.
Then the sound of steel through flesh.
My mother gasps—soft, human, heartbreaking—and collapses into my arms.
Her blood spills across our hands, blending with the blood already dried on Kael’s knuckles.
A shocked whimper tears free.
“No. No. No. NO!” I scream.
But her eyes, soft, pleading, knowing, bore into mine.
“I made him do it, my daughter,” Lesara whispers, her voice thin but resolute. “I sealed a deal with him… to prove my love for you.”
And my heart shatters like a stone to a mirror.
“It’s okay,” my mother says in peace and acceptance.
I’m sorry. Kael pleads down the tether.
And like a chorus of pain, they repeat.
“It’s okay.”
I’m sorry.
“It’s okay.”
I’m sorry.
“It’s okay.”
I’m sorry.
The chorus blurs around me.
A cacophony of unbearable regret and unconditional acceptance.
Until the words overlap, indistinguishable—love and loss spoken in the same breath.