Chapter 29 – Azaria
AZARIA
Iwoke to stillness. There was no burning or pain. Just empty quiet, heavy limbs and soft sheets. The faint hum of healing runes somewhere close.
I forced my eyes open. White ceiling. Lamplight casting gentle gold across stone walls. Shelves crowded with jars and folded linens. The air smelled herbal: rosemary, something sharper underneath.
Myrin’s quarters.
And then I saw him. Three beds down. Dark hair against white linen. Face too pale, shadows carved deep beneath his eyes. Chest rising and falling slowly.
Quinton. Still unconscious.
Relief and dread hit me at once, tangled so tight I couldn’t tell which was stronger. He was here. Alive. But he hadn’t woken yet.
What if he didn’t?
What if this time, the burnout?—
My chest tightened. I tried to sit up, muscles screaming in protest, but I shoved through it. I needed to see him. Needed to?—
His eyes opened. Slowly. Confused. Unfocused.
Then they found me. I watched the tension leave his body—shoulders dropping, something tight in his face finally loosening.
His gaze swept over me, the patient’s robes, the pallor of my skin, the way I was gripping the sheets like they were the only thing keeping me upright.
He was assessing damage, counting injuries.
For one heartbeat, he stared at me like he was afraid I’d disappear if he looked away.
Then his voice came, rough and cracked, barely more than a rasp.
“You’re alive.” The sound of his voice nearly broke me.
“So are you,” I whispered.
Something passed between us; warmth spread through my chest. From him. From the way he was looking at me, like I was the only thing in the room that mattered. He tried to sit up. His arms shook, then gave out. He collapsed back against the pillows with a grunt.
“Don’t,” I said quickly, voice breaking. “Don’t move. You’re?—”
“Burned out,” he finished, voice flat. “I know.”
Silence.
I stared at him. He stared back. Neither of us looked away.
“You idiot,” I breathed. “You nearly killed yourself.”
His jaw clenched. “You were dying.”
“And now you’re—” My throat closed. “Quinton, what if your magic doesn’t come back?”
His entire identity—the thing that defined him—and he risked it all.
“Then it doesn’t,” he said simply, like it was nothing. Like losing everything he had built didn’t matter.
“You can’t?—”
“I’d do it again.” His voice cracked just slightly, just enough to betray him. His eyes held mine, dark and unflinching. “Without hesitation. Every time.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I whispered. “You can’t keep burning yourself out for me.”
“Watch me.”
Gods. He meant it. I could see it in his face, hear it in his voice, that absolute certainty. And I hated how much of me wanted him to. How much of me needed to know he would.
I wanted to cross the space between our cots, wanted to reach for him, press my palm to his chest and feel his heartbeat under my hand: proof that he was here, alive, real. Proof that I hadn’t lost him. But I was too weak. And so was he.
Three beds apart. It might as well have been miles.
The door opened. Myrin swept in, leather satchel in hand, gaze landing on me first—half-sitting, gripping the sheets—then flicking to Quinton. Her mouth pressed into a line.
“Good. You’re both awake.”
She moved to my bedside first. Hands lifted, and her magic flared. Five seconds, no more.
“Fever’s gone. Wound’s healing cleanly. Rot’s completely purged.” She pulled back. “But your body’s a wreck. Muscles torn, reserves empty. Three days of rest. Proper rest. Not your bullshit version of it.”
I opened my mouth.
“Don’t,” she said. “I’ll sedate you again.”
I closed my mouth.
She moved to Quinton. Her magic swept through him—gentler, but no less precise.
He didn’t flinch. After a moment, she pulled back.
“Magical exhaustion. Your channels are barely holding together.” Her voice dropped.
“Second burnout in two months. You do this again, Thornvale, and you might not come back from it.”
He didn’t answer.
She reached into her satchel, pulled out a small crystal vial, and pressed it into his hands. “Drink.”
He took it without argument, which told me exactly how bad he felt, and downed it in one swallow, grimacing.
Myrin placed one hand on his chest and whispered an incantation I didn’t recognize, older and more fluid than her usual healing spells.
Her palm flared with soft green light, spreading warmth through his body like water soaking into dry earth.
Color returned to his skin. His spine eased. His fingers stopped shaking.
He inhaled fully for the first time since I saw him regain consciousness. When she pulled her hand back, he looked dazed.
She straightened and surveyed us both. “Neither of you moves. I need supplies from the main ward.”
Then she was gone.
The room went still. Lamps flickered softly.
The scent of rosemary and burned iron lingered, threaded with a faint tang of blood magic that hadn’t quite faded.
The runes on my bed hummed their quiet rhythm.
I turned my head on the pillow just enough to see him.
Quinton was already looking at me. “I was scared,” I said quietly.
“When Dain told me you collapsed. That you were unconscious and—” My voice cracked. “I thought you might not wake up.”
His expression softened. “I’m here.”
“I know.” I swallowed hard. “But what if next time?—”
“There won’t be a next time.”
I almost laughed. “You just said you’d do it again.”
“I would,” he said. “But I’ll be smarter about it.”
“Quinton—”
“I’m not losing you.” His voice cracked again, rougher this time, the fear beneath the certainty finally showing. “Not to hounds. Not to rot. Not to anything.”
I didn’t have a response for that. Not one I could say out loud. “I don’t want to lose you either,” I whispered.
Our eyes met across the quiet. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers curled into the sheets like he was holding himself back from trying to close the distance. Neither of us looked away.
“You won’t,” he said.
So we looked at each other.
The door opened after three hard knocks. Dain stepped through first, expression unreadable. Then the man behind him followed, and the room’s gravity shifted.
Tywin.
His presence filled the space like a second weight. Eyes that missed nothing, hair swept back, shoulders squared like he carried the realm itself. He took one look at me—still lying down, bandaged, pale—and exhaled through his nose. “You gave me quite a scare, Captain Sylvenhart.”
I forced myself to sit up slightly. Dain was there immediately, hand at my back before I even asked. “High Lord,” I said, voice rough.
Tywin waved the formality off. “Enough of that. I’ve already been briefed.” His eyes flicked briefly to Dain, then back to me. “But I wanted to see for myself.”
His gaze lingered, not in judgement, but in careful assessment. Cataloguing every detail Myrin hadn’t written down yet.
“I’m glad you and Quinton are alive,” he said quietly. “Truly.”
I nodded once. That was all I could give. He stepped further into the room, hands clasped behind his back.
“We’ll keep your condition between us and your lieutenants,” he continued. “No word to the council yet. The political fallout would slow everything down.”
I almost smiled. “Translation: they’d use it against me.”
His mouth tightened. “And we can’t afford that right now.”
I knew what was coming before he said it.
“But the abyssal magic,” he said carefully. “I won’t stay quiet about that.”
The weight in his voice wasn’t political—it was fear, real and measured.
Good.
Because whatever happened out there, it wasn’t random. It wasn’t done.
Tywin stood at the foot of my bed, arms crossed now, lamplight carving tired lines deeper into his face.
“The team?” I asked, voice rough. “Any injuries?”
“Minor scrapes. Exhaustion,” Tywin said. “But they’re fine. They’ve been debriefed.”
I nodded slowly. “And the hound?”
“In the south hall.” His jaw flexed. “We have three scholars and a military alchemist working on it. Dissection’s still in progress.”
“Anything useful yet?”
Tywin exhaled. “The creature itself doesn’t match anything in our records.
Not Karethian, not Dravarethian. It’s stitched together, literally.
Constructed from parts that shouldn’t coexist. Whatever made these things, it’s new.
” He paused. “But the magic driving them is unmistakable. Abyssal. And its blood is reacting violently to light-based spells.”
I frowned. Something cold settled in my chest. “How violently?”
“Burns on contact,” Tywin said. “The alchemist nearly lost a hand.”
A beat of silence passed. Then his voice softened. “But the part that concerns me most is you.”
I stiffened.
He held up a hand. “I mean it. What you described: how you were pulled from camp, how you sensed the rot before anyone else, how you slipped through the wards.” He paused. “You should be dead, Azaria.”
I didn’t look away. “I know,” I said quietly.
Tywin didn’t speak for a long moment. Then: “I’ve served this realm for thirty years.
I’ve seen what happens when magic gets inside the walls.
When corruption sinks into the seams of a city before anyone notices.
” His gaze locked with mine. “And if something new has entered our borders—something designed to slip through unnoticed—I need to know what it’s targeting. ”
“You think it was me,” I said.
“I think,” he said carefully, “whatever it is… responded to you.”
My chest tightened. He wasn’t wrong. And I hated how much of me had already wondered the same.
The door opened again. Myrin swept back in with an armful of supplies, took one look at Tywin, and crossed her arms.
“She needs rest,” she said firmly, cutting through whatever Tywin might have said next. “Both of them. All of you—out.”
Tywin raised a brow but didn’t argue. He gave me one last look, concern mixed with calculation, and nodded. “We’ll speak more when you’re recovered,” he said, then turned toward the door.
Dain lingered for a heartbeat, meeting my eyes. I gave him a small nod. He returned it, then followed Tywin out. Myrin stood at the door, arms crossed, gaze sweeping over both of us.
“Sleep,” she said flatly. “No talking. No moving. If I hear so much as a whisper, I’m sedating you both.”
She left, the door clicking shut behind her.
Silence settled over the room. I turned my head on the pillow.
Quinton was already looking at me. Still too far away, but close enough to know he was there.
His gaze held mine for a long moment. Then, slowly, he closed his eyes.
I did the same. And for the first time since the woods, I felt like I could breathe.