Chapter 24 #3
"I can't. Not until you understand. Not until you forgive me."
"Forgive you?" He laughed, a broken, bitter sound. "For what? For being alive? For wanting your own body back? I don't blame you for existing, Iraia. I blame you for taking her from me."
"She was killing me. Slowly. Every channeling, every spell, every moment of Aether—she was burning me away like fuel. If I hadn't stopped her, there would be nothing left of either of us."
"Then you should have told us." He stood, swaying slightly, and turned to face her.
His face was wrecked—unshaven, hollow-eyed, a king who'd lost his kingdom in a single afternoon.
"We could have found another way. Together. But you didn't trust us. You didn't trust her. You just took. Because that's what nobles do, isn't it? They take. They claim. They call it destiny."
Iraia flinched. "I love you too, you know. I've always loved you. Before she did. Before she existed."
"Don't." His voice was a blade. "Don't say that. Don't cheapen it. What you feel is memory. Nostalgia. The dream of a girl who died on a battlefield believing her prince would avenge her." He stepped closer, his eyes blazing.
"What I feel is real. It's messy. It's furious. It's a woman who reset my shoulder in a wine cellar and told me to stop being a baby while I screamed. It's a woman who crawled through sewage with me, who broke my nose, who looked at a kingdom and said 'burn it down, we'll build something better.
' That is love, Iraia. Not your duty. Not your devotion. Love."
He reached out. He grabbed her shoulders—my shoulders—and shook her.
"And I want her back. I don't care what it costs. I don't care if this body burns. I want Vienne. So you tell me where she is. You tell me how to reach her. Or by every god in this broken world, I will spend the rest of my life hating the face I once adored."
Iraia stared at him.
And in the dark, I screamed.
Not from pain. From hope. From the desperate, terrible knowledge that he was still fighting for me. That he hadn't given up. That love, real love, was stronger than death, stronger than magic, stronger than the locked doors of a stolen mind.
I'm here! I shouted into the void. I'm HERE!
Something shifted.
A crack. A hairline fracture in the wall Iraia had built.
I threw myself against it. Again. Again. Again.
And on the third strike, I felt something give.
Not much. Not enough.
But enough to whisper.
Enough to reach out through the crack and touch the mind of the man who loved me.
Cassian, I breathed into the dark. Don't give up. Please. I'm here. I'm fighting. Just... don't let go.
In the tower, Cassian froze.
He let go of Iraia. He stepped back. His eyes widened, searching the room, the shadows, the air itself.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered.
"Hear what?" Iraia asked, my voice trembling.
He looked at her—at me—and for the first time in seven days, he smiled.
"She's alive," he said. "She's here."
Iraia's face went white. "No. That's impossible. I locked her away. I—"
"You locked a door," Cassian said, his voice gaining strength, gaining fire. "But you didn't kill the woman behind it. And doors can be broken, Iraia. By love. By rage. By the sheer, stubborn refusal to die."
He moved to the window. He opened it. The night air rushed in, cold and clean and full of stars.
"Vienne!" he shouted into the dark. "I hear you! I know you're there! Fight! Fight her, fight the dark, fight whatever walls she's built, and COME BACK TO ME!"
His voice echoed across the capital. Across the kingdom. Across the space between souls where I was drowning.
And I fought.
I clawed. I screamed. I tore at the walls of my prison with nails and teeth and the memory of his voice.
The crack widened.
Light poured through.
And for one blinding, beautiful moment, I saw the path back.
But Iraia saw it too.
She lunged—not at Cassian, but at the window. She slammed it shut. She turned my face to the room, my eyes blazing with Aether, my hands raised in a gesture of absolute denial.
"No," she hissed. "No. I won't go back. I won't be a ghost again. This is my body. My life. My crown."
"Cassian!" I screamed through the crack, my voice faint, fading, desperate. "Don't stop! Don't—"
Iraia raised my hand. She pressed it to my own forehead. She channeled Aether—her Aether, pure and ancient and terrible—and she pushed.
The crack sealed.
The light died.
And I fell back into the dark, screaming, as the walls closed around me thicker than before, stronger than before, a tomb of my own making and hers.
In the tower, Cassian fell to his knees.
He pressed his forehead to the glass, his breath fogging the window, his heart breaking in silence.
And Iraia stood over him, my chest heaving, my face wet with tears that were neither hers nor mine, but both.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. To him. To me. To the ghost she'd buried alive. "I'm so sorry. But I can't go back. I can't be dead again. Please... please understand."
No one answered.
The tower was silent.
—————
A/N:
And the Lady King—both of her—was alone.