Chapter 50
AUGUST
At the mouth of the tunnel, Lily paused, and my heart hammered against my ribs.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
She turned to me, her hand finding mine. Her fingers were cold, but her eyes burned. “I’ve never been more ready.”
Something twisted in my chest. It wasn’t fear, it was something deeper. Hope.
And God, it scared me more than any blade ever had.
The tunnel swallowed us whole.
Damp stone. Slick steps. The scent of mold and something long dead. Garrick led, torch in hand, casting flickering shadows over the narrow walls. Every footfall echoed. Every breath felt too loud. We moved in single file, quiet as ghosts, until the light above us began to shift.
A glimmer of daylight filtered through cracks in the stone ceiling. The tunnel bent left, then climbed sharply.
Garrick signaled. “Courtyard’s through there. I’ll go up first. If I don’t come back in two minutes. . .”
“You’ll come back,” I said flatly.
He didn’t argue. Just disappeared into the shaft.
Lily turned to me, and even in the dim light, I could see the worry creasing her brow. “What if we’re too late?”
“Then we burn it down,” I said. “But we won’t be.”
Because this wasn’t just a rescue.
This was a reckoning.
And Elias was about to learn that he had forged his son into a weapon—just not one he could control anymore.
A faint whistle echoed down the shaft—our signal.
Together we climbed toward the light.
Toward the Spire.
Toward war.
But we didn’t go in alone.
While Garrick and I scouted the Spire, Lily had done what she did best—woven the broken pieces into something whole. The Weavers weren’t soldiers. But they were survivors. Magic lived in their blood, and where Elias had tried to unmake them, they’d learned how to hold each other together.
According to Lily's plan, Abigail and Mira were guarding the northern gate, two Bonders beside them ready to raise magical barriers. Two Menders waited at the southern wall with supplies. Three Seers watched from the bell tower, cloaked and still. They were our eyes.
It was a shame Ysella was captured. Her ability to open a portal would have been a beneficial talent to have right about now.
We didn’t have an army, but what we had would have to be enough.
“They know what to do,” Lily had whispered before we ascended. “If we get Ysella and the others out, they’ll draw attention—buy us time. They’re ready to fight. Just. . . not with swords.”
Lily turned towards the weavers that came with us. Syra, Thessaly, and three others. “We get our Weavers out before anyone notices.”
Lily stood beside me, hand tight around her stolen blade. Her hood had slipped back, her red hair glowing like fire in the dark. Before we moved, she looked at me—just for a heartbeat—and I saw not fear, but fierce determination.
“Five minutes,” she murmured.
“We won’t need more,” I said, then added quietly, “Stay close to me.”
When she moved ahead of me up the final steps, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine, something electric sparked between us despite the death waiting above. Even here, even now, I couldn't ignore the pull between us.
We rose into the light.
At the far end of a platform, shackled and bloodied, were three Weavers.
I spotted Ysella first.
She knelt upright, spine unbowed despite the blood in her hair. Her hands were bound with iron—the kind that burned Weaver flesh—but her gaze was steel. Even from this distance, I could see the faint shimmer around her wrists where her magic fought against the restraints.
Astrid stood to her right, swaying. The girl on the left was young, maybe sixteen. Her lips pressed in a thin line, white with fear.
“We need to get them now,” Lily hissed.
But something was wrong. The courtyard was too quiet. Too exposed. I'd learned to trust my instincts during years of hunting, and every nerve was screaming danger.
That's when I heard it—marching boots. Not from one direction, but from all sides.
Hunters poured into the square like floodwater surging through broken gates, uniforms dark against the sandy dirt, boots stirring dust. Blades and guns drawn. Eyes cold. There were too many. Far too many.
They'd been waiting.
“They knew we were coming,” I breathed. My chest constricted. All of this—the planning, the hope—it had been for nothing. We'd walked straight into his trap.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then a shimmer of gold bloomed at the north gate—Abigail’s signal. The Bonders raised the barrier just in time, a wall of magic flaring to shield us from the tightening ring of Hunters.
Mira darted into the fray—fast, lethal, clearing a path.
I sprinted for the platform.
Garrick fought at my side, wordless and brutal. He downed a guard before the man could raise a cry. Another rushed me. I parried and drove my blade through his ribs.
“August!” Lily’s voice rang through the courtyard.
She was already at the platform, her cloak snapping behind her like a banner. I followed, vaulting over a fallen soldier, eyes on the captives.
Ysella met my gaze. “You came,” she rasped.
I cut through her bonds, the iron cuffs clattering to the stone. Raw burns marked her wrists where the metal had bitten deep. “We're not leaving you.”
She didn’t smile. She just turned to the girl beside her, lifting her with surprising strength despite her injuries. “Can you manage the stairs, child?”
“Aye, ma'am,” the girl whispered.
I helped Astrid to her feet while Lily freed her restraints. “Can you walk?”
“I’ll crawl if I must,” Astrid croaked.
“Good.” Lily slung her arm around her and helped her toward the steps. “Go!”
Behind us, the sound changed—deeper, heavier.
I turned and saw him emerging from the shadows of the main archway—Elias, moving with deliberate calm across the courtyard. He'd been watching. Waiting. His robes were pristine white against the chaos, and in his right hand, dark energy began to coalesce like smoke given weight.
The Unraveling. Not just gathered magic, but concentrated obliteration.
“Barrier, now!” I yelled to the Bonders.
A hum cracked through the square as a dome of magic formed overhead, but I could see it wouldn't hold against what Elias was building.
“We’re clear!” Mira called.
“Go!” I barked.
Ysella and the girl ran with Garrick toward the tunnel entrance, twenty paces to safety. Lily moved slower, weighed down by Astrid's stumbling steps.
Elias stepped fully from the archway, robes pristine. He didn't shout. He didn't snarl. He just looked at Lily with cold calculation, as if she were nothing more than a problem to be solved.
He raised his hand. The Unraveling magic pulsed, ready to release.
The magic erupted from his palm—not chaotic, but precise. A lance of pure dissolution aimed directly at her back.
“No,” I breathed, throwing myself forward. But I was too far away. Too slow.
Lily had just reached the tunnel entrance when I saw the attack coming.
That's when Ysella turned.
She'd reached the tunnel mouth with the girl, safety just steps away. Freedom. Survival. Everything we'd risked this for. But she looked back and saw the Unraveling magic streaking toward Lily like a spear of darkness.
For one suspended heartbeat, I saw the choice written across her face—the war between self-preservation and sacrifice. Then her jaw set with terrible determination. She stepped back from the tunnel and placed herself between the Unraveling and Lily.
Golden threads already spun between her hands. Not to attack; Ysella was a Bonder, a builder of connections and barriers. The iron had burned her wrists raw, weakened her connection to the Weave, but she pulled on it anyway.
Gold flared between her palms as she wove a protective barrier—layer upon layer of binding magic. It was the strongest barrier a Bonder could create, one that should have been impossible while injured.
“I cannot hold it long—” she gasped, sweat beading on her brow.
For a heartbeat, gold met darkness. Ysella's binding ward flared like a star, her magic literally holding the fabric of reality together against the dissolution magic trying to tear it apart.
Then the weakened threads snapped.
“No!” Lily's scream shattered the air.
The Unraveling tore through Ysella's failing ward and struck her full in the chest.
Dark.
Silent.
Final.
She didn't scream.
She just looked at me, and her gaze was calm. Like she'd already made peace with this moment.
“Don't forget.” Her edges began to blur and fragment. “Where you come from. . . who your mother was. . . who you truly are. . .”
Then she was gone.
Unmade.
Where she had stood, a single golden thread drifted downward like a fallen leaf—the last remnant of a life that had burned too bright, taken because she dared to love someone worth saving.
The square fell into hollow silence.
Lily dropped to her knees, hands shaking in the space Ysella had stood.
From the tunnel entrance, Syra's scream pierced the stillness—raw, broken, the sound of a sister's heart tearing.
“She saved me,” Lily's words came in gasps. “She was safe. She was safe and she came back—”
I fell beside Lily, reaching for something that was no longer there. My hand curled around empty air—air that should have held warmth, held life, held a woman who'd just saved us all.
She was just gone. Not dead. Not bleeding out. Just. . . erased. Like she'd never existed at all.
And I couldn't save her. Couldn't protect her. Could only watch as my father unmade another life without hesitation.
Elias stood across the courtyard, already turning away as if Ysella's death—her complete erasure from existence—meant nothing at all.
But something cracked.
Not just in the Weave.
Not just in the world.
In me.
Twenty-two years of loyalty. Of obedience. Of believing my father served a greater good. All of it—every lesson, every hunt, every justification—shattered in the space where Ysella had stood.
He'd killed her. Not because she was a threat. Not because she was dangerous. Because she was inconvenient.
The careful control I'd maintained, the hunter's discipline that had kept me focused, it all shattered like glass. Rage poured through the cracks, white-hot and consuming.
I rose to my feet, and when I looked at Elias, I saw nothing but a target.
The hunt was over.
Now came the reckoning.