Chapter Eighteen
Wynessa
The Vorrhounds haunted my thoughts. Their snarling mouths, the way they moved like smoke, like nightmares, stitched to the shadows. I still heard their echoing cries and the memory of Erindor falling. My scream. Forcing something else to take over.
A light. A golden blaze not born from firewood or spell. It had burst from me like a heartbeat—warm, immense, and terrifying. But it had driven them away, saving us.
But what was it?
I glanced at my hands, they were pale and trembling in the morning light.
They looked like they always had, but I no longer trusted them.
That light hadn’t burned me, but instead, empowered me.
Jasira sat beside me now, carefully rinsing the blood from my fingers with water from a canteen. Her own hands were shaking.
“They would’ve killed us all if you hadn’t. Whatever that was, it saved us.”
I stared at the minor cuts along my knuckles. “But it didn’t save Tyren.”
Jasira stilled. I could feel her pause, see her mouth open and close like she wanted to deny it, but couldn’t.
“You didn’t know it would happen,” she said softly.
“But what if I had? What if I could’ve done something sooner? Maybe if I’d felt it earlier, or—”
“Wyn.”
Her voice was firmer now. She took the cloth and gently pressed it to my palm.
“You don’t get to blame yourself for not knowing how to be a miracle.”
My eyes met hers, my voice, raw with a confession barely understood, fractured. “It came from inside me, Jasi. That power wasn’t something I cast or conjured. It was there somehow. Waiting. Watching. I don’t know what it means.”
Jasira’s eyes searched mine. “I don’t either. But I know this—when the world gave you something terrifying, you used it to protect us. Not yourself. Us. That’s what matters.”
My throat closed. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe I hadn’t failed. A constriction seized my throat, making it difficult to swallow past the sudden lump. Every fiber yearned to trust the words, to banish the gnawing fear that I had not failed.
A tremor ran through my hand as I wiped at my face, attempting to scrub away the sickening emptiness that filled them. Every breath felt shallow, the heart aching with a regret that whispered, “I wish it hadn’t come too late.”
Jasira said nothing for a moment. Then she reached out and took my hand in hers, steady and warm.
“Then use it now. Use it to keep the rest of us alive. That’s what Tyren would’ve wanted.”
Across the camp, the silence was brittle.
Gideon paced near the fire, muttering under his breath. “Didn’t even see it coming. One blink, and he was gone.”
Alaric sat nearby, sharpening his blade with steady, violent strokes, the motion too fast, too harsh, his knuckles white around the hilt.
No one responded. There was nothing to say.
Jasira stood and trudged back toward her bedroll, but not before exchanging a glance with Erindor. They both knew I was different now, something more.
That night, as the last light faded, and we made camp in the haunting forest, the sky came alive.
I found Erindor standing at the edge of the camp, alone on the cliff’s edge, watching the night like it might crumble.
Veilfire.
It began with a small shimmer. The stars blinked out, one by one, veiled by something brighter.
Curtains of light unfurled from the heavens in undulating waves—violet, crimson, gold.
It was something old and holy. It twisted and flowed like ink dropped into water, painting the sky in colors that didn’t belong to the world of men.
I had read about it once in an ancient text with pages that crackled at the touch—Veilfire, the ghostlight of the gods. They say it appears only when someone has awakened a divine tether, when the realm beyond ours leans too close.
It was beautiful. But it also terrified me.
The trees stood still beneath it, every branch silver-edged in its glow. The wind didn’t move. Even the fire in our camp dimmed, as if bowing to a more ancient flame. I stood, feet fixed firmly to the ground, watching the sky breathe.
Something inside me responded, a thread pulled tight, a presence stirring beneath my ribs. I felt seen by something otherworldly and vast.
Erindor said nothing when it appeared. Even when the strange light painted his shirtless back with violet fire.
He was crouched in silence, shadows moving down the muscles of his back like something sacred.
His body was marred, yet he had beautiful, broad shoulders that tapered into lean muscles and long scars. I shouldn’t have stared, but I did.
I knelt behind him and unwrapped a clean bandage, then unscrewed the lid of the salve I’d made that afternoon. “Let me,” I said softly.
He didn’t respond, but he didn’t stop me either.
I gently peeled back the bloodstained wrapping.
His back tensed under my hands. The old scar stretched white and smooth, like lightning carved across the skin, but the fresh wound from the Vorrhound was angry, deep, with edges that were red and hot to touch.
I cleaned it carefully, then dabbed the salve over the worst of it.
He hissed softly. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
Stillness lingered. Then, quietly: “You’ve got a terrible habit of looking after people who don’t deserve it.”
“You’ve got a terrible habit of believing you don’t.”
A new kind of silence unfurled, deeper than before, filled with an awareness that hummed in the air.
My eyes were drawn to him. I reached out gently, my fingers dislodging a leaf tangled in his dark silk hair.
He turned toward me, shadows flickering across his face.
“Your scar…” I said softly. “How did you get it?”
At first, I thought he wouldn’t answer. The moment his eyes truly met mine, a jolt went through me. He didn't just see the surface; his eyes delved deeper, and under that relentless scrutiny, the carefully constructed walls around his heart seemed to tremble, threatening to crumble.
“I was ten,” he whispered. “The raider. The one who slaughtered my mother in front of me. I didn’t even think after she fell.
After I was too late. I picked up a kitchen knife and put it to his throat.
Not before he nicked me with his sword. That was the day I stopped being a child.
The sword came first after that. Always. ”
The familiar ache of held-back tears prickled in my throat.
“You are more than a sword, Erindor. I see it every day.”
He didn’t look at me. But he didn’t move away when I touched his shoulder again.
My hand lingered, fingertips brushing the edge of the scar. I watched the muscles shift beneath his skin, the subtle rise and fall of his breath.
The Veilfire above cast shifting color over his face, reds and violets bleeding into gold. I watched him through my lashes, heart stuttering. A strange silence pulsed between us.
He glanced at me then, shadows in his eyes. “You’re staring.”
My eyes, unwilling to linger, darted away as a wave of heat washed over my face. “Sorry. I…I’ve seen nothing like that scar. Or…you. Like this.”
“Like what?”
“Human,” I whispered.
He blinked. “Most days I forget I am.”
I shook my head. “You’re more human than anyone I’ve ever met. You’re just buried under armor.”
His voice dropped. “And you see through it?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Not always. But when I do, I like what I find.”
He inclined his head, his eyes, dark pools of unknown depths, finding mine.
My hand remained, a silent anchor, fingers tracing the ridges above his scar.
Every breath brought a new awareness of him: the sharp tang of pine, the subtle metallic hint of steel, and, most powerfully, his inherent, captivating warmth.
“If you keep touching me like that, Princess...” he said, voice husky, “...I might forget I’m not allowed to want you.”
And for the briefest second, I felt it again.
A flicker of heat deep in my chest. Not like blush or embarrassment, but something steady.
Quiet. A warmth that unfurled beneath my ribs like the hush before a storm.
My fingers twitched where they touched him, and from the corner of my eye, the mark on my forearm pulsed faintly; gold, soft, and gone again.
I sucked in a breath. No one else saw.
Did he feel it too?
A sudden chill seized me, freezing me in place. My lungs refused to draw air, and the fingers recoiled as if burned. My eyes flew to him, then the sky, then anywhere but his mouth.
Heat rushed to my face like fire beneath my skin, my pounding heart echoing in my ears. He looked so solid beside me, so strong, wounded, and real. It wasn’t fair that he made me feel unsteady by breathing.
Then he blinked hard, the spell breaking. “Sorry,” he said quickly, looking away. “I didn’t mean—That wasn’t—gods, that came out wrong.”
“No, I—” I stammered. “I just—I wasn’t expecting—”
He ran a hand through his hair, turning further from me, clearly flustered. “Forget I said anything.”
But I couldn’t.
He stood and stepped away from the ledge, posture stiff. I caught one last glimpse of the scar trailing down his back before the shadows swallowed him.
And I stayed where I was, the light of the Veilfire catching in my eyes, wondering what it was I had awakened inside myself.
What exactly had he awakened in me?
I drew my knees to my chest, curling under the shadow of a half-fallen pine, the veilfire flickering through the gaps above me.
A dormant part of me ignited, a vibrant spark of life that hadn’t burned so brightly in years, or perhaps ever.
I had spent my whole life within stone walls.
Being quiet. Proper. Small. Measured in silks and curtsies, in whispered obligations and words I never said aloud.
I’d once watched a noblewoman scold a servant for crying and been told, “Feelings are for peasants.”
I practiced curtsies while dreaming of running barefoot through trees; something that now feels so close, so true.
But out here, in the dirt and ash and sacred flames, I was louder. Wilder. Real.
And I realized I didn’t want to go back to who I had been.
Not if it meant losing who I was becoming.
So, I stayed curled in the quiet hush of the flame-streaked sky, the mark on my arm still warm, as I whispered to the night, “Please…let this be real.”