Chapter Twenty-Four
Wynessa
The climb had grown sharper; the ground shifting from soft moss and forest loam into brittle, cracking shale. Grass no longer grew here. Roots gave way to stone, and the trees had thinned into gnarled silhouettes; stunted, wind-bent figures that clung to the mountain like half-forgotten thoughts.
Each step felt like an unanswered question.
The air grew thinner, and yet it didn’t feel clean. It stung the back of the throat, laced with the strange, sour tang of mineral steam rising from deep within the earth. Sulfur. Salt. The smell of something long buried emerging to the surface.
Patches of mist slithered between the rocks, not heavy enough to hide us, but enough to blur the edges of the world. It made the horizon shift, giving distorted distances. The muffled sounds echoed around the mountain as we walked cautiously.
Ahead, the ocean shimmered beyond the ridge. Distant and unreachable. A strip of ghost-blue against the jagged edge of the sky.
No birds. No beasts. Just the wind and the brittle crunch of our boots on fractured stone.
Erindor walked at the front, shoulders tight, and head lowered. He wasn’t scanning for threats, but carrying them. I recognized that posture now. That stiff, coiled gait meant his thoughts were loud and clear. He moved only like that when he was building walls inside himself.
And judging by the weight in the surrounding air, they were high.
I hated those walls.
“Wyn?” Jasira’s voice came from behind, soft and careful.
“I need a minute,” I said, already veering off the trail a little.
I didn’t wait for permission. Just angled away from the others toward a narrow, crumbling outcrop that jutted from the ridgeline.
Not far, but far enough to feel alone. A place where I could breathe.
Or try to. The wind hit harder there, sweeping in from the distant sea, tugging at my cloak like it wanted me to fly or fall.
I didn’t look back, but I sensed her pause. Jasira’s soft intake of breath. Then a nod.
The others kept walking, their footsteps crunching against loose stone.
Except for him.
I felt him pause without even looking. Heard the hitch in his step, the shift of his boots as he stopped at the fork in the path, uncertain. The silence between us buzzed like static. I waited. Maybe he’d stay with them for once. Perhaps he’d listen.
“Do you want—”
“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended, but I didn’t take it back. Didn’t soften it.
“I want you to keep walking, Princess.”
Silence. For a moment, I thought I’d pushed him too far. But then the sound of his footsteps drew nearer.
He could never leave me alone. Not when it mattered.
“What is it?” he questioned, his voice dropping, almost swallowed by the sudden tension.
I turned slowly to face him, and it hurt to look, not because he’d done anything unforgivable, but because he hadn’t trusted me enough to do anything else.
“What is it?” I echoed, arms folding over my chest. “You tell me.”
He said nothing.
“I’m not a child, Erindor.”
“I never said you were.”
“No, but you act like I’ll shatter if you tell me the truth.” My throat was tight. “You shut me out again. After everything.”
His brows pinched, and his arms stayed at his sides, tense. I knew that expression was the struggle between silence and confession. Silence always won.
“I am trying to protect you,” he said finally, his jaw clenched.
“From what?” I snapped. “From you? From what you used to be?”
A flinch; subtle, but there.
“You think I can’t handle it? That I’m too soft or too na?ve?” I took a step forward, trembling. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
His gaze dropped. His shoulders curled inward a little. No words came.
I felt my breath catch.
“Why do you even stay near me?” I whispered. “Because you care, or because it’s your duty?”
He looked up at that. Fast. Like the question cut deeper than I meant it to.
“That’s not what this is,” he said, voice low.
“Then what is it?” I asked, my voice breaking.
His expression shifted, mouth parting only to snap shut. His eyes, a brewing tempest, a palpable darkness swirled, holding thoughts too potent for release.
That silence was the answer I didn’t want.
“I saw your face when he said Riven’s name,” I murmured. “You looked like the world fell out from under you. And then you looked at me like I was something you’d already lost.”
Still, he said nothing.
“I trust you,” I whispered. “Even when it hurts. Even when I don’t understand. And you—” My voice cracked again. “You treat me like I’m fragile. Like you’re waiting for me to break.”
He took a slow breath, but it caught halfway. He clenched his hands at his sides now, not in anger, but in restraint. I saw the tightness in his throat, the ache behind his eyes. He looked like he was begging himself not to reach for me.
I hated how much I wanted him to lose that battle.
“I’m not asking for everything,” I said. “Just something. Let me carry a piece of this with you. You’re not alone. No matter how much you try to be.”
His voice, when it came, was almost a whisper. “If I give you even a piece, it’ll change how you see me.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it won’t change how I care.”
“You can be quite suffocating, you know that?” he muttered and turned. “I’ll be nearby.”
I wanted to scream. To throw the nearest rock straight at his back and make him bleed like he made me bleed with every withheld truth. Instead, I said the cruelest thing I could:
“Of course you will. That’s all you ever are.”
He stopped. Stiffened. But he didn’t look back.
And then he left me there, standing in mist and silence and my own broken hope.
…
I didn’t know where to go, but I couldn’t stay there. I needed a moment, a breath away from everyone else, to clear my head.
The cliffs narrowed fast, the path fraying into jagged stone and patches of brittle grass scorched gold by unseen heat. Steam hissed up from the cracks, curling around my legs, weighing me down. My boots slid on the slick edges, but I didn’t stop.
Let it crumble. Let the world tilt. Let me fall, if it wants to.
I was so tired of being a symbol. So tired of being the fragile one people whispered about, the one who needed protecting, needed guiding, needed deciding for.
Tired of fire blooming in my chest every time I got too close to anger, fear, or something else…a fire I didn’t ask for. A fire that made me feel like a weapon disguised in soft skin. A fire that lit up when I was most afraid and then left me hollow in its glow.
I was tired of people telling me I was destined, chosen, sacred, as if that would make bearing the nightmares easier.
Tired of my mother’s silence, sharper than knives. Of her eyes that never quite softened, her voice that measured me in disappointment. As if I were already failing a crown I hadn’t even worn yet.
Tired of always pretending the weight didn’t hurt when it did.
The ledge sloped toward a crag where the view opened wide; the ocean to the east, endless trees behind. Below, somewhere in the smoke and fog, the ground fell away into nothing. An endless hush of sky and stone.
And for one aching heartbeat, I wondered what it would feel like to let go.
To let the wind take me. To stop clinging to the shape of a girl I no longer recognized.
If I fell, I wasn’t sure I’d even care.
Because what remained of me that still felt like mine?
But I wouldn’t. And, gods help me, I couldn’t.
Too much relied on me, no matter how much I hated it.
Too many eyes, too many hopes, and too many lives hanging in the balance of a girl who had never wanted to carry any of this.
My breath became shallow. My fingers curled around the edge of the rock until they ached.
Even here, at the edge of everything, the fire inside me pulsed. Stubborn and still burning.
With a growl, I yanked the rock from the ground and hurled it as hard as I could. It sailed only a few pitiful feet before plunking into the dirt.
Heat flushed my cheeks—part anger, part embarrassment. “Truly a weapon of war,” I muttered.
“Wynessa!”
His voice.
He was back.
I didn’t turn. “Go away, Erindor.”
Footsteps. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably.” I let out a laugh, sharp and thin. “You should like that. Easier to manage.”
I heard him behind me, boots scraping as he stopped short. “What the hell are you doing out here alone?”
“Getting some air. Since apparently I suffocate everyone.”
“You could’ve died.” He scoffed.
“Maybe that would’ve been better,” I snapped, spinning to face him. “At least then you’d stop looking at me like I’m a responsibility you didn’t ask for.”
A sudden paralysis claimed him.
My heart gave a violent lurch, then pounded a frantic rhythm in my chest.
“Don’t say things like that,” he said, voice low, strained.
“Why not?” I hurled the words.
“I protect you.”
“It’s your duty.”
“I’ve saved your life more times than I can count.”
“Then maybe stop. Maybe next time, leave me to the mimics.”
His hands clenched into fists. “You’re not being fair.”
“Neither are you! I bled myself raw trying to earn your trust, and you shut down and glare and pretend I’m some wide-eyed child who can’t manage shadows!”
His jaw flexed. “Because I’ve seen what shadows do, Princess!”
“And I’ve seen what silence does!”
We were both shouting now, and I didn’t care if the others heard. Let them. Let the trees hear too.
“Gods,” he hissed. “Do you always have to argue like it’s a duel?”
“Do you always have to retreat like a coward?”
His eyes blazed. “I’m not a coward.”
“You fear me.”
“I’m scared for you!”
“Same thing!”
“You drive me insane!”
“You make me feel like nothing I do is ever enough!”
“You hum like a godsdamn beehive when you’re thinking!”
“You breathe like you’re judging the air!”
“You stomp like a bear!”
“You smell like—like pine!”
He blinked. “That’s not even—”
I gasped. “That is not an insult.”
“No,” he said, stunned. “I don’t think it is.”
Silence fell between us; wild, messy, and far too full.
And then the ground beneath me shifted.