Chapter 38 Thou Shalt Not Silence Fire #2
Some Councilors exchange looks, uninterested, already writing me off. Others lean forward, as if they can’t help but listen. I let their silence feed me.
“I’ve learned strategy. Discipline. How to stand my ground against people stronger than me.
I can hold my own in a fight, even without powers.
I'm at the top of my classes. But I’ve also learned loyalty, and sacrifice, and the difference between surviving and truly living.
I’ve learned I can protect others—not with a power, but with my choices. With my courage.”
My voice wavers only once, but I don’t let it crack. “I’ve learned who I am. And that person is worthy of standing here, of being part of this academy. With or without a sin.”
The words fall into the heavy quiet. My chest burns with the effort it took to say them, but I refuse to drop my gaze.
Councilor Willshire lets the silence linger for too long, his lips curving into a condescending grin. He leans forward, voice dripping with mockery.
“I’m sure you thought your speech was moving,” he says. “But we don’t allow just anyone into the academy. And without power, you cannot contribute to your faction. Nobody has a use for you. Nobody here is going to speak for you.”
I feel the air shift before I even see it happen. Atticus steps forward, his voice steady, cutting through the chamber like a blade.
“I will speak for her.”
***
Maddox
I called an all-hands meeting as I stormed through the halls.
Every member of my gang is on edge the moment they see me.
They know something’s burning; they know the steel in my voice means business.
I lay it out: Our territory in Feastwell is under threat, Raven’s taken the club, and if we don’t act, we could lose it. Every move counts, every second.
They’re ready to go before I even finish giving orders, my plans already forming in their heads.
I see the loyalty in their eyes, the unquestioning obedience that keeps this empire afloat.
And yet… my mind keeps drifting. To her.
That defiant, impossible girl. The one who doesn’t even know how much danger she’s in—or how much power she holds as a threat to the Council.
I tell my crew to suit up, coordinate, and meet me at the rendezvous. Everyone nods, ready to reclaim what’s mine. We head out to the airbase at the academy. It’s full today thanks to Councilors all being here. I’m about to step into our helicopter with them when something stops me.
It’s her. Arwen. Or rather, it’s what I feel in my chest for her. The thought of her in danger while I’m Factions away, while my men handle the politics, while I play the game my father loves so much—it’s unbearable.
I take a sharp breath, slow it, weigh the consequences. The gang, the territory, the power—all of it can wait. She can’t. My decision snaps like a bone.
I won’t let her be collateral in my father’s chess game. Not today.
I text the crew with a simple message. “Handle Feastwell.”
I don’t need to explain. They know better than to question me.
I cut back toward the hallway where I last saw Dean Bellows and Arwen, the academy’s layout snapping into place in my mind like a battlefield map. My boots slam against the marble—too loud, too fast—but I can’t slow down. Not when every stride sends a fresh jolt of adrenaline through my veins.
Atticus can hover at her side all he wants. He doesn’t change the one thing that matters.
I don't want her to go.
The thought claws up my throat, makes the world narrow to a single objective. Get to her. Get the potion into her hands. Don’t let her slip away again.
Corridors blur past. Students jump back, startled, but I barely register them.
I’m already imagining the worst—her collapsing, her breath sputtering, that stubborn fire in her eyes flickering out as she's transported away to the Wastes.
Not happening.
Not while I’m breathing.
I’ll get to her. I’ll fix this. I’ll make sure she walks out of today alive.
Whatever it costs.
Rounding the corner in the familiar hallway, I slam to a stop. A familiar face- not the Dean, not Arwen—but Maylo Villanox is leaning against the wall, looking at his phone. "What the hell?"
“Took you long enough,” he says, not even looking at me, voice smooth, almost smug.
“What are you talking about?” I snap, stepping closer, eyes narrowing.
He smirks, unbothered. “You’re late, West. For someone very important.”
I grit my teeth. “What game are you playing, Villanox? Where is the council?”
Maylo tilts his head, amused. “We don’t have time for explanations. You’re trying to get to Arwen, and I’m late for a very important Council vote. Follow me.”
He moves, and I follow. He's an insane psychopath but if he's heading toward Arwen, that's all that matters.
Every second counts. Every hallway, every turn brings me closer to her, and closer to the moment I can make sure she gets what she deserves: a chance to survive, a chance to unleash what she’s meant to be.
***
Arwen
“I will speak for her.” Though Atticus's voice is steady, it carries a certain gravity that pervades the room.
Every head in the room turns toward him. The torchlight catches the sharp edges of his face, reflecting in his eyes —which are not trained on me, but on his father. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t shift. The air feels charged, like the moment before a storm cracks the sky open.
“I have watched Arwen fight harder than anyone in this academy,” Atticus says, each word precise, measured. “She has no power, yet she stands shoulder to shoulder with those of us who do. She defends herself with nothing but grit and discipline. She has proven she deserves to be here.”
The Councilors murmur, some scoffing, others exchanging quiet glances.
But Atticus doesn’t waver. He stares at his father like he’s boring through him, silent words carrying beneath his spoken ones.
My stomach twists. I know what he’s doing.
He’s trying to push past his father’s mental shields, to plant conviction where none exists.
My heart pounds.
“You raised me to believe strength is everything,” Atticus continues, voice low, dangerous. “But maybe strength isn’t just power. Maybe it’s resilience. Maybe it’s refusing to bow, even when the world says you should.”
A tremor ripples through the air, too subtle for anyone else to notice, but I feel it. The tension between father and son, power colliding beneath the surface, invisible but suffocating. Atticus’s spine straightens. He’s pushing harder.
“Enough!” Councilor Willshire slams a hand against the stone desk, his face flushing with fury. His voice booms, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. The chamber goes silent.
His eyes burn into his son. “You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do, boy? You think I can’t feel it? As if you could ever overpower me.” His lip curls in disgust. “What has gotten into you? Why on earth would you stand up for this sinless scum?”
“She is my bond.”
The words land like a stone as my heart skips. This wasn’t part of the plan…
The room stutters around me. A hush spreads thick and heavy.
Warmth rushes up my neck. The bond flaring so hard it steals my breath.
My throat closes up. He actually said it. For the first time my bond is admitted out loud.
Atticus meets his father’s eyes and doesn’t look away — not even for a second. “If she goes, I go.”
Atticus's father goes motionless, eyes narrowing a breath too slow. Confusion flickers- brief, but there. The whole room seems to lean into the moment, waiting to see which way he'll snap.
A haunting tune echoes from the stairs. Whistling. And everyone's head turn as Maylo saunters in, looking like he's just stepping outside for a walk. The tension breaks like glass.
Maylo’s not alone. He’s followed — from the shadows Maddox steps into the torchlight, and my chest does something stupid and traitorous.
"Maddox? Why aren't you in Feastwell?" His father shouts in confusion.
Maddox pulls something out of his jacket, and my eyes flick to the pale golden liquid. He’s holding a vial. His promise. He did it. He came after me. My heart fills with gratitude.
Sound explodes. Councilors shout; a half dozen aristocratic voices triple into a single, ugly roar.
The room detonates into chaos.
Councilor Blaise’s voice cracks across the chamber, sharp as a whip, yelling at the transporter: “None of this makes a difference. Begin the exile protocol—now!”
Councilor Willshire steps forward, teeth bared. “Stop—stop, damn it—” His shout ricochets off the marble walls, but no one listens. Guards from the shadowy sides of the room run forward and trip over themselves, shoving past one another to defend their own Councilor.
A hand clamps onto my shoulder—Atticus. His fingers dig in, not hard, but with the desperation of someone trying to hold lightning still. “Arwen—stay with me—”
I barely hear him.
Everything else sucks inward, narrowing to a single point across the room.
Maddox.
He breaks through the chaos.
Bodies shove and shout around him—Councilors barking orders, the Dean trying to restore order—but the noise folds away from him as if something in the room recognizes who holds its center of gravity now.
His coat cuts the haze in a clean sweep, each step measured, mechanical, relentless.
Boot heels strike the metal with the rhythm of a countdown.
His jaw is a line drawn in stone, fury sculpted into restraint.
His eyes hold mine—locking, pinning. The rest of the chamber blurs, but he sees me with a precision that makes the air in my lungs hitch.
It feels like a cable snaps taut between us, pulling him forward, pulling me upright as a golden thread from his chest reaches me.
Nobody else seems to see it. A proximity bond.
Around him, the world is fracturing—Blaise’s voice cracking in outrage—but his hands stay steady. Not a twitch. Not a breath out of place.
In that grip, the vial burns with its own heartbeat. Light swells inside the glass—gold, alive, desperate to be used.
Maylo steps into my frame of vision beside him.
Where Maddox is tension and steel, Maylo is the opposite—loose, smiling, wearing a grin far too calm for the chaos. Something off-kilter shines in his eyes, a glitter of mischief sharpened into danger.
Before I can decipher it, he moves.
A dagger flashes—silver caught in the chamber’s fractured light. He catches Maddox’s wrist, drags the blade across his palm in one practiced, brutal line.
Maddox jerks, fury snapping through his expression, but Maylo is already moving—already rolling Maddox’s blood between his fingers, already smearing the glowing vial with it, quick and unhesitating, as if he’s rehearsed this moment alone in the dark.
“Catch,” he mouths at me.
He winks—sharp, wicked, almost affectionate—before the vial leaves his fingers in a bright arc through the air.
Maddox lunges, fury incarnate, his fist connecting with Maylo’s jaw in a crack that cuts through all the shouting. Maylo’s head snaps sideways, smile still ghosting across his mouth even as he staggers.
But I’m already reaching.
The vial spins toward me—light flashing off its surface, Maddox’s blood streaking red across gold. My breath locks. The room tilts. My hands shoot up—Too fast. Too desperate. Too late.
Glass meets my palm with a sickening, brittle music.
The vial explodes in my grip.
Shards bite deep, hot and precise, embedding like teeth.
The ruined liquid spills across my skin before gravity can claim it, running between my fingers, down my wrist. A sting blossoms, sharp and electric.
Blood—Maddox’s and mine—mixes in the cracks of my hand, dripping to the floor in red-gold drops.
Something jars inside me as I begin to glow.
Heat floods my ribs. My knees nearly give. It’s not slow or gentle.
It is a collision.
Maddox’s attention snaps to me as he stumbles in a similar way.
A hot, magnetic pull yanks tight between us, threading from the base of my spine straight toward him, stronger than the thread from before. The air between us turns charged, violent, inevitable.
The proximity bond ignites. The power working to complete the bond between us and anchor us together forever.
The bond doesn’t ask. It claims. Loudly. Violently.
The surrounding chamber dissolves—guards shouting, Councilor Blaise is still screaming instructions to the transporter as Councilor Willshire is trying to stop him.
Atticus’s hand is shaking against my shoulder. None of it reaches me.
The transporter’s magic prickles over my skin—first like static, then like a thousand pins of light finding every inch of me. The air around my ankles warps. Someone shouts my name. Someone else curses. The chamber folds in on itself, the sound turning watery, distant.
I should be terrified. I know that. Exile is the end of everything.
But a strange calm anchors itself in my chest, heavy and certain. Bond or not, powers or not, I know who I am.
Arwen Davies.
Sinless.
Worthy.
Loyal.
Unbreakable.
The words don’t feel like something I’m telling myself—they rise like truths carved into bone, finally surfacing. For the first time, they fit.
Heat surges through my ribs, blooming outward. It tastes metallic on my tongue. The power of the bond magic and the transporters magic both pulling at me. I'm frozen as pain ripples through me but I'm filled with silent confidence.
The torchlight fractures into halos, every flame bending toward me as if dragged by gravity. Stone beneath my feet sweats silver, lines of light racing across it like veins waking up.
The transporter’s pull tightens.
And still—still—I’m not afraid.
My vision blurs. My heart slams into something that feels like recognition—raw and primal.
Like I’ve been walking around with a missing limb and suddenly it’s slid into me, completing me like a puzzle.
The proximity bond seals as I feel Maddox's presence inside me.
And suddenly I know with bone deep clarity: I'll never be alone again.
Then the world lurches. The shattered glass at my feet, the ruined mixture soaking into the stone—it was never meant to save me.
The air collapses.
For a heartbeat, every sound in the chamber drops away—and in that silence, I finally understand what's happening.
I didn’t need the potion.
The power rising in me doesn’t feel borrowed or brewed. It feels ancient. Familiar. Like a door that’s been waiting for years for someone—me—to turn the handle. Light floods my vision—white, molten, absolute.
It bursts open.
Heat ignites along my spine, racing upward. My lungs seize, not in fear, but in recognition, as if every cell has been waiting for this command.
Everything around me starts to fade as the transporter completes his duty.
My sin power roars to life inside me as everything turns black.