Chapter Eighty-Seven
ELYSSARA
I stumble to the ground, drenched and breathless, the waterfall thundering behind me like a gate slamming shut. My palms scrape wet rock, chest heaving. I glance back at the rune still glowing faintly beside the cascade.
I made it.
“Much faster this time, El. I’ve only been here about an hour, I’d say,” Ronyn calls out with a grin.
“Fuck off,” I mutter, though my voice is half-cough, half-wheeze—lost under the ripple of laughter that spreads through the group like wildfire.
Rhyven pushes forward, a crease between his brows. “Well, don’t just leave her on the ground—she’s the Dravari heir, for Star’s sake,” he snaps, fussing like an anxious steward. His movements are tight, and his tone is sharper than usual. Something’s got him wound up.
But one look at Kael, who’s still doubled over in laughter, and I can’t help it—I crack too, the tension sloughing off my shoulders like a deadweight.
“I’m okay, Rhy. Really.” I push to my feet, dripping and dizzy but standing.
“You look like you could do with some brask,” Rubi says, sauntering up like she didn’t just emerge from a death-defying magical Gateway. She holds out a battered flask, smug as sin.
“Rubi, are you fucking serious right now?” Therion barks, aghast.
“How in the Stars do you have that?” I gasp, laughter bubbling out of me, raw and uncontrolled.
“What?” she says innocently, turning to Therion. “Tvira was quite willing to help me out, actually.” Her grin is all teeth and trouble.
Therion mutters something savage under his breath.
“Tvira was the one who gave you brask?” I repeat, blinking at her like she’s conjured it from thin air.
“Oh, Tvira gave me lots of things, if you know what I mean,” Rubi says with a conspiring wink, wagging her eyebrows like a complete menace.
“We all know what you mean, Rubi. Now put the fucking brask away,” Therion snaps, exasperated.
But I can’t stop laughing. None of us can. It’s the flavor of laugh that catches in your throat. The kind you get as a child when you’ve just gotten in trouble but can’t stop the laughter from exploding.
“Excuse me,” Rhyven cuts in, his voice too tight, too formal. Embarrassed, perhaps? Or something else? His cheeks are flushed, jaw set like he’s holding something in. “I’ll go scout ahead. Ensure our travels back to Thornewood are safe.”
Kael gives a curt nod, the smirk still playing at his lips. Rhyven doesn’t wait for further approval—he turns and disappears down the slope in a flash of silver steel.
“I think we should get Rhy drunk on brask when we return,” Ronyn muses. “Or what about those mushrooms, Rubes? I’d pay to see Rhy act like a duskprowler.”
We descend the slick, slated rock face in single file, boots skidding, fingers clutching at twisted vines and slippery edges.
Water drips from our clothes, hair flat to our skin, every breath dragging in the thick, misty air.
The waterfall roars behind us like a reminder of everything we’ve just traversed.
At the base, Therion halts so abruptly that I nearly run into him. His head tilts, his nostrils flaring. That stillness wraps around him again—the way it always does when he’s listening to something the rest of us can’t hear.
“Someone’s coming,” he murmurs, voice like steel.
He draws his axe without ceremony, and Kael mirrors him, blades whispering free from their sheathes. In an instant, we shift from wet, exhausted travelers to a pack of warriors ready for battle.
Branches rustle. Tension tightens.
“It's me, my prince. Just me.” Rhyven emerges from the trees with his hands raised, breathing hard, his pale hair damp and clinging to his forehead.
We all exhale as one, though the unease still lingers like mist.
Kael lowers his swords an inch, eyes narrowing. “All clear?”
Rhyven nods, but it’s too fast. His gaze flicks from Kael to the treeline and back again. His shoulders twitch like he’s about to bolt.
“All clear,” he says again. “Though... the river’s flooded. We’ll need to loop around, hit the western ridge. It’s a short detour.”
“That ridge is exposed,” Therion says, already scowling.
“Only for a moment,” Rhyven insists. “Then we cut back through the stone glen. We’ll be sheltered again before anyone even knows we’re there.”
Something in his tone makes the hairs rise on my arms.
Too eager. Too rehearsed.
I open my mouth, the warning forming in my throat—
“We’ll do it,” Kael says, sharp.
“Kael,” Therion warns, the edge of his axe glinting.
“We’ll scout ahead at the crest,” Kael adds, firmer now. “If it’s not safe, we pull back.”
Therion doesn’t like it. That much is obvious. But he nods, tight and reluctant.
So do we all.
Even though the air tingles with warning.
Merrik urges his mare beside us, “Lad, we can just camp here for the night. Wait for the river level to drop and return home the way we came.”
Kael pauses for a heartbeat, weighing his options, “Rubi’s been away from the infirmary for almost two days, Mer. The relics are there unguarded. Our hunters are away—there’s no food. We can’t stay away any longer than we’ve already been.”
Merrik grimaces. He knows Kael’s right—that he has a point. But he doesn’t like it. He grunts in displeasure but leaves it alone.
“It’s just up here,” Rhyven calls from the front, Therion trailing him closely, tracking in the way he does.
Kael looks to Merrik and shrugs, “We’re here now—let’s get home.”
Therion stills up ahead, holding up his hand to stop, his tall frame tensing. A predator ready to strike.
Everyone halts instantly, but Rhyven is further ahead. He can’t see Therion and keeps going.
“Something’s wrong,” Therion murmurs, but there’s no mistaking his words. “We’re not alone.”
“Fuck,” Kael grits out, but doesn’t hesitate to slide his swords from the scabbards at his back.
My hand hovers over the blades at my thighs, senses alert and ready.
Therion hisses his name, low and urgent, but Rhyven doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t hear.
Or pretends not to.
Therion gestures to all of us to dismount and doesn’t hesitate to brandish his axe.
We all leap down at his command with no hesitation. No waiting, just action.
Ronyn has an arrow nocked in a heartbeat, and Jax’s magic flares at her fingertips. Daelen and Merrik are crouched low with broad swords at the ready, and Rubi pulls out a sickle blade from her belt, which I’d always assumed was just a harvesting tool.
Seren, brows furrowed, aims her crossbow, and this time, she doesn’t look frightened—she looks prepared.
“There’s no sound,” Therion states. “No birds, no insects, no wind,” he says. “This isn’t right.”
Even the wind is holding its breath. The jungle is too quiet. Not dead—waiting.
Then the first arrow flies.
It whistles through the silence, embedding itself in the bark of a tree inches from Jax.
A second follows—this one grazing Daelen’s upper arm.
Kael’s voice slices through the hush. “AMBUSH!”
The command rips from his chest like thunder, and all hells break loose.
All at once, the trees erupt.
Dozens—no, more—of masked warriors spill from the shadows. Not wild, not disorganized. Trained. Moving in formation.
I leap into action, the sound of steel singing in my ears.
My dagger finds the flesh between the ribs of a soldier moving towards Seren. I withdraw my blade, slick with dark crimson blood, almost black, and that’s when I see it—the Mark of Morrathys.
“It’s Maldrak’s army!” I bellow, but don’t stop moving.
I charge into the fray, ready to rip through soldiers who dare to come after my friends.
Jax’s magic flares around us, blooming outwards to cast the jungle in a vibrant white light. Lightborne magic.
Soldiers fall at her hands, dissolving into dust on the jungle floor.
Therion’s axe doesn’t swing—it cleaves. Each strike lands like a death sentence.
No flourish, just brutality. He’s not fighting for glory.
He’s ending threats. He’s slicing through men with precision and calculated fury.
He unleashes an avalanche of brutal attacks—sliced throats, cracked skulls, mangled bones.
He senses movements before they happen, calculating in less than a heartbeat, and killing in a single breath—he’s made for war.
I fight like the warrior Revryn prepared me to be—I cut through flesh like silk, my blades the beginning of their afterlife.
Ronyn picks off Maldrak’s men with unerring accuracy, moving like a blur of stealth and finesse.
But it’s Kael that takes my breath away.
He moves like shadow incarnate, not a man, but a force—swords spinning with deadly precision, each strike choreographed in violence and grace.
His blades sing through the air, leaving behind trails of silver light as if the Stars themselves mourn each soul he sends to the Final Gate.
His shadows crawl along the earth like hounds loosed for the hunt—wrapping around ankles, necks, slicing breath and bone. But it’s Kael’s eyes—cold, unyielding, divine—that silence even the boldest soldiers. He doesn’t look at them like enemies. He looks at them like ends.
Markings of the night sky peek over his armor, veins and muscles tense with exertion as he deftly wields his swords, his piercing blue eyes the last thing these soldiers will see in this world.
Kael. My Starbound. My ruin and my salvation.
I should be terrified—but I’m mesmerized.
A soldier with veins as dark as night rippling out from his bloodshot eyes rushes me. His mouth twisted in a snarl, a shiver licking up my spine at the sight—a Bloodbond. I drop low, instincts screaming at me to incapacitate him first. I pull my arm back, ready to embed my blade in his groin.
But invisible hands wrap around my wrist, twisting my arm with inhuman strength.
Pain screams up my shoulder, a jagged blaze of fire. My blade clatters uselessly to the dirt.
“KAEL!”
“I’ve got the Lightborne bitch!” The man behind me snarls, his breath rancid, festering.