Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“Fuck,” Kael curses behind her, but he doesn’t stifle the smell. A warrior used to the stench. He pushes into the vault, eyes searching hungrily for evidence, understanding, anything.
“The Orbs…” Elyssara murmurs, confused by the emptiness. “They’re not here.”
Kael strides through the vault, eyes drinking in every alcove, scanning for answers, for danger, for rules to this godsforsaken game.
For whatever they want trapped down here.
Elyssara follows, desperately trying to figure out the snare they’ve walked into. The invitation Maireth so obviously extended.
Kael stops dead.
He doesn’t move.
Doesn’t breathe.
Just stares.
He drops to his knees, his legs buckling beneath him. His eyes are fixed on the very last alcove. Kael has faced armies without trembling. Elyssara has never seen his body fail him before now.
She runs, feet tangling in the skirts of her dress.
“No,” she breathes before she even gets there. “No.”
And that’s when he cracks.
A roar rips from Kael’s throat like a cut beast, haunting and raw.
His fists clench in unfettered rage, but the sound continues. The rasping, straining howl that tears from his chest in blind grief.
She reaches for him, hands gripping his coat.
He doesn’t respond.
Every vein and sinew in his neck bulges under the strain of his pain, his roar reverberating through the vault like an endless chorus of grief.
She drags her eyes to the alcove.
No.
No.
NO.
Three bodies.
Propped against the filthy vault wall like slaughtered animals.
Throats cut from ear to ear.
And words drawn in crimson blood across their chests.
Not a warning. A lesson.
Kiva. Comply.
Laryn. Or.
Rhaema. Die.
The same hands that stitched Elyssara into silk now hang limp at her sides. Rhaema had known. Had known helping them might cost her everything. And she’d done it anyway.
The words were written with meticulous precision. The work of someone who took their time. Diligence in death, if there was such a thing.
And she knows with absolute, bone-chilling certainty that Maireth is the only one callous enough to apply precision to such a thing.
The blood has not dried, still clinging to the skin in thick, gelatinous streaks.
Rivers of ichor spill from their open wounds, dripping down their necks and pooling in the hollow notches at the base of their throats.
And in the center of their abdomens—weapons. Their weapons.
Kael’s twin swords protrude from the bodies of his aunt and uncle. Elyssara’s Starforged Blade hangs from the soft flesh below Rhaema’s sternum. A precision slice.
“No,” she breathes, but the words feel pointless.
She drags her gaze up to meet Kael’s face.
His jaw is set, teeth grinding together with a force that threatens to crack his molars.
“Look at me, Kael. Look at me,” she pleads, voice desperate and strained.
He doesn’t. His eyes are locked on his dead family like he’s trying to sear the image into his mind.
“I did this,” he grits out, devastation and rage and grief colliding in his chest. His whole body shakes.
Elyssara grips him, presses her hands across his chest, desperately trying to reach him inside his rage. His disbelief. His grief.
“No, Kael. No. This is Maireth. Maireth is the monster, Kael. You loved them. They helped you willingly,” she pleads, the words coming out strained and desperate. “This is not on you.”
Her hands frame his face, palms scratching against the stubble of his chin.
But he does not react.
She reaches for his hand, clawing at it desperately. She presses it to the bare skin of her chest, the rapid rhythm of her heartbeat thundering into his palm.
You will come back to me.
That’s what she said. That’s what she promised.
“I love you from now until the Stars claim me, Kael Thorne.” Her words come out as a desperate plea. “Look at me, my love. Come back to me.”
His gaze moves to hers slowly. Too slowly. It is not Kael who stares back at her. It is wrath incarnate.
Obsidian spills across his irises like ink in water.
He huffs a humorless laugh. “A monster?”
Obsidian spreads, bleeding into the oceans of his eyes.
“Maireth doesn’t know the meaning of the word,” he growls, voice dropping into a low register. “But she’s about to.”
The vault seems to recoil from the promise.
His breath steadies. Just slightly. Not from peace. But from the calm that always descends upon him before violence. Before he becomes a beast on the hunt.
The tether goes cold. Not broken. Worse. Deliberately severed. Walls slam up, blocking their connection. Cutting her off. Casting her out.
Serpents of onyx crawl through his veins in response to his rage, climbing up his arms, stretching through his honed form like soldiers being commanded by a general.
Stormlight eyes cling to the last fragments of color.
“Stay with me, Kael,” Elyssara pleads, eyes desperate, voice raw.
Kael stands, presses a kiss to her forehead. “I need you to leave, El.”
Leave?
“What? No. Kael, where you go, I go. We’re Starbound. I won’t leave,” Elyssara says, but she knows she’s begging.
“You must,” he grits out.
The rhythmic pounding of bootfalls beat down the corridors. They’re coming.
“I won’t,” she snaps, defiant. But tears spill from her eyes anyway.
The last sliver of ocean-blue is swallowed whole by the Decay, and depthless pools of obsidian stare back at her. It is not the loss of him that terrifies her. It is how little of him she has left to reach.
Kael grits his teeth, as if he’s fighting to stay with her. Fighting to claw his way to the forefront of the Decay that possesses him.
His veins are entirely black, eyes endless chasms.
“The Memory Orbs aren’t here, El. We still need them to restore Dravara.
I need you to live. To find the Orbs. I need you to take back your throne.
So when Maireth’s guards get down here, I want you to run, fight, kill—whatever you need to do to live.
Get Seren here. And go!” His voice is savage now. All teeth and fury.
Elyssara shakes her head, mouth opening and closing, desperate to say something, anything that will change his mind. “And what of you? You’ll stay?”
“I’ll draw them to me. I’ll kill every last one. But El, this thing…” he gestures to the rot running through his veins, “it owns me. Next time you see me… I won’t be there. Leave me.”
Fear threatens to swallow her whole.
“No.” The words leave her without conscious thought. But there’s no conviction in it—it’s a whisper.
Another roar tears from Kael’s throat, darkness spreading across his chest like it’s made a home there.
He shakes his head like he’s trying to remember himself.
“I cannot hurt you. I cannot bear the thought of hurting you. Of losing control with you. I need you to leave me. Please,” he begs.
The rasp of steel sings through the corridors, bootfalls closing in.
“I can’t,” she sobs. “My heart won’t let me.”
But Kael bares his teeth. “Leave me!”
Elyssara shakes her head again, ripping the mask from her face. “You are part of me,” she whispers, voice tender and raw.
Kael winces at the truth. “And I will find you in every lifetime, Elyssara. I will burn down hell to get to you. But in this one… let me go.”
Elyssara reaches for him.
But a snarl rips from his throat.
Kael fights the Decay, straining to keep it in check. He strains, neck muscles bulging under the pressure. “I will do inexplicable things to keep you safe, my love. You cannot be here when I become the creature even the monsters fear. The Decay will not care who you are. Bodies are all it sees.”
A sob wracks Elyssara’s body. “I love you—”
A booming clap cuts through her declaration.
“So touching,” a smooth voice echoes through the vaults.
Princess Marin steps across the threshold, chin lifted, an ugly sneer across her beautiful face, and her crimson and ivory dress dragging through the grime of the corridors without a single care.
“I see you found our gifts,” she croons, sarcasm thick on her tongue. “Welcome to Caeloria.”
As if the kingdom itself had been waiting beneath the silk for a chance to show its teeth.
Kael doesn’t move. But his hands flex at his sides, preparing to strike.
“You fucking killed them!” Elyssara screams, the words rasping and strained as they tear from her throat.
Marin strides forward, shrugging nonchalantly. “Comply or die, darling. It’s not just an idea—it’s a promise.” The words come out flippant, easy. As if they haven’t snuffed out the lives of people Kael loved.
“All because they helped us,” Elyssara snarls. “How pathetic. Are you really so easily threatened?”
Defiance rises in her chest—an old friend.
Marin laughs, and it sounds genuine. “Threatened? No. Committed to upholding the standards we’ve set? Undoubtedly.”
The soldiers are close, their footfalls echoing through the corridors like a war drum. They have heartbeats to form a plan.
Elyssara needs information. Needs to know what in the fucking Stars is happening—the resin, the Orbs. What does all of this mean?
“What did you do with the Memory Orbs? Those memories belong to my people,” she grits out between her teeth.
Marin steps closer, sensing blood in the water.
But Elyssara is not chained. She is not a prisoner.
She is the fucking Lightborne.
A snarl of warning rumbles in Kael’s chest. He’s still there. Still accessible beneath the force of the Decay.
“You lay a hand on my Starbound, Marin, and I will rip your fucking heart from your chest before you even realize I’ve moved,” he growls, the words landing like a promise and a threat.
She smiles something wicked. “Is that how you killed my brother, Kael? You always were a vicious creature.”
Fuck.
Prince Vaelor.
“Yes. And now I’ve perfected it,” he taunts, voice almost amused.
The footfalls descend the last steps, a symphony of rasping steel, clashing metal, and the steady thud of boots on stone.
“The Memory Orbs!” Elyssara demands, her composure loosening.
Marin’s deep-brown eyes settle on her, steady and calculating.