Chapter 17 Aurelia
Aurelia
A sea of gold and shadow spun in my vision. The world bent sideways.
I must’ve blacked out. Or fainted. The wine, the hallucinations, the sound of my brother’s scream still echoing in my head. It all blurred.
Everything shifted. Tilted. I was falling—no, floating—no, I was being carried. My limbs dangled, heavy and boneless, my body caught in a heat I couldn’t place.
Voices blurred. Laughter. Clinking goblets. A rising hum in my ears like bees trapped beneath my skin. And then—pressure. Two bodies. One to each side. Kaelith. Malachi. Their voices overlapped—too close, too sharp—surrounding me like a cage.
I felt pinned between them—Kaelith’s presence scorching at my side, Malachi’s arm firm across my back. Their wills crashed, and I was just a body between them—silent, drowning, immobile.
Malachi leaned in. I felt it—not just his breath, but the shift in him. He said something low into Kaelith’s ear. I couldn’t hear the words, but I felt the impact.
Through the haze, I thought I saw something crack through Kaelith’s mask—a twitch of his jaw, his eyes flashing toward Malachi. Startled. Or maybe I imagined it. The room kept warping, and I couldn’t hold onto the details.
A beat. Then—Laughter. Too loud. Too forced.
“She’s fine!” Kaelith called out, raising his goblet like a toast. “Too much wine, too fast. Nothing more.”
Laughter rippled down the table, brittle and thin.
I hadn’t moved. Couldn’t. I barely registered Malachi’s arm still around me. The scent of him embraced me: smoke, myrrh, ash. Familiar in a way it shouldn’t have been. The edges of the room rippled—faces warping into smears of gold and shadow.
We were moving. The castle halls blurred, going in and out of focus as voices rose and fell around me.
“…she said bride—”
“Did he mean it?”
“She can’t…”
“She’s burning up.”
“She’ll recover.” Malachi again. Sharp. Final.
The warmth thickened around me. Something soft cradled my body. A bed. Clouds, maybe. Silk brushing over my skin, weightless and slow.
The hum in my ears quieted. The scent of lavender and cedar wrapped around me. Heat pooled at my feet, and my fingers curled instinctively into the softness beneath me.
For one breath, I felt safe.
And then the voices melted. One by one. Gone. And I fell fully into the stillness that swallowed everything.