Chapter 19 Aurelia #2
The children froze mid-throw, eyes wide with mock guilt. One of them hopped off her stool, her little hands dusted white and her cheeks flushed from laughter.
She walked toward me with the certainty only children carried, head tilted as she studied my face. “You’re so pretty,” she said simply.
I blinked, taken off guard.
The little girl’s eyes were the softest shade of twilight, her curls a tangled crown of rich brown spun through with gold. A constellation of flour freckles dusted her nose, and when she smiled, it was wide and toothy and entirely disarming.
I crouched down in an effort to meet her gaze. “And what is your name?”
“I’m Nara,” she beamed. “And that’s Kylo. He’s my big brother.”
Kylo gave a shy half-wave from the table, cheeks flushed with flour and mischief.
“Well,” I said softly, “it is a pleasure to meet you both.”
Nara tilted her head, gaze lingering on me with a strange intensity, little hands hovering to reach my face.
“You’re so pretty,” she repeated, voice soft as snowfall. “Like the Shadow Queen from our stories… ”
Then—her breath hitched. Her pupils blew wide, swallowing the color of her irises before her eyes rolled back into her skull, showing only white.
Her body went slack. The flour-streaked smile still lingered on her lips, but it was wrong now—unsettling in its stillness. Her limbs hung like a marionette cut from its strings.
“Nara?” I reached out, but before my hand could touch her—
Her head snapped up. Her voice came low, distant, like it didn’t belong to her at all.
“When roots drink from stolen wells,
And thorned crowns bloom in blood,
The veil will tear in silence—
And the Dark will seek what belongs to him.”
Then she blinked. Once. Twice. The color returned to her eyes. Her shoulders lifted, as though nothing had happened.
“Do you like honey cakes?” she asked brightly, as if she hadn’t just been a vessel for something ancient and uncanny.
I stood frozen, my heartbeat a drum in my throat. The way her voice had changed—flat, distant, like something speaking through her—it clawed at a memory.
Aeryn’s voice, low and wrong, whispering words that weren’t his. The same stillness after. The same eerie calm, like the storm had passed but left the air wrong in its wake.
Even Lysara had gone still, her expression unreadable. “The old shadows are restless again…” Lysara whispered, almost to herself.
Santiago let out a nervous laugh, brushing a hand through his hair. “Well… I do love honey cakes, yes,” he offered, voice a shade too high to sound casual.
Kylo echoed the laugh—sharp, shaky—like it had climbed out of his throat just to chase away the silence.
“I also love them,” I said softly, rising to my feet.
We ate in the warmth of the kitchen, soft-spiced sweetness melting across our tongues, the hum of mundane comfort stretching over the strangeness that we all just witnessed.
Lysara and Santiago stood near the hearth at the center of the kitchen, close enough that their shoulders brushed as they shared a quiet laugh between bites, heads tilted inward in some soft reprieve.
When I slipped away, neither of them noticed.
For days, they’d shadowed me wherever I went—softly, politely, but always there. Even when they pretended not to, I could feel it.
Freedom here was an illusion—measured, permitted, timed. Which meant anything allowed to grow had been allowed on purpose.
If there were gardens hidden somewhere in this twilight fortress, that was where the Etherblooms would be.
I didn’t exactly know where such a place existed—or if it even could. Nyxarra was locked in eternal dusk. I wasn’t sure how anything grew here, let alone bloomed.
My steps were light, careful, drawn by some pull I couldn’t name as I wound down the corridor toward the dining hall. The same hall where Kaelith had announced his intentions only days ago.
The doors were slightly ajar. Torchlight pulsed through the gap, shadows dancing against the stone. I pressed closer, peering inside.
Kaelith stood in the center of the room—shirtless, his body painted with ink and sigils. The markings swam like language across his skin. He moved—fluid, poised, lethal.
He was sparring. I crept inside.
His opponent looked skilled—quick-footed, focused—but fear clung to his movements.
Kaelith disarmed him in one breath, blade flashing with cruel efficiency. Then came a second blade, a shorter one, curved. He drove it into the left of the man’s breastbone. The man’s eyes went wide.
Kaelith pulled him close, sword still embedded, holding him in what might’ve looked like an embrace to anyone watching from afar.
Then he sank his teeth in.
The sound he made was obscene—part growl, part moan, deep and guttural. He drank, his eyes half-lidded with indulgence.
I gasped, the sound catching in my throat as my back struck the edge of a table just inside the doorway. Goblets toppled, clattering against the floor with a dull metallic ring.
Kaelith’s head snapped up.
His gaze met mine across the room, unblinking. I couldn’t have moved even if I wanted to.
Still holding the man against him, he took one final draw before letting the body slide bonelessly to the floor.
Shadows appeared, materializing from the edges of the room. Their eyes glinted as they dragged the corpse into the dark without a word.
“Aurelia, my love,” Kaelith purred as he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. He slowly sucked the stain from it before he let his hand fall.
“I’m glad to see you’re doing much better,” he said, stepping forward.
I should’ve never left the kitchens.
Because Kaelith had already shown me what he could do. That vision—Aeryn’s heart torn from his chest, his smile wiped from the world—hadn’t felt like a trick. I could still feel his blood on my hands, smell the ash in the air.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t told me how or when. The message had been clear: Aeryn’s life was a thread, and Kaelith held the shears.
Hopelessness pressed like a weight against my chest, but I would not let it win. If I couldn’t fight him head-on, then I’d fight another way.
I would play his game—every move, every beat—until I found a way to cut him down from within. It was the only path I could see that kept Aeryn breathing.
I’d known men like Kaelith. Cloaked in charm, carved in cruelty. Though I’d never been chosen, never marked by any goddess, I’d learned to make my own kind of power. I knew how to wield a blade while dancing on the edge of a predator’s heart.
So I smiled. A slow, careful thing, one I knew didn’t touch my eyes.
“Prince Kaelith,” I said, dipping my head just slightly. “Didn’t expect to find anyone here.” Not entirely a lie. I hadn’t expected to find him. “I was just… heading to the garden,” I added, feigning casual interest.
I gave him a soft smile, tilting my head in a way I knew drew attention. Flirtation wasn’t armor, not really. But sometimes, it could be a distraction.
Kaelith’s lips curved.
“Call me Kaelith. I’ll walk you,” he said.
He stepped closer, gently sliding my hand through the crook of his arm, guiding it to rest at his bicep. The touch was soft, practiced, but beneath it I felt his strength coiled, waiting.
This wasn’t a partnership. This wasn’t equal footing. Kaelith set the stage, wrote the script, cast me as his bride. But if he thought I would only read my lines, he was wrong.
Hayat had taught me: masks were weapons, silence a shield, performance a blade. If Kaelith wanted a play, then fine. I’d give him one. But the ending wouldn’t be his.
I lifted my chin, letting the mask settle—and walked beside him.