Chapter 24 Aurelia
Aurelia
I lingered outside my door until I heard Santiago’s voice fade down the hall, Lysara’s softer tones tugging after it. Their footsteps receded, a door thudded shut, and silence followed.
Only then did I turn the other way. Ten paces.
At the end of the corridor, a narrow passage slanted down, lit by a single slit window where mist pressed thick against warped glass.
Below, I glimpsed the pale smear of courtyard stone.
Surely this stair led outside. Surely the door at the bottom wasn’t locked.
The stair breathed cold. Stone sweated under my feet, torchlight thinning, the air humming. Aeryn’s face rose where my breath should have been—his pupils swallowed in black, his voice a thread: I stay for you.
I stepped outside. Cold bit instantly. My breath ghosted fast in the air as I took in my surroundings.
The night stretched wide around me. Stone paths crossed in neat grids, vanishing into the mist that hugged the keep.
The castle felt too small. Too loud. Too full of hands that wanted to touch and eyes that wanted to claim.
I needed air. Just air.
So I walked. Farther than I meant to.
And by the time I realized where the corridor led, cold mist was already curling around my ankles. At first, silence. Then pressure. Then love—suffocating, endless.
I had wandered into the Veil.
The shadows slid up my wrists and slicked over my ribs. When I gasped, they poured into my mouth and lungs, adoration thick and drowning.
They whispered. Not in words, but in a sound my bones understood. Stay. Ours. Hush. A hundred soft mouths pressed against my skin, breathing into me. The Veil pulsed like a heartbeat, matching mine.
Love. Claim. Keep.
My lungs cinched. My vision narrowed. The sweetness turned to weight—hands that wanted to worship, then smother. Something ripped me back.
“Of all the places to wander…” he said, closing his hand around my arm. “You do enjoy tempting fate.”
Reality slammed back in jagged pieces—his grip, the cold air, the cut of his breath. For a fraction too long, the shadows clung to my ribs like they didn’t want to let me go, and Kaelith’s face blurred with theirs. Claim. Keep. His eyes held the same promise.
I hit him. My fist cracked across his mouth. His head snapped. He licked the blood slow and smiled, sharp.
Kaelith bent, hooked an arm beneath my knees, and threw me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing.
“Put me down—”
“Absolutely not. You’ve proven you make terrible decisions.”
I thrashed. Kicked. Cursed.
He didn’t even break stride. His breath stayed maddeningly calm. His grip tightened. Still I bucked, shoulders jerking, jaw clenched. The only thing left to me was teeth.
So I bit him.
My mouth closed hard against the line of his back, through his thin tunic and muscle. He hissed, his hold jolting loose. I hit the ground hard.
He straightened slowly, hand pressed to the place I’d bitten. Eyes brightening. “Did you,” he said softly, incredulous and delighted all at once, “just bite your prince?”
I didn’t answer. I only met his eyes, breathing hard, letting the silence speak: Yes.
He stared, jaw working. Then he exhaled through his teeth, bent, and hauled me up again. Shadows surged back into place, binding tighter this time.
The back stair was narrow. Keepers pressed themselves flat to the damp walls as he passed, eyes averted, muttering low under their breath. A few dared glance up at me, but no one stopped him. The torchlight stuttered over their faces, then vanished as Kaelith climbed higher.
I twisted one last time, but he only adjusted his hold until I was pinned more securely.
“Enough,” he said, utterly unbothered. “You’re making a scene.”
He stopped at my chamber door, shadows still wound tight around my wrists.
He set me down but didn’t release me, his copper eyes burning into mine. “If I remove them, are you going to run again?”
I lifted my chin. “Maybe.”
For a breath, I considered bolting anyway, shadows or not. But Aeryn’s face rose in my mind, and the weight of Kaelith’s stare told me I wouldn’t make it two steps.
I swallowed the urge down, but not the fury.
His mouth curved. “If you do… I’ll tie you to my bedpost.” A promise. “Now get ready.”
The shadows released all at once.
He pushed the door open and ushered me inside, the door closing behind us with a soft click.
I stood facing him, my breath uneven but steadying.
Two more days. Just two. Then I could get back to Aeryn.
“Aurelia,” he murmured, stepping fully into the room.
He crossed to the small table by the window, where two untouched glasses waited, and lifted one with idle grace.
His lips curved into a slow, hungry smile as he turned back to me.
“I came to check on your fitting. From the looks of it…” His gaze dragged down my frame, deliberate and devouring.
He gave the wine a lazy swirl. “…it’s going quite well.
Lucky I found you before you ruined that pretty dress. ”
“Ah, yes. Lucky me,” I said smoothly. “All of the dresses in the wardrobe happen to fit like they were made for me.”
Play nice. Just for now. I told myself.
His smile widened, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. “Interesting,” he said.
“Convenient,” I offered lightly. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Oh, there are many things,” he said, his tone wrapped in innuendo. “But we’ll get to those eventually. The gowns,” he swirled the wine in his glass, “—belonged to someone quite important to this realm. She wore them almost as beautifully as you do.”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t know who they belonged to, not for certain. But I didn’t trust Kaelith’s reverence.
“And who might that be?” I asked, feigning curiosity.
“Her name was Eryndis,” he said, emptying his glass in one smooth motion. He poured another. Then one more, and held it out to me. “The Veiled Keeper. Goddess of secrets and thresholds… though some would say she spent too much time pretending to be mortal.”
I didn’t reach for the wine.
Kaelith chuckled, low and amused. “The Nightmother made the goddesses for love,” Kaelith said, eyes glittering.
“Not mortal love—the fleeting kind that leaves you broken. Eternal love. A love so consuming she tore herself to pieces to birth them. And yet… even that wasn’t enough to keep the realms from fracturing.
Tell me, Aurelia—what do you think your blood was made for? ”
He took a sip, eyes dragging over me slowly. “Eryndis always did have a fondness for fragile things.”
A white-hot flash of heat surged through my body—sharp, sudden, searing. My breath caught. The air in the room shifted, too close now, thick and humming with something unspoken.
I couldn’t wear these. Not when Malachi’s people had bled for her. Not when Gabriel would stand in that hall, watching.
I couldn’t do that to them.
My face must have betrayed me, as it often did, because Kaelith stepped forward.
“Now, now,” he crooned, his voice a slow drip of honeyed poison. “There’s nothing wrong with that, my nychta.”
“People are going to love it,” he added, eyes gleaming. Whether it was the wine or lust, or both, I couldn’t say. But there was something darker there too, something sick. “In fact,” he murmured, making a slow twirling gesture with one finger, “turn around.”
I hesitated.
His smile deepened, all teeth and anticipation.
Reluctantly, I turned.
The heat of his body pressed close behind mine. His fingers brushed the small of my back, deceptively gentle as they found the silk ties Malachi had just fastened.
The laces began to loosen.
I stiffened. “I can remove it myself, Kaelith.”
“Ah-ah,” he chided, voice thick with amusement, “but why waste the moment? I’d like to see you in something else.”
My fingers shot to the laces, but his hand shot faster.
He fisted a handful of my hair and yanked—hard enough to drag me flush against him. My hands flew to his arm to keep from stumbling.
Try not to scream this time.
The words weren’t Kaelith’s, but memory’s. The cold stone biting my spine. Restraints biting deeper each time I thrashed. A masked voice above me: Push her harder. We’ll find it if it’s there. The sterile tang of iron. The blade tracing me open like a map they meant to redraw.
My breath stuttered. For a moment, I was there again.
Then—another voice. Hayat’s. Gentle. Steady. The opposite of force.
“You’re stronger than storms,” he’d whispered, braiding my hair by firelight. His fingers never yanked, never claimed—only wove. “You don’t have to roar to survive.”
The memory cut through the dark, sharp as lightning. My grip on Kaelith’s arm steadied—not yielding, but holding. I clung to it. To Hayat. To the reminder that I was not broken.
So I let Kaelith keep pretending I was his to unwrap, knowing the truth was mine alone. This wasn’t desire. It was theater. And I would not forget my lines.
I lowered my hands from the knot of hair Kaelith had gathered, pressing them against the front of my dress. He leaned close, his voice curling low.
“That’s my good girl,” Kaelith purred.
My body moved before fear could stop it. I drove my elbow back, sharp and fast, aiming for his ribs.
He caught it mid-strike, his grip like iron around my arm. A laugh rumbled low in his chest, dark and amused.
“There it is,” he murmured, twisting me until my spine pressed flush against him. “That spark I keep seeing.”
“Let go,” I spat, twisting hard, nails raking down his arm. He didn’t flinch—just caught both my wrists in one hand and dragged them down tight against my stomach. His other hand slid back to the laces at my spine.
“Fight all you want, Aurelia,” he murmured, voice velvet over iron. “It makes the game so much sweeter.”
I fought anyway. Kicked, strained, tried to jerk free. My heel scraped against his shin, but his grip only tightened until my ribs ached with the effort of breathing. The more I struggled, the more he seemed to savor it.