Chapter 38 Malachi
Malachi
The saddle creaked under my hands as I tightened the final strap.
The mares were steady, dark-coated, and trained well enough to tolerate Gabriel’s unsettling magic—though fortunately for everyone involved, he’d never willingly ride one.
He’d sooner take his chances in the Veil than climb onto a horse.
Before I left the stables, I made one last stop.
The library was near silent at this hour, lit only by soft glowstones set along the baseboards. Seraphine had left the books I’d asked for on the counter, bound in violet-threaded leather with no titles on the spines. Just as she’d said—unmarked, unindexed, deliberately forgotten.
Once, the goddesses had offered blessings freely.
Passed from goddess to mortal as gifts of kinship.
A flame to keep a child through winter. A tide that rose only when called.
They were small, sacred things. The patron ceremonies came later, twisted into law by the ones who sought control and the goddesses who craved worship.
These books were older than the rites. Older than the rewritten histories. They remembered what had been stolen.
I tucked them into the saddlebag. If I couldn’t protect Aurelia from what she was becoming, I could at least give her the truth.
By the time I stepped back into the courtyard, Lysara was already arguing with Santiago near one of the mares.
“I’ve been riding longer than you’ve been alive, Navarro. I do not need your help.”
Santiago grinned, holding out his hand anyway. She rolled her eyes but let him boost her up, laughing under her breath.
I adjusted the reins on my mount just as Aurelia approached. She looked up at me, expression unreadable, but her eyes were brighter than they had been in days. Clearer.
“Hi,” she said, simple and soft.
Something tightened in my chest.
“Hi,” I answered.
Gabriel appeared at her side, and without hesitation, she turned and wrapped both arms around him in a full embrace. Closed her eyes. Let herself be held.
I didn’t blame her. His kind were born for this.
The Shadow Elves Eryndis once blessed could take the sharpest edge off fear just by being near—an old magic of resonance.
Gabriel didn’t steal emotion; he softened it, steadied it, drew panic into something quieter.
But the weight of what he absorbed never vanished.
It settled somewhere behind his eyes—a burden he carried in silence.
He’d always borne that cost, even after Eryndis was torn from him.
No wonder she leaned into him. Anyone would.
Aurelia pulled back and glanced behind Gabriel. “You don’t have a horse?”
Gabriel’s eyes went wide, then narrowed immediately at me. I shrugged, answering before he could. “He’s afraid of them.”
Gabriel shot me a glare sharp enough to slice marrow. “I am not afraid of them,” he said, voice low. “I simply find their giant, beastly presence... unsettling.”
Aurelia blinked. “That’s not better.”
“It is for me,” Gabriel said. “Besides, I prefer to walk. It’s easier to stay hidden in shadow when you’re not dragging around a half-ton animal that snorts like it disapproves of your existence.”
Santiago laughed from the other side of the courtyard. “He’s not wrong.”
I checked the packs one last time. Food. Weapons. Cloaks. And the books Aurelia didn’t yet know I had grabbed for her.
I reached for the reins, but Aurelia was already mounting. “I’ve got it,” she said, firm and unbothered. With the practiced ease of someone who hadn’t spent the last week dancing on the edge of death, she swung into the saddle.
She turned and extended a hand down to me, palm open in mock chivalry. “Need help up, General?”
I arched my brow. “No, no, no.” A smirk tugged at my mouth as I stepped forward and took hold of the saddle. “You’re riding in front.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Because you’re significantly height-challenged, and I’d like you to see more than the back of my head for the next few days.”
Before she could argue, I hoisted myself up behind her.
Santiago, already mounted with Lysara tucked in front of him, chimed in with a grin. “He just wants an excuse to hold you all day.”
Lysara smacked his thigh. He grinned wider and pulled her closer. Aurelia snorted. Gabriel—adjusting the saddle packs at our mare’s side—didn’t even glance up.
“Malachi’s logic is sound,” Gabriel said evenly. “Stealth and strategy favor his position.”
Aurelia sighed and scooted forward just enough for me to settle behind her.
I tried not to notice how warm she felt. How snugly her back aligned against my chest. But even through the new leathers, I could feel her—solid and alive and fiercely present in a way that made my pulse stutter before I caught it.
She smelled different now. There was something else layered beneath—the edge of something god-touched and old. Power that hadn’t fully decided what to be yet.
She turned her head just enough to speak without looking at me. “You’ll manage to control yourself, won’t you?” A pause. “You did so well in the bath, after all.”
My breath caught, just briefly.
“I was… focused,” I said, clearing my throat. “On your condition.”
“Mm.” She faced forward again, adjusting her weight deliberately, hips shifting as if she didn’t know exactly what it did to me. “Of course you were.”
I hadn’t forgotten this morning. The image of her still clung to me—the parting of her lips, the flush rising up her neck, the slow slide of her hand beneath her waistband.
I’d seen her.
Long enough to know what she was doing. Long enough to want to keep watching. I’d forced my gaze to the wall. Cleared my throat too loudly. Given her the chance to cover, to lie. Still, I couldn’t help myself.
“And what do you know about behaving?” I murmured. “This morning you were one breath away from tearing those clothes off just to get your hand beneath them. That’s not how good girls behave… now is it?”
She didn’t even pretend to flinch.
“Ah, Malachi,” she hummed, voice wicked, “you should know by now I am anything but a good girl.”
“Well, this is cozy,” Santiago’s voice rang out, too bright, too loud. My hands tightened on the reins before I could stop them. “Should we give you two a moment? Maybe a tent? A cold bath? I can fetch one. Or all three.”
Aurelia and I snapped our heads toward him in perfect unison, twin expressions of shut up sharpened to a point.
Santiago just grinned wider, completely unbothered. “I mean it,” he went on, tightening his arm around Lysara with mock seriousness. “I’ve seen tension before, but yours has actual teeth. These poor horses are going to hate us before we clear the gates.”
Lysara let out a laugh, low, warm, and spectacularly unhelpful, while Gabriel adjusted the final pack with a pointed sigh, the kind that said he’d long accepted all of us as lost causes.
Aurelia shifted in front of me. I tensed, jaw tightening.
“Would you sit still?” I hissed under my breath.
“Sorry,” she said, far too innocently. “So hard to find a comfortable position.”
Gods. If she shifted against me one more time, I wasn’t sure whether I’d survive the ride.
The castle shrank behind us like a bruise against the mist, its towers bleeding into dusk as we crossed the gate. For the first time in centuries, I didn’t look back.