CHAPTER NINE
Verena
CALLUM GUIDED ME FORWARD, over the threshold and into the forge.
Though, guided felt too generous.
He had all but shoved me through that doorway. Not unkindly, but with the urgency of someone who had run out of patience.
I stumbled inside, even as every instinct begged me to flee.
The heat struck me quickly, the tang of melted iron and ash coating my tongue. The walls were lined with an arsenal of tools, blackened hammers, metal tongs, all clustered in rows. Even the ceiling above was heavy with dangling, rust-bitten horseshoes.
A furnace sat in front of me, its belly glowing like a dragon ready to strike.
That’s where Wells stood, bathed in flame. He hadn’t yet grown into full Fae height, barely a year awakened, and still wore that young-boy innocence like it mattered.
His clothes were charred and blackened, dark strands of hair soaked to the back of his neck.
He didn’t notice us. Or couldn’t see us. Not with the iron mask covering the entirety of his face.
His hum drifted through the room, every strike of his hammer ringing in rhythm with the forge’s roar, sparks scattering like lunethmoths.
Callum nudged me forward, and I hesitated. Then, reluctantly, swallowed the edge of fault rising, and forced myself a step closer.
I had to face him.
He wasn’t a child anymore, despite the purity that had never left him, and neither was I.
Wells turned to us at last, orange flames reflecting off his mask, the weight of the furnace still shielding him.
My hand lifted, stiff and awkward as I gave a pathetic wave.
He removed the mask, dropping it with a clang that resounded like judgment. Soot streaked every line of his face, and still, beneath it all, he looked devastatingly young. Too young.
The hammer stayed tight in his grip and movement wavered behind my eyes.
This was a bad idea.
I shifted back, bumping into Callum’s chest, and his hand curled around my arm, a grip I couldn’t shake.
Don’t, his voice pressed into my mind. Run, and I’ll have him melt the damn thing down.
The hammer fell at last, its weight cracking against the table, sparks against my bones.
Callum only smiled wider. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Duke said you were finished with my request.”
My brows narrowed. “Why am I here for this, couldn’t you have just brought it to me?”
Callum shrugged, infuriatingly casual. “No.” His hand slipped free of my arm. “You want it, you get it yourself.”
I rolled my eyes, masking the way my stomach twisted.
“Of course,” Wells replied. His weary brown eyes carried the strain of things never spoken. “Got it right here for you.”
He searched the cluttered tables where a collection of blades sat, some cooling in sand, strands of hair falling across his face with every move.
His fist hit the wood once, a muted bang, before he muttered, “Must be in the back. Sit tight.” Then he slipped away, through a half-hinged door.
I caught a glimpse before it shut—a bed tucked under windows, a desk stacked high. A life lived in quiet and isolation.
“You’re breathing like a bull,” Callum noted, snatching a hammer and tossing it into the air.
He caught it with ease, like neither its weight nor the room’s tension would dare touch him.
“Cut it out before your eyes go black and we’ve got bigger problems.” His throat cleared, like I was making him as uncomfortable as I felt.
“You’re not going to prey on anyone in this room, and that’s a fact. ”
He was right, but that dark pulse...it remembered what I had tried to forget.
“I just…” My voice thinned, shame curling around my chest. “I get anxious seeing him.”
Every time I looked at Wells, it was like staring straight at my guilt.
Behind me someone whispered, “I don’t want you to feel that way around me.” Wells had emerged from thin air, like he’d stepped from the damn forge itself.
I spun so fast I nearly tripped over my own legs, hand flying to my chest. “Fates curse me, how long were you standing there?”
He stepped closer, something unseen clutched in his hands. “It was my fault, what happened. Everyone knows it.”
“It wasn’t—” I shook my head in dispute, the words cracking, choking me. Before I could finish, an object shimmered in his palms.
“This is for you,” he said, the firelight catching across the sweat on his face as he motioned behind me. “From Callum. Made by me.” Callum nodded, smug as sin. “I had very specific instructions.” Wells glared at him. “And a deadline. But I got it done early if you wish to brag about it, and me.”
There it was, the smile that tried its damned hardest to outshine what lay hidden, fracturing when he forced it too big.
I reached forward, then paused. “May I?”
He nodded and the fabric rippled away the moment my fingers grazed it. And in its place, a dagger. No—artwork.
The hilt was carved from white marble, smooth as ivory and cool as midnight, where a single amaranth stone nested in the pommel, catching the forge’s glow like captured flame.
My fingers drifted up the blade, breath stalling when I caught the engraving. Au Savaro. Our savior.
My chest tightened and I blinked hard, trying to disguise it.
Callum came to my side, admiring the dagger he’d envisioned. “During a mission for the king, we had to recover in a cave. Obviously, I got antsy.” He traced the blade like it was sacred.
“You, antsy?” A dry laugh slipped past my lips. “Unheard of.”
He chuckled, shaking his head, his thumb sweeping over the engraving. “I found this stone lodged in the wall and it felt too beautiful to leave behind. I wasn’t sure what to do with it at first, but then you lost your dagger.”
He said it so modestly. Like I had simply misplaced a weapon, and he had simply pocketed some stone.
Simple. But gods, it was so much fucking more.
I turned the blade in my palm. Perfect balance. Perfect weight.
As if it had been born just for me.
“There’s just one more thing—” Wells began.
But I didn’t hear him, I only heard the blade singing against my palm, my skin. In a single movement I spun, loosing the dagger from my grip as the blade whistled through the air before embedding itself clean between two swords hanging inches apart on the wall. The clang rang out like music.
I glanced back to Callum, who was rubbing his forehead, trying, and failing, to suppress a grin.
Wells only stared, mouth parted, throat working around a swallow. “I was going to say,” his fingers raked through his hair, nails catching at the back of his neck as he let out a breath, “it’s on the heavier side. Because the blade is made of nix metal.”
The word sank into me like poison.
Nix.
Mined from dimensional rifts and crafted with blood rarer than gold. A weapon that didn’t just null magic, it drained it. Drained you. Until all that was left was an empty body and a soul wrung dry.
The blood drained from my face. “I’m sorry—” I dragged my jaw up from the floor. “You made me a blade from nix?” The marble gleamed where it hung unmoving on the wall. Not only beautiful now, but deadly. “You do realize if I cut Callum, or anyone, with it, they could die?”
Wells’ head swung from the dagger, to Callum, back to me. “Were you planning to stab him with it?”
I didn’t answer, not right away. Instead, I moved, crossing to the decorated wall in three strides, ripping the blade free. The weight hummed through my palm.
Mine.
“No plans as of yet.” I slid him a wink over my shoulder.
Callum’s smirk widened, and he drifted closer, laying his hand against my shoulder.
“Glad you like it, V.” The look in his eyes, it was affection laced with something rarer that I hadn’t seen in a long while.
“I have to head to the palace—” He slipped a folded note into my hand, his fingers hot against my skin. “I’ll see you both in a few days.”
I stared at the door long after it shut behind him.
Nothing came to me about why what he said made me feel that subtle warning. There wasn’t one damning thing I could recall happening this week. And yet, Callum’s unease remained, stitched into the air, refusing to clear.
Restlessness pooled at my feet, shifting me on my toes as I pocketed the parchment. Only then did it hit me, who I was left alone with...
The guilt swelled again, walls looming closer.
I wanted to let them crush me.
The Viper tested the boundaries of its cage, its cell door creaked open, slow, certain. I didn’t remember unlocking it, but here it was.
Heat crept down my spine, filling my limbs with that familiar tremble. I slammed my eyes shut, feeling the shift already, fangs easing down, darkness spilling into my vision.
It hissed before it said, This is what you truly desire.
But I didn’t let it finish. I wouldn’t.
I was still in control. Of who I was. Of who I became. I shoved it back, hard, forcing it behind the bars of my mind. The door slammed closed. Locked. For Wells. For Elva.
When I opened my eyes, Wells was watching, like I was a thing barely contained, a celestial rupture he wasn’t sure how long would hold. The silence stuck between us now was brutal.
Callum had been a buffer. His smile, his presence, a shield to hide behind. Now it was only me and Wells.
And the burden of what I had done.
I wanted to apologize. Gods, I wanted to fall to my knees and spill it all. But if I gave voice to it, it would become a conversation. And from the look in his eyes, he didn’t want it spoken either.
His stare cut to the dagger in my grip and his fingers twitched, flexing once against his thigh.
I opened my mouth, searching for words, for anything to break the crushing quiet. Nothing came. The forge seemed to sense it, its warmth swelling, pushing against my skin until the air itself felt complicit.
Speak, Verena.
A laugh broke free in place of words. Harsh and severely misplaced. A jagged little sound that didn’t belong here.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Wells offered. “But I have to get back to work.”
A dismissal, if not subtle. And merciful.