CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Verena
I DIDN’T REMEMBER LEAVING CAMP.
One blink, there was a fire crackling beyond the pixie tent where I slept, Elva’s soft breathing at my back. The next, I stood knee-deep in twilight mist, bare feet sinking beneath stone where a ghost-trail of smoke and spice lingered.
A lake yawned open before me, moonlight fractured across its black surface. It looked like a mirror waiting to drown its own reflection. I dared to lean forward, to see what stared back—
The first thing I lost was my breath. It didn’t flee, it was stolen, dragged from my lungs. That was when the whisper came, a slick breeze of numb twisting up my spine.
You’ve wandered so far, so close, so…wrong.
I gripped the stone beside me. “You don’t decide where I belong,” I forced out, though my voice tangled with a hiss.
Don’t I? it said.
My vision blurred, pupils thinning to lethal slits. The water shuddered as if it feared what stared out through my eyes.
Ronan’s voice was a distant storm thundering at the edges of my mind.
Verena.
A snarl of static seared across the bond, cutting him off. The connection twisted, strained, a dark presence sinking its teeth into the tether between us. I reached for him. For the heat. For the anchor—
But the curse sank its defilement deeper, dragging me down with it. The lake rippled outward, ring after ring, a fissure stirring beneath its depths as a distant call whistled from behind me.
This no longer felt like losing control, but more like removing the muzzle, tasting the darkness, bittersweet and too damn addictive.
The Viper exhaled in delight. Good girl.
And just before the corruption swallowed the last piece of me, a flicker of green-gold light surged down the bond. Ronan, calling me back.
The curse twisted and I lent it my smile.
Try not to scream.
The voice boomed through my thoughts, so suddenly the heavy tome slipped from my hands and hit the floor with a crack.
Heads turned as I slapped a palm to my chest.
“Gods, what the fuck.” I scrambled to snatch the book up, its rough leather still vibrating like it had shared in his laughter.
Just testing this bond thing out, Ronan said, smug, deep, and far too close inside my skull.
I hadn’t realized that a blood oath apparently came with the added bonus of twenty-four seven intrusion rights. Lovely.
Gods, your head is a noisy place. I’m starting to understand why you’re always so on edge.
Oh good, I grumbled. I was worried you couldn’t possibly get any more irritating.
Ah. Straight for the throat, then. And before you panic, no, I can’t hear everything. Just the interesting parts.
My fingers continued skimming the brittle pages. None of it made sense. The ancient script, the Verathi, I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I shoved it aside for Callum or Nezra, forcing my mind to steady, and lifting another.
Luckily for you, the interesting parts are usually also the dangerous ones, I shot back, words sharp as I could make them.
He didn’t miss a beat. How’s reading going?
Unproductive.
No need to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d already seen me fail at translating from the tome. Or to admit that my shields were more sieve than stone.
If reading’s failing you, it’s because you’re thinking too loudly. I’ve felt the tension rolling off you since I left, he murmured, the tone so smooth it could have been pity, if not for the hint of amusement underneath.
Aren’t you rescuing a damsel in distress?
The tome crackled as I turned the page to where a strange diagram stretched to all four corners. A circle split into six pieces, marked with words neither the curse nor I recognized. My stomach tightened still.
Your pulse is spiking.
I’m fine. Did you find her?
She’s clinging to Elysian’s back, shaking like a reed.
Poor thing. I’d sooner fling myself off a cliff than be stuck on top of Elysian.
I pictured the hulking hound and fought the urge to grin. Although that exact comparison of flinging myself off a cliff might have been ill-timed. The wave of fleeting grief through the bond confirmed Ronan thought the same.
Also, getting into your mind was like walking through an open door. Fix that.
As if the Viper and my interior monologue weren’t already a crowded room, adding Ronan’s voice felt completely maddening.
Let me check my to-do list. A sharp tsk cut from my tongue. Booked today. Maybe tomorrow.
We’ll be back by tomorrow night, he said. That will do.
Pest.
The candle beside me sputtered as I squinted at the script. Elva’s undone braid spilled across the cushion, and half my lap, as she slept beside me, one hand still clutching an upside-down book.
You’re sure she’ll be safe in Ryuu? I asked, because prudence still lived in me somewhere.
No safer place. The certainty in him landed through the bond before anything else.
Ford mumbled across the caravan in his sleep, his foot twitching like he was kicking at invisible enemies. My eyes moved to Wells, who was slumped sideways above him where he sat with Nezra on a cot as she pretended to read. Her eyes were distant, lost to something.
“No safer place,” I repeated to myself. Low enough that even Ronan couldn’t hear. It was funny, a few days ago I would have thought there was no safer place than this pixie camp. And look at it now.
I wasn’t sure why I asked, Is she young?
A rune caught my eye off one of the pages, a single vertical line, split once near the center before ending inside a broken circle. My pulse twitched, slipping out of repetition once.
Same age as Wells, Ronan said. But Veyari’s age unusually. She could be eight thousand years old, and we’d never know the difference.
Likely as beautiful as she is unique, I thought, and the thought tasted like worry.
Nothing to be jealous of, love. She won’t be sleeping in my bed tonight.
There was heat threaded through that scrape of humor. Gods dammit these shields.
We’re approaching Ryuu’s borders. Do me a favor and barricade that beautiful mind of yours before I check in tonight. If I’m able to read your dirty thoughts, he teased, I’ll take that as permission.
I shot a rude gesture at his presence. Go away.
This time I was met with actual resistance. A bloom of black, scale-hard wards rising between us. It wasn’t subtle.
Bastard.
I flipped lazily through the rest of the tome, my eyes getting noticeably heavier each turn. They shot open when I came across a map sprawled over one page. It was Selvarra but drawn…broken, kingdoms shattered like floating shards.
A future? A past? I didn’t know which was worse.
We sat gathered around the pixie’s eternal fire, a grey sun breaking through the morning, while we waited for Ronan and Elysian to return the following day.
Killian had incessantly dragged steel against stone while Elva worried a curl around her finger repeatedly.
“What is that?” Inessa asked, chin tilting toward the delicate square parchment clutched between Wells’ hands.
It was small, but his lips lifted, just in the corner. “A portrait of my family.”
She leaned in, breath grazing the paper’s edge. “I’ve never seen one so small and realistic. Whoever drew it must be gifted.”
His thumb brushed the crease where it had bent, worn soft by his pocket. “It’s not a drawing. It’s a real portrait. They captured it on something called an ikon when we were in Amarrow visiting my aunt and uncle.”
He was younger there, no more than ten, his father’s hand resting on his shoulder with a grin that nearly split the frame. His mother’s straight hair, the same shade as his, fell over her cheek as she gazed down at him. Pride softened every line of her face, a love caught mid-breath.
“Amarrow?” Ford lifted a brow, waving both hands over his ears. “As in the continent?”
“Will you stop doing ear shields?” I snapped.
Mostly because it wasn’t fair that he could mute the world whenever he wanted, and I had to deal with multiple voices haunting my own.
“Yes,” Wells' tone roughened.
“That’s where my brother ended up after he left Selvarra,” Ford muttered, pretending to flip through the manuscript sprawled across his lap that he was meant to browse last night.
The dust was barely disturbed; he wasn’t fooling anyone.
“With no magic over there Amarrow doesn’t ask anything of him. ”
Killian leaned back against a tree, head tilted toward the sky, displaying the ragged scars that crossed his jaw. He let out a long, piercing whistle. “Heard they’ve only got one ruler there. An emperor. And an army to match the title.”
Wells gave a small nod, eyes tracing the portrait one last time before he folded it with care, returning it to the safety of his pocket. “It’s beautiful there,” he spoke quietly. “A different world.”
Inessa’s hand found his shoulder, eyes lingering on him. A mirror of the faces he’d just tucked away. His father’s steady weight, his mother’s tender pride. “Do they have one as well? To look at while you’re away.”
He exhaled as he said, so faint the words barely reached her, “They’re gone.”
Inessa’s eyes dipped, the sadness there but contained, as she gave his shoulder a light squeeze.
The weight of loss sat in every corner, stretching between us as my thoughts slipped to Gemma. If she hadn’t died, would we even be here, chasing Nyctom’s shadow? Or would another tragedy have drawn a different path beneath our feet, dragging us onward all the same?
The gods warned us that division would bring ruin, but they never said how much it would cost in blood, in love or sacrifice. I swallowed hard, the ache in my chest a reminder: every step we took was built atop her absence.
“How did they die?” Ford asked, careless as ever.
“Ford,” we all snapped at once, though Nezra was the one who leaned across and cuffed him hard on the arm.
His hands flew up. “What? It’s a question.”
“It’s okay,” Wells shook his head before the rest of us could flay Ford alive. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is the promise I made to them. One I intend to keep.”
That was all steel, no hesitation, no crack where doubt could slip through. In that instant, it was clear, our boy was gone. Whatever innocence he’d carried had been forced into something harder.
From the corner of my eye, I caught Callum watching him, his expression unreadable. The kind of look that left a sting, because it was the same one he wore when he thought I wasn’t looking.
And when I reached for him, for the bond he’d given me all those years ago, the only thread tying me to the family I had left, I didn’t just find it sheltered. I found it shattered.
Another hour had passed of us twiddling our thumbs, waiting, until it was Elva that decided the quiet had sat with us too long.
She turned to me. “So,” she hesitated, “what did Maerin tell you...before…”
Callum’s head lifted from his map, eyes drawing together. “She wanted you alone, why?”
I shifted uncomfortably as every damn pair of eyes latched to me. Mae’s last words hadn’t settled; their omen was still certain. Let them feel the ascension of your Vyratheon blood.
Vyratheon.
The name sounded so familiar, like it had been whispered into my mind while I was sleeping, settling into my soul like a first heartbeat. The moment I thought about it, the darkness stirred, hissing against my ribs, winding tight.
The way Mae had said it made it clear this wasn’t just a name.
It was the truth of who I was, who I am.
If it meant nothing, she wouldn’t have spent her last breath giving it to me.
But what good was a name without a history?
Without a root? It was still only a reminder of everything I didn’t know about myself.
I forced the name back into darkness I kept locked, trying to shove the Viper down with it.
“She said that if war came, if Obrann or the Bale pressed further, her people would stand with us. That we wouldn’t be alone.”
Elva’s shoulders eased, soft relief spilling across her face as she murmured something to Wells.
“She didn’t want to share that kind offer with the rest of us?” Ford bit out, lounging over stone while he sent small force-shields to catch and entrap escaping embers from the fire.
Callum only grunted, resuming his incessant planning as Inessa and Kanoa joined in, showing him our best route to take. Killian never looked up, the lie sliding neatly into the circle of firelight before us.
Except Nezra. Her eyes caught mine, unblinking. She wasn’t fooled. But she let me keep the secret, let me cradle this name like a blade pressed to my own throat.
The fire popped, sparks snapping skyward, and I tore my eyes away before Nezra’s stare could strip me of every lie.