CHAPTER FIFTY-SI #2
“It’s not a cage,” I told her. “It’s a forge. It’s in you, Elva. You’re not broken.” She hesitated and I caught her arm, forcing her to meet me. “One day soon, it will consume everything in your way, and you’ll be magnificent.”
The faintest spark caught behind her eyes. Hope, or maybe fear. They were often the same thing.
Ahead of us, Wells walked in silence alone, his shoulders squared, posture tighter.
He didn’t carry himself like a boy anymore, more like someone who’d already seen the cost of survival and was still paying it.
The way his head scanned side to side, the way he inhaled to feel rather than smell, it looked as though he was memorizing the world.
I closed the gap between us, my boots quiet on the gravel. “You okay?”
He looked over his shoulder, brown eyes leaden with exhaustion. A half smile tugged at his mouth. “I’m alive. That’s more than I expected a few months ago.”
I tried to smile back, but my throat bobbed. Because I knew what he wasn’t saying—that living didn’t feel like surviving anymore.
Nudging his arm with my elbow, I teased, “Look at you now, though. You were made to be part of our Order. You should feel proud.”
The smile he offered was weak, but the strength of his voice surprised me.
“I am. Coming with you all, it forced me to grow faster than I would’ve.
Honestly, faster than I wanted to.” His eyes were still rimmed red, glassy but not broken.
“But it’s good,” he said, more to himself than me.
“I was stuck before. Scared of my magic. Of people. Of everything, really. I think I would’ve stayed invisible forever, if… ”
If I hadn’t been taken. If they hadn’t burned our home to the ground. If he hadn’t been dragged into my chaos.
I slowed, reaching for his hand. “Wells…”
He lifted a hand, stopping me before I could let it fall.
“Don’t,” he murmured. “You don’t need to say it.
” The muscles in his jaw tensed before a breath escaped him.
“You took something from me.” Oh gods. “But what came after, what replaced it, was something I wouldn’t have found otherwise. So, thank you.”
“Thank you?” My brow furrowed. “For what?”
He gave a humorless laugh. “You weren’t the only one afraid, Verena. That pain was real for both of us. But so was the change. I learned to survive it. To endure it. And in the end, believe it or not, I think it was you who made me braver.”
The sting behind my eyes burned hot. I blinked fast, willing it away. “You shouldn’t have had to be so brave.”
“No,” he agreed, and this time he smiled true. “But I’m glad I am.”
We reached the edge of the border path, the gray sky stretching above into where the world beyond waited in its stillness.
I reached out with my other hand, fingers finding his shoulder, grounding us both for one fragile moment. “I see you, Wells. Everything you’re becoming. And I’m so damn proud of you. We all are.” My throat tightened. “Your parents would be proud too.”
He nodded. “Then maybe it’s time I finally stop hiding.”
Callum straightened from his crouch, dragging a hand down his face. “Alright—” His stare tracked from Ronan, to Killian, to me, waiting until every attention caught his. “Eyes up, ears open.”
“Oh!” Ford sprang up from the stone. “Here comes the pep talk, everyone. Try to look inspired.”
Callum didn’t dignify him with another glance.
The horizon of Ryuu extended beyond him, obsidian peaks and thick clouds. Though my stare was fixed on the border ahead. The wall of Nyctom.
It loomed before us, a barricade of dark magic where the ward shimmered like smoke trapped behind glass.
No sound. No life. Just that curtain of shadow.
But something had fractured it, leaving a single, jagged rip through its skin.
Nothing bled from it, no force leaked through; whatever power had once lived there was long drained by the Bale.
“The second we cross that barrier, our magic is gone. Every drop of it.” Callum’s boots ground into gravel as he paced. I’ve felt that vulnerability before. “Ronan will still be able to shift, and Verena,” I jerked my head toward him, “you may or may not be able to summon the Viper.”
Yay, me.
“But beyond that,” he continued, “we’re blind. Mortal. Any injury that would’ve healed in seconds will kill you in moments.” He let the silence hang, just long enough for the gravity to sink in.
Then Ronan spoke, a growl softened by purpose. “Our priority is still the heir. They could be in the mountains, caves, even underground. But we start with the fallen palace.”
“Why the palace?” Nezra stepped forward, raven nestled on her shoulder.
Ronan kept his eyes on the rip, waiting for something, anything, to rush from it. “Because power remembers where it was born. And if the heir’s still breathing, that’s where their blood will have called them home.”
Callum nodded once, drawing his sword, the steel flashing dimly under the fading sun.
“Be smart,” he ordered. “Be silent. Be swift. We are stronger, but they are many.” He turned, eyes narrowing at the rift’s edge.
“And they already know we’re coming.” The wind howled, dragging the last of his words into the void, and from deep within it, something whispered back.
I cut in before the dread in his speech could sink its teeth and hold.
“Remember, magic doesn’t define our strength.
” I turned, meeting every set of eyes that waited for what came next.
“We lived eighteen years as mortals before any of us ever felt that rush, and we survived it. We’ve fought our way through worse than what’s waiting across that border. ”
My dagger spun between my fingers, a streak of glinting silver. “So, swallow the fear trying to slither out of your throat. It’s not welcome here. You are in control. Obrann thinks we’ll falter. He thinks we’ll break—” I smiled. “Maybe, once, we would have. But not anymore. Not today.”
The blade caught the glow of a dying sun as I lifted it, aimed at each one of them. “We are warriors. We are the Onrathen. And today, we are all Selvarra’s saviors. And that,” my palm pressed against my heart, “is something no curse, no king, no God can smother.”
The bond flared, Ronan’s pride flooding me in a rush before it reached his face. The way he beheld me then was as if I’d just set the world ablaze. I looked back, my gaze sweeping the line of them. My family, blood or not. Faces carved by loss, lit by a promise stronger than what it left.
What bound us now wasn’t just pain or survival. It was choice. The relentless, quiet decision to keep standing.
Beneath the flash of dread in my chest, another feeling rose. Hope. Because no matter what came next, no matter what we lost, I knew then we would keep moving forward.
Even if it burned us.
For a pause when everything stilled, I was proud. Of them. Of us. Of myself. I let myself feel. Because for the first time, the world we wanted, the one worth dying for, felt possible.
But then the air shifted.
That delicate hum down the bond, Ronan’s warmth, his faith, it fractured. The mask slipped, oil spilling back across the tether where silk once wove between us when that darkness made of venom heard them before I did. Before my own eyes could witness.
That death had finally come. And it blew out the flame in my soul before it could even finish igniting.
Wells staggered first.
A single, trembling step. His eyes, soft brown, shattered to black. A strangled sound crawled from his throat as his hand shook around the shaft buried in his heart.
Then silence.
Utter, suffocating silence.
The world blurred at the edges as my pulse pounded inside my skull. Everything slowed, except him…falling.
The sound when he struck the ground was wrong. Like the gods had dropped him from the sky and broken something on impact.
A breath caught in my chest before Nezra fell next.
Her body jerked forward, collapsing beside him, an arrow quivering from her hip. The raven launched upward, wings frantic, beak open in a scream the world refused to let me hear.
Elva’s shriek was muted. Callum’s orders were only shapes of panic. Ford’s barrier flared, silver light cutting through the haze.
I heard none of it. But I felt everything—the magic recoiling like a wounded beast, the heat leaving my body, the exact second the world decided to take from me again. My veins burned, a fever trying to break free, remembering it was made to destroy.
Ronan’s smoke spilled from his fists, streaks of shadow writhing through the air, brushing against my skin until it shielded me.
Elva’s screams at last tore through the stillness, cracking something sacred as she dropped beside Wells. Light erupted from her palms, flooding his chest, her hands slick with crimson that refused to yield. His tunic had turned to a river of blood, blooming outward in violent red.
Elysian was already there, blade drawn, his body a barricade before Ford’s already flickering shield. Both trying to protect her.
Wells’ eyes found mine, full of fear he didn’t deserve.
“It’s okay,” Elva whispered repeatedly, as if repetition could rewrite it all. “It’s okay, it’s okay—”
“I—” his voice was thin, a thread unraveling, “I can’t feel anything.”
A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. Blood followed from the corner of his mouth.
Elva’s hand shook as she swept his hair from his face. “I know,” she breathed. “I know. It’s okay. I’m going to fix you. Just…just stay with me.”
Magic flared from her palms, frantic. Not the radiant blaze it should have been, but splintered, a dying star gasping for one last spark.
Still, she kept going, kept pushing her light into him, trying to seal the wound, to stop the river.
But the shadows fought back. They leaked beneath her touch, wrapping around the wound, swallowing the glow whole.
She turned to me then. “Verena,” she choked. “What do I do?”
Shouts split the air, echoing through the peaks. Arrows screamed from above, followed by the hiss of enemy magic shattering against Ford’s shield. The barrier wavered again, thinned. His hands shook, his face burning red from the strain.
“What do I do?!” Elva screamed again.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My head shook in denial alone. Sound refused when my lips parted, because I already knew.
Blood dripped from Wells’ mouth, trailing down the curve of his cheek, his jaw. His lashes fluttered as the light around Elva dimmed, her glow faltering to nothing as she pressed harder, whispering prayers to deaf skies.
My knees hit the dirt. “I’m sorry, Wells. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” He didn’t hear me.
I felt the exact moment his heart stilled, the calm of it breaking through every roar, every breath. His chest sank once, eyes open, fixed on the horizon, then nothing. Grief cracked through the land, splitting stone. But it couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t touch what death had already claimed.
The realm trembled beneath my palms as my head fell back, and I screamed. It ripped through me, through the peaks, through the world itself. A sound that flayed the sky bare.
A sound loud enough to wake the gods and damn them all.