Chapter 25
?──── Koen ? ────?
The ruins are quiet now, save for the rhythmic crackle of the small fire Dimitri had built before shifting into his bat form to sleep.
I haven’t moved from my spot beside Serenya. Her breathing is steady—shallow, but steady. That is something. It’s the only thing keeping me from breaking.
My legs are still numb. I had barely managed to walk here, but I don’t feel the cold seeping into my bones or the way my limbs tremble with exhaustion. All I can feel is her hand, limp and bandaged, resting in my own.
I know I should sleep. But every time I blink for too long, I see it again. The moment the nemorak’s bony fingers gripped her, the way her body arched in agony, and the way my magic had exploded out of me like a dying star, wild and unrelenting.
I thought she was going to die, and in that moment, something in me shattered at the thought of losing her forever.
I rest an arm on my knees, watching her face lit by flickers of firelight. She looks peaceful now, but her skin is still mottled with healing burns, and her pulse, when I checked it—not once, but three times—was still too faint for my liking.
I don’t understand what happened to me. Even though I never learned how to control my magic, it has never taken over like that.
It felt like it wasn’t just me, like something had awoken inside my chest and was furious.
Something that answered when she screamed.
What is it about her that causes my magic to respond like that?
I clench my jaw, dropping my forehead to rest against my knees. What is it about her that calls to me like this? She’s fae , and I’m human. I had thought she hated me since the moment we met.
But she came for me. She saved me from a mawless. She had walked through burning light for me. She touched my magic, even as it burned. She came for me when the world had gone white and searing and uncontrollable, whispered my name and pulled me back from the brink.
I don’t understand it. I don’t understand her. How someone who keeps everyone at arm’s length and carries that much fury and grief would still reach for me when I was breaking. How her shadow magic had wrapped around my wild light like it recognized it. Welcomed it, even.
I don’t know how I can feel this strongly for someone after knowing them for so little time.
What I do know is that I have never felt like this before.
Not for anyone. With her—it’s like my soul is reaching for her, like my bones know hers, like I have spent my entire life searching for something and have only now found it. ..in her.
I slowly turn and wipe a bit of soot off her cheek with a trembling hand.
What would she say when she woke? Would she be afraid? Would she see me as a monster? A threat? Would she regret saving me? A lump forms in my throat.
What if I lose control again? What if next time, it actually kills her?
Still, even as my thoughts spiral, I know with absolute certainty that I would do anything to protect her. Always.
Even if it kills me. Even if it means handing her over to Dimitri so he can take her to a healer. Even if it means standing aside, useless and hollow, watching her leave while someone else carries her home.
I look up again, unable to stop watching her. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I’m so sorry.”
I go back to waiting, silent, still, and sleepless, guarding her as if I could keep the gods themselves from coming near.
Hours pass in the quiet, the cave filled only with the occasional crackle of dying flames and the steady rhythm of her breathing.
The fire has long since burned down to soft, glowing embers by the time the sky outside begins to pale with the coming dawn.
Dimitri stirs and shifts back to his vampire form with a slow groan, stretching his limbs. His eyes land on her, and I watch as the vampire’s expression tightens.
Without a word, he moves to her side, opening the satchel of salves and other healing supplies she packed before she came for me. She brought them to save me. Now she’s the one needing saving.
I don’t move as he peels away the wrappings. Her skin is still raw in places, an angry red, and healing slowly. The steady beat of her heart is still too faint. Too fragile. So unlike the fierce female I’ve come to know. Every time I checked it, I had to fight down the panic rising in my chest.
She is still with us. I keep telling myself. But for how long?
He works quietly, hands steady as he cleans and treats the burns. I watch each movement with a tense stillness. I keep my fists curled in my lap, white-knuckled, hating how useless I feel. Hating that I wasn’t able to stop this.
When Dimitri finishes, he rests back on his heels and studies her—really studies her. His silver gaze drifts from her face to the soft shadows that cling to her skin like a second layer, protective and pulsing. They aren’t attacking. They aren’t withdrawing. They are holding her. Guarding her.
Dimitri tilts his head slightly, then speaks softly and respectfully . “Shadows.”
I glance at him with a frown, but he isn’t looking at me. He is watching the dark strands coiled around her arms, her legs, the base of her throat.
“Can you show us the way to the others?” he asks them. “Please.”
For a long moment, nothing happens. The shadows simply curl tighter around Serenya, as if the idea of parting from her is unthinkable.
Dimitri lowers his voice further. “We need to get her to a healer. But we need to get Koen to the others first. It’s what she wanted.”
The shadows tremble faintly, then loosen. Slowly and reluctantly, they begin to unravel from her limbs. One tendril drifts toward the outside of the ruin, then another.
I don’t breathe as I watch. They’re answering .
Dimitri nods once, murmuring something in thanks. Then he leans forward and carefully gathers Serenya into his arms, making me tense.
“I’ll carry her,” he says in a low but firm voice. Not challenging, just a matter of fact. “You’re still too weak.”
I don’t argue this time. I can’t. My body is still barely holding itself together after yesterday’s events. But it doesn’t stop the sick twist in my stomach to see someone else carrying her.
He stands, cradling her like something precious and irreplaceable. “We follow them,” he says, glancing at the gently drifting shadows that have started to slither ahead, slow and sure.
I push myself to my feet with a soft grunt, pain sparking down my legs. I don’t care. I would follow, no matter how long or far.
I look at her again—her brow still furrowed in sleep, face pale against my dark cloak wrapped around her.
Hold on . Please. Just hold on.
I follow them into the morning light. Toward Asbel and Lioran.
We walk until the sun is setting again. My feet are numb.
My muscles scream with every step, my legs tremble beneath me, but I don’t stop.
Not once. Not even when the pain reaches bone-deep.
My body has long since demanded rest, but rest is a luxury I cannot afford.
Not while Serenya still lies limp in Dimitri's arms.
We only pause twice. Once to refill the water at a moss-covered stream, and once when Dimitri tightened Serenya's wrappings and reapplied one of the salves in the dying light.
Then we are moving again. Through tangled forests. Over broken trails. Following the slow drift of shadows that glide ahead of us, like living wisps of smoke.
Even after night falls, we press on. The stars above are hidden behind storm-heavy clouds, and the moon is only a sliver. But the shadows keep going, glowing faintly in the dark, understanding the urgency.
It is sometime past midnight when the forest thickens, then opens up. The land drops away to something else entirely.
An old village. Stone homes half-collapsed into flooded earth. Water pooling around the cracked foundations, slick and stagnant. Trees growing sideways, their trunks split and gnarled.
There is no noise. No animals. No wind. Just the quiet sound of water lapping at the forgotten houses. We don’t speak. Words don’t seem welcome here.
The shadows wind their way through flooded paths with purpose, weaving beneath sunken stones and shattered fences, until stopping before a crumbling temple, its once-golden spire now half-buried in collapsed stone. It sits on a small hill, out of reach of the water.
I stare up at the ruined archway. A temple of… Roxnos?
The name crawls through my mind. Foreign, yet somehow familiar. I can’t recall ever hearing it before, though. Not in prayer. Not in books. Not even whispered by the elders in my village. But a part of my magic stirs at the name.
Who is this god?
My eyes drift across the doorway, where faded carvings had long since been eroded under time and storm. Above the entry, a shattered symbol had once gleamed in silver. Now, only a fragment of it remains. This place feels wrong.
My brows furrow. Why did this god let his people fall? Why is this place nothing but death and water now?
I glance at Dimitri, who says nothing. The vampire’s expression is as unreadable as ever.
Maybe he knows more than he originally let on.
Maybe he has seen temples like this before or knows stories that may have faded from mortal memory.
If he does, he doesn’t offer any answers. So I swallow my unease and step inside.
The air is colder here. The ceiling has partially collapsed, and moonlight filters in through the cracks above. Stone pews lay broken, scattered across the floor in piles. Steel masks, once polished to a mirror shine, lie abandoned in the dust—some still upright, staring blankly with empty eyes.
My boots crunch over forgotten offerings and rusted trinkets. The altar is cracked down the middle; it’s a statue of Roxnos reduced to nothing but feet and a broken hand still clenching a blade. It’s quiet, but not peaceful.
Desolate.
As if the god himself has left and taken all meaning with him.