My Downfall
CAELAN
The Hollow did not give us any more problems after what Sera did.
I was not entirely sure what Sera did.
For a moment, when I was on one knee, I had been certain that I had gotten us all killed. Every instinct I had was screaming one thing only.
Protect her.
That was my one and only thought. Which was laughable because technically, if I died, so did she. It didn’t stop the commitment, though. Whatever happened next, I needed her to be behind me.
That was not what happened.
Because she had wrapped herself around me instead.
I kept turning it over. Which part had surprised me most, or whether all of it was equally inconceivable.
The part where she tried to cover me with her own body.
Her small frame doing something structurally optimistic.
The impossible light that detonated out of her palm.
The way she held on afterward, as if she were afraid I would disappear with it.
She didn't pull away. Not when the darkness came back. Not when Maelor said something about needing a drink and a moment to recover his dignity. Her body stayed pressed against my chest, and I held her there in the quiet.
When we finally separated, the distance was immediately noticeable. It was as if she had taken something with her and I needed it back.
“You're bleeding.” She reached for my right side and stopped just over the torn fabric, wet and dark.
I looked down. The pain announced itself properly now that the adrenaline had somewhere else to be.
Her jaw was clenched tight. She felt the pain through the bond.
Riven crouched beside us. “Supplies are with the horses.”
I pushed up from the ground.
Sera had shifted forward, barely, enough that I noticed. Then Riven moved in to help. She had intended to do it and reconsidered at the last moment when Riven did.
I looked at Riven. He looked back at me with no awareness of what he had interrupted. I silently cursed him.
We climbed out of the Hollow alive and with considerably more questions than we had descended with.
Nobody spoke until the gorge had disappeared behind the tree line.
My bandaged side stung with each movement of the horse.
All four of us were more battered than we were going to admit out loud.
But we were alive, which had been the goal, and the veil ash was in my pocket, which had been the other goal.
Maelor predictably spoke first.
“So.” He settled back in the saddle. Riven tucked behind him, seemingly having made his peace with things. “Are we going to talk about what happened? Or are we pretending Sera didn't just blow up the Hollow?”
Sera tensed against me.
I shot Maelor a look that had stopped arguments in war councils. He only shrugged.
Her magic was not light. Whatever it was had enough saturation to erase dozens of creatures that three trained fae had been struggling to contain. It was not the small orb that sat quietly in her palm and looked like the aggressive candle Maelor had once called it.
“I don't know what I did,” Sera said. Barely audible.
Her nails pressed into the saddle once, twice, then released as she exhaled. She never let anything hold her for long. It was one of the things I had come to understand about her. Strength and weakness in equal measure.
“Show me,” I said.
She opened her palm and the orb appeared. Small, steady, unremarkable. The same as it had always been.
I pressed forward against her and passed my hand through it slowly. The surrounding air shifted as the light flickered from the intrusion. Warm. Dense. With a quality that had nothing to do with illumination.
It felt exactly as I suspected, but there was something else underneath it. Something close to familiarity.
“This isn't light,” I said.
She looked up at me, frowning. “Then what is it?”
Maelor and Riven moved their horse closer, stirrups nearly touching ours.
“It's magic,” I said.
Maelor snorted. “Obviously.”
I ignored that.
“It doesn't emit. It condenses.” I passed my hand through the orb again. “Light doesn't produce a physical impact. It doesn't detonate. Whatever this is, it has mass.”
“A concentrated force,” Sera said.
“Exactly.”
“She's concentrating her own magic?” Maelor asked.
Sera shook her head slowly. “My reserves aren't large enough for an explosion of that radius. I've never been able to expand the orb. If I had that kind of capacity, I would have known.”
Unless the magic wasn't only hers.
“A conduit,” Riven said.
Everyone looked at him.
He said nothing further.
“You're channeling raw magic,” I said. “From external sources. Pulling it in without realizing it and compressing it until it has somewhere to go.”
She inhaled sharply. Stared at the orb in her palm like she was seeing it for the first time. Like it had just introduced itself properly after years of simply existing.
“So,” Maelor said. “Not a candle.”
“More like a sun,” Riven said quietly.
Maelor poked the orb twice. It quivered with what I could only describe as offense. He looked at Sera with something close to respect. “Impressive, though. Wiped out every creature and none of us.”
Sera's head came up, then winced. “I didn't do that on purpose.” A beat passed. “It sort of just happened.”
Maelor stared at her.
“What?” His voice climbed. “You're telling me you had no idea what you were doing. That you could’ve killed us all and we just got lucky?”
The lopsided smile she gave him was the wrong response but she did it anyway.
“Fuck, Sera.” He looked between me and Riven, seeking support. “We could have died.”
No one disagreed.
“I need to understand my magic,” Sera said. The orb disappeared as she closed her fist.
“We'll figure it out,” I said.
She turned and looked up at me.
Her eyes were bright. A soft smile at the corners of her mouth, the sad one that appeared when she let herself want something.
“I know,” she said.
My fingers tightened on the reins. Because if they didn't, they were going to find their way to her face, into her hair, and that was not something that should occur on a saddle in front of Maelor and Riven.
If we were alone, it would be different.
If we were alone, I would tilt her chin up and look into those eyes that couldn't decide between the ocean and a forest, and I would—
Sera was staring at me.
“What?”
“Maelor asked you what the plan was,” she said. “Twice.”
That wasn’t possible because I would have heard him.
I looked at Maelor, who had an amused look on his face that told me he was going to remember this moment.
Riven's expression matched his, which was frankly unsettling.
I cleared my throat.
Sera bit her lower lip and turned away, and that, specifically, was going into permanent memory.
“Mirror Lake is frozen right now. We regroup. Head to Winter once the frost breaks.” I delivered this with what I considered to be admirable composure given the circumstances.
Maelor stretched. Nearly took Riven's chin off with his elbow. “I intend to drink every day until then. In case your next plan actually finishes the job.”
“You're going back to training the new recruits, Commander.”
He groaned.
Sera laughed.
Then she glanced back at me, eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth curved.
Mine did the same before I could think about it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I smiled this much. Probably when I was still a child. When Mallas, Maelor, and I were just three idiots who thought setting off alchemical powder in the east corridor was worth three weeks of stable duty.
After the accident, smiling without the performance in it took effort.
Smiling at her was simply what my face did when she was near.
Somewhere between a cursed dagger and a gorge full of nightmares, Sera had stopped being the assassin I was keeping alive for practical reasons.
I would have stood in front of her without the bond.
I would have done it without hesitation, which was a significant thing to discover about yourself when you were a prince responsible for an entire border kingdom and everyone living in it.
She was going to kill me slowly, and it would not be with a dagger.
But with a glance over her shoulder, with eyes that crinkled, and with the soft curve of that mouth.
And when she finally brought me to my knees, I suspected that I would thank her for it.
I would welcome my downfall like a prayer I had stopped believing would be answered.
And I hadn’t even kissed her yet.