Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
“Kael will probably go all growly and threaten to spank me or something for sharing all this shit with you all, but honestly, if that’s the punishment on offer, I’m all in.” Sonny bounces his eyebrows up and down like he’s just delivered the line of the century.
Jack snorts out a laugh. “Plus there’s the whole thing of the rift having changed all of our lives, and every single person deserves to know the truth,” Jack adds, deadpan.
“Semantics.” Sonny waves a hand through the air, looking entirely too pleased with himself—and, if I’m not imagining it, a little flushed at the thought of his mate getting all territorial about it.
Whatever floats his boat.
All I want is the truth.
I shift slightly where I’m perched on the edge of the table, ignoring how my ribs complain about the movement. The humour bleeds out of me faster than it does them. My focus locks in.
“Start talking,” I say.
Sonny sobers.
Not completely—I don’t think he’s built that way—but enough that the edges of the joke fall away and something more grounded eases in its place.
Jack straightens a little, too, folding his arms across his chest, his gaze flicking between us.
Sonny exhales. “All right,” he says. “You already know why Aelith went back.”
“I know the version I’ve been told—as a ‘prisoner’ exchange, which is obviously bullshit, as I know for a fact that he was here by choice,” I reply. “I want the real one.”
His mouth quirks. “Fair.”
He leans back against the wall, one foot braced behind himself, like he’s settling in for something that’s not going to be quick.
“It wasn’t just about the exchange,” he says. “That part? That was… timing. Opportunity. A way to make it happen without the Queen immediately suspecting something bigger was going on.”
I nod once. “Okay.” I suppose it could have just been perfect timing—me getting the shit kicked out of me just in time for the prince to return home.
“Aelith made the call before that,” Sonny continues. “Before you were taken. Before any of it.”
That catches me off-guard. “What?”
“He already planned to go back,” Jack adds quietly.
I look between them. “Why the hell would he do that willingly?”
Sonny’s expression shifts. “Because of what we found.”
The air feels heavier suddenly.
“In the citadel?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Sonny replies. “The fun little field trip we had.”
“You mean the one where you nearly got yourselves killed,” Jack mutters.
“Details.”
I lean forward slightly despite the pull in my ribs. “What did you find?”
Sonny drags a hand through his hair, like he’s trying to figure out where to even begin. “All right,” he says slowly. “You remember what we were looking for.”
“Information about the rifts.”
“Yeah, as well as help for Dawson. But specifically—whether they’re natural… the rifts.”
“Or not,” I finish.
Sonny nods. “Turns out… not.”
The words land harder than I expect. I go very still. “What do you mean, not?”
Jack steps in this time, his tone more measured. “They’re not random,” he says. “Not anomalies. Not some weird cosmic accident.”
“Then what are they?”
Sonny meets my gaze. “They were made.”
Something cold slides down my spine. “Made,” I repeat.
“Started,” he corrects. “That’s the word the records used. Initiated. Engineered. However you want to spin it.”
My brain tries to catch up. “By who?”
Sonny doesn’t answer immediately, which tells me everything.
“Don’t do that,” I snap. “If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
He exhales. “King Ithius.”
The name hits like a dropped weight.
I blink. “The King?” I say. “Aelith’s father?”
“Yeah.” Sonny nods.
“He’s dead.” Hell, he died a long time ago.
“That’s what everyone thinks,” Sonny says.
I stare at him. “You’re telling me the dead king started ripping holes between worlds?”
“I’m telling you,” Sonny replies carefully, “that about a century ago, he started experimenting with something the records refer to as ‘dimensional convergence points.’”
“Rifts,” Jack translates.
“Right,” Sonny says. “Early versions. Unstable. Small. The kind of thing you don’t notice unless you’re looking for it.”
“And then?”
“And then,” Sonny continues, “it gets messy.”
My breath hitches. “Define messy.”
“There are gaps in the records,” he says. “Missing sections. Destroyed documents. Whole chunks of research just… gone.”
“Convenient.”
“Very.” Sonny shrugs but is also clearly pissed off by the whole thing.
Jack shifts his weight slightly. “But there’s enough left to piece together a timeline.”
“Which is?”
Sonny ticks it off on his fingers. “Ithius starts experimenting roughly a hundred years ago. Small-scale stuff. Controlled. The kind of thing that doesn’t raise alarms.”
“Then something changes,” Jack adds.
Sonny nods. “Yeah. The language shifts. The tone of the records changes. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s all less controlled. More… urgent.”
“Urgent how?”
“Like he’s running out of time,” Sonny says. “Or trying to achieve something specific before something else happens.”
“And then he dies.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
“Allegedly,” Sonny says.
I stare at him. “Allegedly? What the fuck does that mean?”
“There was no body,” Jack says quietly.
That hits heavier than anything else so far. “What?”
Sonny nods. “No confirmed remains. No proper record of how he died. Just… an announcement.”
“That’s it?”
Sonny bobs his head again. “That’s it.”
I run a hand through my hair, wincing slightly as my shoulder protests. “Okay,” I say slowly. “So best-case scenario, he started something he didn’t finish. Worst-case—”
“He didn’t die,” Sonny finishes.
“Or someone else continued the work,” Jack adds.
Silence stretches between the three of us.
The glow in the walls pulses faintly. The rhythm is steady, unbothered.
“How long ago did people start coming through?” I ask, looking for confirmation more than anything. If the king started experimenting a century ago, does that mean there were others a long time before us?
“About twenty years,” Sonny says.
I arch my brow, strangely relieved. “Same time Varek showed up.”
“Yeah. It looks that way,” Jack responds.
“So something changed,” I say. “Between Ithius starting this and Varek being dragged through.”
“Exactly,” Sonny says.
Jack nods. “The scale increases. The rifts get bigger. More stable. More frequent.”
“And suddenly people aren’t just slipping through by accident,” I add. “They’re being pulled.”
Sonny’s lips twist. “It looks that way. It seems that they’re definitely targeted.”
The words sit heavy in the air.
“Why?” I ask. “Because of the whole fated mates thing?”
Neither of them answers.
“But if so,” I continue, “how does the rift or whatever is creating the rifts know who does and doesn’t have a fated mate?” As far as I’m aware, every human that’s come through has a fated mate.
As for the other species not born of this world, there are still plenty without, but I can only assume that with time—and more rifts—that their fated will come through eventually. Right?
When they continue to stare and me and shrug, I mutter, “Right, that’s something you don’t know and that the prince is trying to find out.”
“They’re working on it,” Sonny says.
I let out a breath. “And Aelith really thinks he can find those answers in the palace?”
“Yeah,” Sonny says quietly.
“By walking straight back into it?”
“He seems to think so.”
Sonny sounds as unsure about this plan as I do.
“With his human mate?”
Sonny winces slightly. “Yeah.”
I shake my head, disbelief threaded through the motion. “That’s insane.”
“It’s necessary,” Jack says.
I look at him, and he holds my gaze steadily.
“He knows that place,” Jack continues. “He knows how it works. Where to look. Who to watch.”
“And more importantly,” Sonny adds, “he knows how to move without raising suspicion.”
“He’s the prince,” I say. “Everything he does is watched.”
“Exactly,” Sonny says. “Which means no one expects him to be sneaking around like a thief in his own home.”
I huff a humourless laugh. “God, I hate how much sense that makes.”
“Same,” Sonny says.
There’s a pause. Then I ask the question that’s been sitting at the back of my mind since this conversation started. “And Dawson?”
Sonny’s expression softens slightly. “He chose to go.”
I’m not surprised. From the simple interaction we had when I could barely stand straight, he seems like the kind of guy who’ll face the world with his head high and a smile on his face.
Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Didn’t even hesitate.”
I close my eyes briefly. “Idiot.”
“Brave idiot,” Sonny corrects.
“Same thing.”
“Not always.”
I open my eyes again.
The weight of it all presses in—the rifts, the king, the possibility that none of this is random. That someone—something—is controlling who gets pulled into this world. And that the answers are sitting behind palace walls, hopefully waiting to be discovered.
“That’s the situation,” Sonny says. “That’s why Aelith went back.”
I exhale slowly. “All right,” I say. “Thanks for telling me what you know.” I nod once, still processing, still adjusting. Rebuilding the shape of the world in my head with this new information slotted in.
It doesn’t make things clearer. It just makes everything bigger. Hell, more dangerous even.
And somewhere in the middle of all that—
Varek.
“Right,” I say again, contemplating moving.
Sonny and Jack both look at me.
“Where you going?” Sonny asks.
“To find the idiot who signed off on all of this,” I reply.
Sonny’s mouth twitches. “Good luck with that.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “I’m going to need it.”
Because if Varek thinks I’m just going to sit back and accept all of this without a conversation, he’s got another think coming.
I push off the table and stand, immediately regretting it.
The world tips sideways so fast, I barely catch it in time. The glow-veined walls seem to lurch away from me, then rush back in, and for one deeply humiliating second, I’m convinced I’m about to end this very serious conversation by face-planting into the floor like an overtired idiot.