Chapter Thirty-Two
Rhune
The world comes back to me in fragments.
Pain, first. Searing and deep, blooming just beneath my ribs and through my entire midsection.
The scent around me comes next, teasing my nostrils. Smoke curling in the air, antiseptic herbs steeped in tonic, and beneath it all, something faintly metallic.
Blood, maybe.
I hear voices, soft and urgent, but none of them hers as I try to filter through them all.
That’s when the panic sets in and my eyes fly open.
Elysia.
The first thing I remember is her eyes.
Not the soft, defiant gaze she wore when she spoke of burning down this world in her chambers.
Not the haunted flicker that clung to her after we told her about Vayrith.
The sight of her eyes steady and sure as she held a dagger poised at the center of her chest. Those eyes were terrifying in their certainty. As if she’d already decided … as if she knew nothing else could save us at that moment.
I can still hear her voice, calm over the roar of chaos: “You forced me to be here, but you can’t force me to remain here.”
The image claws its way to the surface and I jolt.
My breath tears from my throat like it’s been stolen. My heart pounds so hard I can hear it in my ears, drowning out everything else. I don’t recognize the ceiling above me and don’t know where I am, but it doesn’t matter.
Because she’s not here and I don’t remember what happened after that.
Could she … could she be gone?
“Elysia,” her name rips free from my throat, cracked and ragged.
I lurch upright, shadows reacting before I can think, flaring from beneath my skin in sharp, violent tendrils. The pain that follows is instant, white-hot and searing across my ribs and shoulder. My body’s barely holding together, but I don’t care.
The last image I have of her is with steel at her heart.
I wasn’t enough for her to not feel driven to even think of doing such a thing. I wasn’t strong enough, despite countless years hiding the depths of my powers and training in secret at Serenath’s request.
For so long only she and Zayvin knew.
Everything I am would change our world if I let it be known. Never did I want the title or power of being king. I would have kept my strength hidden forever, if it weren’t for Elysia being dragged into my world.
With her life on the line now, I don’t care who knows.
Hands press down on me. Gentle words follow, but they barely pierce the haze. I throw them off and stumble out of the cot, searching the space around me.
Stone walls. Violet light slanting through the far window.
No trace of my dove.
None.
My shadows stretch outward in every direction, seeking her like they always do. A heartbeat. A flicker. Anything.
The threads come back cold, untethered from her.
She’s gone from my reach.
A hollow ache opens inside me, deeper than any wound Sorryn gave me. This isn’t just fear.
It’s the unbearable knowledge that the one person who’s ever seen through the mask—who looked at me and didn’t see the broken, leftover king—is somewhere I can’t reach.
I will tear apart the world to fix that.
You’re safe. You’re with me. Nothing is going to touch you here, Little Dove.
I told her those words—and not even a day later, she’d been harmed in my presence.
Rage swirls in my mind and I force my eyes shut as I take deep breaths, trying to center myself. I can’t do anything for her if I can’t pull my emotions together.
Instantly the image of my hands cupping her face reverently in her chamber surfaces. The brief moment I’d allowed myself to stop fighting against my need to touch her—to hold her and comfort her. How our breaths had mingled, so achingly close.
“You’re the only soul atop these clouds I don’t fear,” she’d told me.
The storm in my heart and mind wanes and I realize my response to her hadn’t been entirely true. My head hangs down.
Instead of telling her that hers is the only soul I do fear, I should have told her that her soul is the only one I fear not knowing—of not understanding every crevice of what makes her Elysia.
I fear not letting her see mine in return. Of being alone for eternity, when I know there’s this woman who sees me and fights for me.
“He’s always been my choice!” she yelled at Sorryn. “And he will always belong wherever I am.”
I’m tired of fighting this. I’m tired of acting like I can stand on the sidelines and watch her with someone else at the end of these courtships, when I know where she belongs: hand in hand with me.
Perhaps there’s a path in which she can be politically joined with Zayvin in their rule, but next to me outside of their throne room.
A hollow opens in my chest, dark and yearning. I barely hear the voices calling my name over the sound of my own heart breaking.
“Rhune.”
I open my eyes at the sound of my brother’s voice, lifting my head as resolve forms within me. It’s time to find the woman I might have fallen for long before she knew I was even in the shadows of her dreams.
I refuse to believe she could be gone.
Zayvin steps into the chamber in a rush of shadows, his presence commanding enough that even my own shadows still.
I don’t speak. I just look at him, waiting for the blow. Waiting for him to tell me she’s gone and that my hope is for nothing.
“She’s alive,” he says with his hands up, and it’s then I realize my shadows are still whirling around me. “But she’s still in his court.”
Relief hits me so hard I nearly choke on it as I call my shadows back into me.
She’s alive. I can still save her.
With that news, I can truly take in the room I’m in for the first time. My focus is instantly on understanding my current situation with the hope of cultivating a plan to get to her quickly. I drag my gaze across it until my eyes land on the cot to my left.
Serenath.
Her chest rises in shallow breaths as her eyes remain closed. Her skin is gray, completely absent of the blue that marks her as a Dromin.
Her powers are gone.
“You both nearly didn’t make it,” Zayvin says, his gaze on her as he steps to my side.
His tone is uncharacteristically tight. “It’s been days, and even then, our healers could barely do anything.
Her injuries … they were never meant to be survived.
She gave too much and burned too hot. You know what it means when a soul fuels magic to that degree. ”
I nod slowly. The final reserve. The point of no return.
“How did I survive?” I ask, voice hoarse. “I felt the way his power seared through my body. It devoured me from the inside out, burning through me like a disease that took root.”
Zayvin’s jaw tics. “No one here could heal you, Rhune. You were too far gone. We tried everything.”
My brow pinches at his answer—and the obvious, that someone clearly had, since I’m standing here. “Then why am I still breathing?”
He steps close until his lips are at my ear and his voice soft, not meant for others to hear. “Last night one healer was overseeing all patients. She summoned me, worried if anyone else had seen what your body was doing.”
My hand rises to settle over my abdomen absentmindedly.
“Your shadows and light encapsulated you in a dome. She watched your shadows stitch your wounds together. And your light burned brightly in each wound after, searing them closed.”
My head jerks back. “That’s … not possible. I don’t have healing magic.”
Zayvin scans the room before leaning back in. “The healer said it looked like a miracle from the Goddess herself as the veins in your body seemed to pulsate bright silver, like when the Hearth Tree comes to life with connection to the Goddess.”
I’m left feeling incredulous shock as my mouth opens and no words come out.
“Unfortunately the other elf that came through with you and Serenath didn’t make it.”
My shock shifts to utter confusion as he points to the back corner of the room.
A third cot.
The sheet is tucked neatly over a body. A gesture of dignity until the rites of passage over their soul can be performed.
I force myself forward, one step at a time, as I beg my mind to remember what happened. When I reach out, my hands hesitate for a moment before I pull the sheet back.
Enari lies still beneath the white linen. Her expression is softer than I’ve ever seen it in the short time I was in her presence. There’s no more pain. No fury. No flicker of the battle that was always raging beneath her skin.
Just peace.
The tattoos that once flickered across her body are faint now. As if the magic has finally let her go. As if in death, she’s finally free of it.
My knees hit the floor beside her cot.
The memories don’t come gently. Images slam into me, one after another.
Adamaris and Sorryn were huddled together, hushed in their argument as she’d crept back into the room.
Her hands grabbed Serenath’s body and dragged her toward me in the quiet aftermath of the battle.
The way her teeth clenched when the High Priestess’s control pulsed in her tattoos and she moved anyway.
“Take her,” she whispered to me, moving one of my arms to drape over my fallen teacher. “Use your shadows and get out. If you don’t, I fear what will happen to our queen.”
I’d found the last bit of energy locked deep within my body to find my waystone just as Sorryn and Adamaris turned to see her bending over us.
My eyes had widened and she jerked to face them, palms blazing with fire as her tattoos flickered over and over. Her knees had trembled as she screamed, “I will not let you use me for your wicked plans anymore!”
The way Sorryn and Adamaris had lifted hands wielding magic in unison. They sent blasts meant to kill.
Then, at the last second, I reached out for her. Just enough for the tip of my pointer finger to touch the back of her calf as my hand cradled the waystone.
That final, desperate touch to get us all out of there.
We had no plan and no time, but she made that one moment matter.
My throat burns. I don’t realize I’m shaking until I reach for her hand and my fingers can barely hold steady.
“I thought I got us all out in time,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
She sacrificed herself for us.
I press my palm to her cool forehead and close my eyes.
“I swear I’ll remember you as you were in the end. Brave. Brilliant. Free. Goddess, please wrap her soul into your welcoming embrace and rejoice her for the warrior she is.”
Zayvin doesn’t speak as I feel him come to my side and rest a hand on my shoulder.
There’s reverence in the silence and comfort he offers. I’m grateful for it.
“I thought I could save us all.”
“You tried,” Zayvin says quietly. “You arrived tangled together and we did everything we could to save her, but she was already gone.”
I rise, slow, trembling. My eyes scan the chamber again, restless now in my desire for justice.
“Where is it?” I ask quietly.
Zayvin lifts a brow. “Where is what?”
“My waystone.”
He doesn’t answer immediately—and that tells me everything.
“You took it,” I say, the realization cold and sharp. “You took it from me.”
“You would have gone back the moment you woke. Alone, enraged, and without a plan, which would have surely gotten you killed this time.”
“I still will,” I snarl. “I will go back there alone and right these wrongs and save Elysia.”
“You won’t,” he replies calmly before taking a deep breath. “Because this time, you will have the backing of this court.”
There’s silence for a beat. Long. Heavy.
His voice softens as he says, “I need you to tell me what happened. Everything.”
So I do. Every brutal detail. Every twisted manipulation. Every time Adamaris used her magic to serve Sorryn’s desires. Sorryn’s greatest weapon: her feelings for him.
When I finish, Zayvin exhales a breath like he’s been holding it for years.
“I knew it,” he growls out before shaking his head. “I knew she wasn’t truly choosing him. They’re trying to force the joining ceremony to occur in two days’ time. Adamaris nearly has the Council convinced.”
He walks toward the windows, staring out into the dark violet sky, streaked with lightning beyond the castle. His voice is low when he speaks again.
“We’ve gone through two queens in his favor already, Rhune. Two queens who chose him. Our magic’s already fading as is, we can’t …”
“The court can’t afford for her to choose him,” I finish for him, “because if she does, feeding on humans’ dreams won’t be enough.”
He nods. “We could lose our connection to our magic permanently.”
It’s the first time I hear it spoken with such finality. Until now, it’s only been whispered what-ifs between us over a glass of liquor late into the night.
The true cost that has kept me duty-bound for Elysia’s choice to make a difference.
He turns back to me, his expression resolute. “Then we do what must be done. We will go to war against the Court of Dreams, before there is no Court of Nightmares to oppose them any longer.”
The air shifts into something heavy and suffocating.
I’m coming for you, Little Dove.