Chapter 34
“You’re a witch?” Zeriel asks, voice low as he eyes the strange objects on the desk: items that appear to serve no purpose but magic.
Selen gives a high-pitched laugh. She arches an eyebrow. “Is that the word we’re using now? For a fae who’s merely reached their full potential?”
He doesn’t smile. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll report you?”
She tilts her head, almost amused. “And what would that gain you, exactly? If you do, your assistant loses whatever usefulness she might have to you. You must have guessed by now that I’m the one who saved her down at the screening.”
The conversation spins in my head. Witch. Full potential. Before I can fully process it, Selen continues.
“And more importantly…”—her gaze fixes on him, steady—“you’d be cutting off the only person willing to help you both survive what’s coming.”
A beat passes. Then, something shifts.
Her expression doesn’t change, but her eyes…
they darken—not in color, but in presence.
As if a veil lifts and something older, colder stares out from beneath.
A sensation prickles over my skin, sharp and instinctive, like standing too close to the edge of a cliff. My breath catches before I can stop it.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Her focus remains on Zeriel. “I mean, those suppressed too long cannot be suppressed forever.”
She doesn’t elaborate. Instead, she moves, smooth, unhurried, reaching for the small vial on the desk.
Zeriel’s gaze sharpens. “What is that?”
Selen’s fingers hover over the glass. “Something ancient. Something the empire has tried to erase.” She lifts it with care, and the golden liquid within shimmers as though stirred by some unseen current.
I struggle to look away. The fluid shifts languidly despite her steady grip, its glow seeming to pulse faintly in the dim light.
And now I notice that it’s threaded with faint shots of black.
“And something that forces a seed to bloom before its season,” Selen adds. “A fast-track, for a fast-track situation. Or a jump-start. Veilfire serum—containing two things no sane alchemist would dare combine: embervein essence, to help awaken… and charmed iron dust, to hide the trace.”
Before either of us can respond, Selen moves with startling speed. Her hand shoots out, catching Zeriel’s wrist in a grip far stronger than her frame suggests.
He reacts instantly, a jerk to free himself.
“What the hell—” he snaps.
Selen’s other hand flashes, one of the silver needles appearing as if from nowhere. She pricks his palm before he can stop her. A bead of blood blooms against his skin.
“Selen,” he warns, his tone dropping into something low and dangerous, a reminder no one puts a blade to him without his consent.
“Veyra,” Selen says, her voice suddenly heavy with command. “Your hand. Now.”
Zeriel’s eyes cut to me, sharp, questioning. I hesitate, but something in her eyes—urgency, certainty—compels me forward. I extend my hand, palm up.
Her second needle stings, and a ruby droplet forms in my hand.
“Selen—” Zeriel starts, but she’s uncorking the vial, light catching in the golden liquid.
“Quiet,” she says, not looking at him. “Both of you.”
She tilts the vial, allowing a single drop to fall onto my bleeding palm. The sensation is immediate and overwhelming: heat, then cold, then a strange, humming vibration that seems to resonate in my bones.
Before I can process what's happening, Selen grasps my wrist and presses my palm against Zeriel's. His instinct is to pull away, but the moment our blood mingles with the golden liquid, something shifts. I feel it like a current passing between us.
Zeriel feels it too. His eyes widen, his resistance faltering as the sensation builds. It's not painful, but it's intense, like standing at the edge of a lightning strike, the air thick and crackling, every nerve waiting for the spark to land.
Selen works quickly, wrapping the red cord around our joined hands. Three times around, each loop accompanied by words in a language I don't recognize. Ancient words, flowing like water, sharp as stone.
“What are you doing?” Zeriel demands, but his voice has lost its hard edge, replaced by something closer to wonder.
Selen doesn't answer. She completes the binding, tying the cord with a complex knot. The moment it's secured, the air in the room seems to compress, then expand. A pulse of energy radiates outward, invisible but palpable, like the shockwave from an explosion.
Fear tightens around my throat. How will this not be detected?
And suddenly, I can feel Zeriel—not just his physical presence, but something deeper. A connection that bypasses skin and bone, reaching into the core of him. It's dizzying, disorienting, like having a second heartbeat alongside my own.
His emotions flood through me: confusion, anger, a thread of fear, and beneath it all, a wild, untamed power that's been dormant for too long. I gasp at the intensity of it, staggering slightly.
Zeriel doesn't fare much better. He sways on his feet, his free hand gripping the edge of Selen's desk for support. “What... What have you done?” he rasps.
Selen steps back, her expression a mixture of satisfaction—and perhaps a subtle wariness. “I've awakened what was always there, Champion. What the empire tried to breed out of you. What flowed through your family’s veins.”
The cord around our hands begins to glow, a soft crimson light pulsing in time with our racing hearts. Then, to my astonishment, it seems to dissolve, the fibers sinking into our skin like they were never there at all.
Zeriel pulls his hand away from mine, breaking the physical contact.
“I feel...” he begins, then stops, struggling to find words.
“Different,” I finish for him. “Stronger.”
He looks at me, surprise flashing across his features. “Yes.”
Selen watches us with those calculating teal eyes. “What you're experiencing is the awakening of your latent abilities, Zeriel. Magic that has been in your bloodline since time began, suppressed but never truly gone.”
Zeriel strides off a few steps, his breathing deep. “And… what am I to do with this? We have less than three days. How could it help?”
“That depends,” Selen says, tilting her head, “on what your gift truly is. Every bloodline manifests differently when the seal begins to crack. The first flare of power is never random. It is memory rising through the veins.” Her gaze narrows. “Tell me, Champion… do you even know your bloodline?”
The question hangs in the air. For a man who never flinches, Zeriel does. A fractional recoil, so quick most would miss it. But I don’t.
“…Storm fae,” he mutters at last. His jaw works, as if forcing the words out.
“And lithborn, if the old songs are true. Stone-singers. Resonant fae. Called by different names. Said to manipulate resonance: vibrations in air, matter, shake the bones of fortresses and make steel ring with their anger. It was an alliance formed well before my great grandfather’s name was written…
but I’ve no way to prove it. Rumor and ash, that’s all. ”
“The sconces,” I murmur suddenly.
He turns on me, frowning. “What?”
“When you fought with Blaise, I tried to tell you afterwards… I saw the sconces trembling. A blade shaking too.”
From his genuine look of confusion, I see he didn’t notice it. Too consumed by his hatred for the Crosnian champion.
But if he genuinely hadn’t detected it before now, does that mean it manifested then, visibly, for the first time?
I wonder, could his first conversation with Selen have triggered it?
There’s something about her presence, something that feels magnetic that I can’t quite put my finger on… and she’d asked him questions.
Selen’s expression flickers with interest. She leans back, the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips.
“Storm and stone-song,” she murmurs. “Skyfire and resonance. That is no small inheritance. If the tales are right, and if your gift awakens in full… you’ll barely even flinch at iron.” Her eyes sharpen on him again. “But… we will see what shape your gift takes when it stops hiding.”
She spreads her hands with a shrug, though her voice carries weight.
“I’ll offer you this, Zeriel. Reconsider your approach to the Games. Give me the little time that remains, and I can turn this awakening into more than instinct. In three days, I can’t promise mastery. But I can promise you an edge. Perhaps the sharpest you’ve ever carried.”
I’m not sure what exactly she means by “reconsider your approach.” But I see the war in Zeriel’s face. The urge to reject the unknown, to shove his past into oblivion, colliding with the instinct that’s kept him alive since his family’s fall: the fighter’s eye for any advantage.
“And if I refuse?” he asks, though it lands more like a thought spoken aloud. “If I simply ignore this... gift?”
“Then it will consume you,” Selen says bluntly. “Magic doesn't simply go back to sleep, especially once forcefully awakened through… what I just performed. A duo-ritual. It demands to be used, acknowledged. And particularly yours.”
The silence that follows is thick with the weight of her words.
To think that the Sundering Oath, sworn by the old fae courts all those centuries ago, hadn’t destroyed magic at all.
It had only pressed it down, muted it. And now, all it takes is fae determined enough to rouse what never truly died.
It makes a terrible sort of sense. How can you kill what is woven into the marrow of our being?
A dangerous thought surfaces in my mind. If magic can be awakened, what of the other gift that defined our ancestors—their endless years? The immortality that practically made them gods?
“Beyond magic,” I begin carefully, my voice barely above a whisper, “could we also reclaim—”