“If you go now,” Azfar interrupted, “you’ll unmake more than your brother.”
He gestured toward the scarred ground. The soil was blackened, faintly smoking, a circle of ash spreading from where Rakhal had knelt. Beneath, the roots gleamed white—bone, not wood.
“This,” Azfar said softly, “is what battle will look like when you lose focus.”
Rakhal stared at it, throat tight. “And if I break the tether?”
Azfar’s voice was calm as falling rain. “Then I’ll end you before you take the rest of us with you.”
Rakhal met his gaze. “Then you’d better be faster than me.”
Azfar’s mouth curved faintly. “There’s the spirit I missed.”
He turned and walked back into the trees, swallowed by mist and silence.
Rakhal remained standing in the circle of scorched soil, breath slowing, heart steadying to the rhythm of the forest. The earth no longer shook. The shadows had quieted, listening.
He would master them—or die before they mastered him.
Chapter
Fifty-Five
The forest had fallen silent again, but not with fear this time. It was a different kind of quiet—watchful, intimate, the sort that made her pulse too loud in her ears.
The glade where Rakhal trained was scorched. Damp earth steamed faintly, carrying the scent of iron, sap, and something darker—old magic, maybe, or the echo of what he’d pushed into the ground. She stepped carefully across the uneven soil, boots sinking slightly where it had gone soft.
He sat at the center of the ruin, bare to the waist, his skin slick with sweat and shadowlight. The firelight from the camp’s edge reached him in soft flickers, gilding the edges of his shoulders, the long line of his back, the planes of muscle drawn taut from exhaustion. His body looked carved rather than built—scars like rivers through stone.
For a moment, she only watched him.
Azfar had left him like this, sitting in silence, the air around him still vibrating faintly from the magic. It hadn’t just been training—it had been survival. She could feel it in the way the forest seemed to hold him, wary and reverent.
When she finally spoke, her voice came quiet. “You’re bleeding.”
He didn’t move, just turned his head enough that she could see the faint gleam of his eyes. “Always.”
She set down a bowl of water she’d carried from the stream. “Azfar said you should rest.”
“Azfar says many things.” His mouth curved, not quite a smile, but close enough to make her chest tighten.
Eliza knelt beside him. Up close, the heat coming off him was startling. The air between them shimmered faintly, as if his skin still hummed with shadow. She dipped the cloth into the bowl and wrung it out, her fingers brushing the water. When she pressed it gently to his arm, the sound he made was a low, rough exhale—half relief, half restraint.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
He looked at her then, properly. His eyes had changed—still dark, but threaded with light that caught the fire’s reflection. “Less than before,” he said. “More when you’re not near.”
The words shouldn’t have affected her the way they did. But they did. Her heart tripped over itself.
She tried to keep her tone steady. “You think I’m some sort of charm now?”
His lips curved faintly. “You’re a pulse I can still hear. That’s enough.”
The cloth stilled in her hand. She swallowed hard and continued cleaning the blood from his arm, moving slowly, tracing the strange, delicate patterns the shadows had etched into his skin. The marks weren’t just scars—they shimmered faintly under her touch.
She shouldn’t have found it beautiful. But she did.
“You’re quiet,” he said after a moment.
