And Kaia—
Kaia is shaking. I feel it through the bond. The grief. The rage. The desperate desire to tear Lady Virath apart with her bare hands.
But she doesn’t move.
She’s waiting. Calculating.
Good girl.
Alekir and Lady Virath turn toward each other, voices rising in what sounds like a ritualistic argument — timing, energy, the precise moment of alignment. Their words blur into noise, magic crackling between them.
I gather the others closer.
“Now,” I breathe. “While they’re distracted.”
Finn leans in, chaos sparking at his fingertips. “Please tell me we have a plan that isn’t ‘die heroically.’”
“We align,” Kieran says quietly.
Torric’s heat flares. “Are youinsane? That’s exactly what he—”
“He doesn’t know.” Darian’s voice is barely audible. Raw. “About the purification. He thinks the corruption is still…”
He trails off. Can’t finish.
“It’s a gamble,” Kieran murmurs. “But it may be the only one we have.”
Kaia says nothing. She’s watching Alekir, breathing too fast, shadows coiling tight around her.
Calculating.
Alekir turns back toward us.
Lady Virath joins him, standing in perfect alignment beside the Gate. Thorne steps behind them, torn but obedient, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“Enough delay.” Alekir’s hands rise. “The moon reaches its apex. The bloodlines will align. And the Gate—”
His pale fingers trace symbols in the air.
“—will finally open.”
The Gate pulses like a heartbeat.
The stone beneath our feet begins to glow — six points of light arranged in a perfect circle, waiting for us to take our places.
I look at Darian. My brother. The boy I saw in the palace halls and forgot because my father told me to.
He looks back at me.
Something passes between us — the beginning of something. A recognition that we’re bound by more than magic now.
Brothers.
The word sits strange in my chest. Heavy. Impossible.
But real.
I take my position.
