Tears cut tracks through the debris on her face. She touched one with the tip of her finger, half afraid it would still be blood, but it fell clear and warm.
The realms hadn’t ended.
They’d only just begun to breathe.
46
ROOTS AND REUNIONS
Two months later, Orchid gleamed.
The entire castle had been scrubbed of ash and grief, the mosaics reset, the garlands replanted until they spilled from balconies in thick jeweled ropes, and the jungle unfurled around the castle, lush and watchful, its green tide lapping at the fringes of the grounds.
When the Veil vanished, the massive split in the marble did not disappear. In those first chaotic hours, Savina had used the last of her stone power—before gifts forged from Dravaryn’s soil stopped answering her on Orchid ground—to drag the fractured floor back into place. In the weeks that followed, Orchid’s best masons smoothed and polished the repaired stone until, from the oculus above the throne, light fell through warm air and gleamed on unbroken marble.
The courtyards and markets filled again with people whose laughter stitched itself to the drumbeat of work. They bowed to their queen with eyes that shone not only with respect but with relief; the ground had steadied beneath them and Threadshifting was finally behind them.
Power had settled back into the natural order. The court scholars agreed that magic answered its own soil once again: Dravaryn’s stone and earth in Dravaryn, Orchid’s flame on Orchid ground, Thirelle’s water magic held within its borders, and Velmire’s windcraft bound to the heights that claimed it once more. Jakobav, seeking to mend what hatred had divided, insisted that Velmire would prove an ally to Orchid once he’d spoken with Thane’s father.
The realization still burned in Ella’s chest. When Jakobav had tasted Thane’s blood, the memory it carried was never meant to see the light of day. He told her what he’d seen in that instant: a sky city where wind harps sang between white towers, and streets lay cut clean as bone; a boy sparring in a training court, laughter lifted on the gale as sunlit hair snapped loose; a king above with serpents chased in gold at his cuffs, citrine eyes cruel and calculating as they tracked every strike; the bow the boy offered; the smile the king returned. Later, behind closed doors, came the punishment that followed for not striking fast enough, brutal enough that Jakobav had spared her most of the details.
The vision had torn away for him, leaving two truths behind: Velmire had tried to force Thane toward a future he’d refused, and the wind Jakobav wielded to hold the Veil Leaches at bay had been exceptionally strong because of its inheritance—a power Thane had carried all his life from his royal bloodline without ever wielding. And with that truth came another secret for her to bear: Thane Ironfell was the rightful heir to the Velmire throne. At least this secret she shared with Jakobav.
Thane and the rest of the inner circle were back patrolling Dravaryn, but she hoped they would visit soon. If not, she would be tracking them down herself before long. She missed them all, even Bryn, and especially Savina and Thane. The knowledge of what Thane had endured as a child would haunt her forever.
Ella shivered and forced her thoughts elsewhere.
In the quiet that followed the Veil shattering, it was almost a comfort to have magic tied to soil as law again.
Jakobav had returned north to steady his kingdom and then come back just a week later, moving through the castle as if space had been made for him, through the Orchid court as if he’d been born to it, and through her rooms like a man who had stopped asking permission.
Ella didn’t ask whether his Claiming gift still held or whether his Blood-Scenting still reached beyond Dravaryn. She thought she’d seen a shield flicker once, instinct more than proof, but too much else demanded her hands: rebuilding and oaths, bread and borders.
He surprised her with one more gift. He had become a better mentor than many men twice his age. All that time beside the King of Dravaryn had left him rich with knowledge, even though the king could no longer speak. Ella drank in every lesson. He didn’t talk over her or soften the work. He showed her the price of command along with the possibilities and stood steady while she chose her path through it.
Thirelle’s queen sailed in blue and silver to thank Queen Ellandria of Orchid for opening the realms and preventing the Veil’s shatter from destroying the mortal world. Ella traveled in return with a guard of Orchid steel to stand with the monarch and further reassure their alliance. She was met with adoration from the Thirelle people and an overflow of warm hospitality from their royalty. Water rose to a lifted hand and poured into a glass as they cheered to good health and pledged support for one another. The devotion there, the way a whole people bowed to tide and lake, was familiar. It wasn’t the same as her homeland’s fire, but it was kin to it, something living that honored an element both purifying and essential.
Spies from every kingdom had been posted along the continent’s far horizon since the day the Veil shattered. Orchid skiffs kept to the currents, Dravaryn watchers guarded the storm-lines, Thirelle listened through water, and Velmire’s commanders kept watch in the high wind. The land across the sea, once belonging to the Fae, lay quiet as bone. No lights. No voices. No proof of life at all. Yet with the realms now open, and those with the ability to travel between them free to do so, it had never been more vital to know where each mortal kingdom placed its loyalties.
Ella sat on the throne that afternoon and, for the first time, did not feel crushed by it. It had taken weeks of practice, pretending, before turning into something she could bear.
Petitioners from Orchid’s capital, Aradessa, arrived in waves. They came and went, speaking of food and bridges and borders that were mostly old grudges in new clothes. At her right stood Jakobav, silent and immovable: she felt the comfort of his protection even when she didn’t look his way. Some petitioners faltered at the sight of him, their words stumbling, but none dared to question aloud why the prince of Dravaryn stood so near their queen.
Ella gave orders when orders might move the world, coin where coin could do honest work, and silence when silence proved wiser than speech. Out of the corner of her eye, she kept catching the clean shine of marble and the small markers of a home that had endured. She smiled at the familiar faces in the throne room, at Nira’s mix of warmth and humor and Demetrius’s chaos and loyalty, reminders that Orchid remained hers in more ways than lineage.
Her father entered without ceremony.
Eryndor moved differently now, lighter around the eyes as if grief had sanded him down to his best parts.
He paused at the foot of the dais until she inclined her head. At his gesture, the chamber emptied, voices dimming as the doors thudded closed. Marisol was the last to walk out and, just before leaving, she turned and met Ella’s gaze, bright with curiosity, as if she were trying to say something without words.
Jakobav didn’t move at first. His gaze found hers, and she wanted nothing more than to hold it. Eryndor looked from the man at her side back to Ella.
“May I speak with you alone?” he asked, the words both a question and a father pulling rank.
She inclined her head.
Jakobav stepped closer before he left, brushing his fingers along hers where they rested on the arm of the throne. The touch was brief, but it left her pulse unsteady. His mouth bent close enough that only she could hear.
