Ella’s gaze fell to his hand still clutching her arm protectively, his thumb brushing absently across her skin, and for one suspended moment, she clung to the steadiness.
Jakobav let it linger no longer than necessary. His hand squeezed once, and then he pulled her firmly toward the door. “Let’s go. Quickly.”
They burst outside into the mist, the air colder, more bleak, as if the forest recoiled from the seer’s laughter too. The horse reared against the reins, nostrils flaring, hooves striking the earth in protest until Jakobav’s deep command steadied it. Ella swung numbly into the saddle, and Jakobav mounted close behind, his chest pressed against her as they urged the horse down the narrow road, the forest reluctant to let them pass.
Shadows clung thick between the trees, branches groaning as though something unseen had stirred them.
They rode in silence for several minutes, the trees hemming them in, until Ella finally found her voice. “I thought your family trusted her.”
He appeared as disturbed as she felt and gave her a sidelong look. “Perhaps that trust was slightly exaggerated. Known about her for generations might be more accurate. Tolerated her living on the outskirts of town, with Cathea keeping an eye on her. That woman is a godsdamned lunatic.”
Ella should have demanded more explanation, but her mind reeled too fervently to focus. “Agreed. But lunacy doesn’t mean she was wrong about everything.” Her stomach lurched at the memory of the seer’s demented analogy. “Although the carcass comment was…uniquely horrifying.”
Jakobav’s gaze stayed on the dark road ahead, his voice flat, steady. “Prophecy or madness. Either way, it changes nothing tonight.”
He was right.
The seer’s laughter still clung to her skin like a film of oil that she couldn’t scrub away, yet Jakobav’s calm resolve steadied her enough to keep going.
At least she had some answers, even if those answers only opened darker doors. And deep down, Ella couldn’t shake the terrible certainty that the worst of her truths still waited ahead.
26
FATE AND VOWS
Ella couldn’t sleep, not after what the seer had said and not after what she learned.
The ride back to the castle unspooled beneath a sky the color of ash, hoofbeats striking a steady cadence like a distant drum. When the guards lifted their lanterns, they asked nothing, and she was grateful. She had no strength left for ceremony, only the need to reach a door and be done with the night.
She lay sprawled across the gigantic bed that belonged to the equally massive, infuriating warlord she had just shared a horse with for days. Her hand traced the edge of the luxe furs, the fire crackled low in the hearth, and a smell that was now familiar wrapped around her, grounding and comforting her even as her thoughts spiraled.
She lay very still and let the truth assemble itself piece by piece, as if naming it too quickly might shatter her. Turning her face into the pillow, Ella let the seer’s words echo again, softer now but no less potent, hating that a part of her wanted to argue with a woman who could peel truth from blood and bone.
The relic she'd been searching for, chasing across rumors and ruins, through treason and prophecy, wasn’t some buried artifact or enchanted object.
It was Jakobav.
It had always been Jakobav.
The revelation moved through her like a tide building beneath the surface for months, not loud or triumphant but vast and undeniable, and with it came the memory of a dozen small moments that now made sense in the wake of the seer’s gaze.
The pull in the corridors when she first stepped within these walls, the strange certainty that the castle breathed with her, the way the air seemed to lean when he entered a room and the floor steadied when he spoke, all of it had been him.
She’d told herself it was instinct and hunger and stubbornness, a compass fashioned out of will, but it had never been that at all.
And gods help her, she hadn’t even questioned it. She had followed him. Trusted him. Stopped searching for the relic the moment he stood at her side and barely questioned why that felt like enough.
She’d mocked him, fought him, baited him…and somewhere between all of that, she’d started to enjoy it.
Not just with Jakobav and his maddening scowls, but with the ones who bled beside him. Thane’s irreverent grin came to mind, followed by Maeren’s steady hands, Soren’s watchful quiet, Savina’s blade-bright rage, and Bryn who laughed at death like an old acquaintance and still had a healer’s touch.
Somewhere along this path, she’d begun to care about the people who cared about him, and if that was not a confession, then it was at least a change of weather inside her chest.
A part of her longed to go to them, to see with her own eyes that they were safe, but there was something else she needed first.
She pushed herself upright, the room seeming to press closer, pulsing with the quiet shock of change. It was subtle but undeniable. Somehow this place had started to feel suspiciously like home.
But beneath that warmth, a harder truth existed. If Jakobav was the relic, everything she believed about the prophecy had changed. Whatever object she’d imagined finding in ruins or archives was now a breathing, stubborn, very much alive, and infuriatingly large man.
