And if she had any hope of preventing the Veil from shattering, she would need to figure out what it meant to wield a living relic. How his blood, his magic, and his fate fit into the old lines of the prophecy she’d studied most of her life.
Threadshifting was accelerating. The world was changing faster than she could track, and she needed to decipher the rest before it was too late.
The solstice was in two days. Jakobav would walk straight into a magical firestorm, one that might split him open and demand he remain standing, and who knows how he might fare. Especially with the Veil fraying.
The gods, if they listened at all, were not known for mercy. It might kill him, and she hadn’t even asked if she’d be allowed to go, to help.
Fuck, she had to fix this.
Her boots waited by the bed. She pulled them on with unsteady hands, tied the straps tight, and told herself that fear was useful when it pointed you in the right direction.
Jakobav was where Kalenya had told her he would be, in the small office overlooking the training grounds.
It smelled faintly of smoke and cedar, the kind of clean, controlled order that felt unmistakably like him. Shelves lined the stone walls, holding maps weighted with knives and worn tomes with broken spines. The mahogany grain of his deskcaught the firelight in deep, rippling lines, polished smooth in the places his hands touched most. The hearth was kept to a thoughtful flame, and the desk pared to little more than a few unread pages and a half-empty mug.
He was still holding one of the pages when she stepped inside, and though he didn’t startle, he set it down slowly and leaned back in his chair, a long exhale escaping him as if bracing for a fight.
His brow lifted in silent question.
“I’m not here to argue,” she said quickly, and it felt like an opening she had to make with care, the first cut in a knot.
His mouth tipped in the smallest warning of a smile. “Then I’m terrified.”
She ignored him, moving to sit opposite. Her fingers traced along the grain of the table instead, restless, unwilling to be still. “I want to know everything about the Claiming.”
He set his mug aside with careful hands, as if the table might startle if he moved too fast. “Ella.”
“No games,” she said, her voice steadier now. “I get that it’s dangerous. But I need to know more. And no half-truths this time. Please.”
His eyes narrowed, and his silence smoldered deeper than the fire’s crackle. “Ella.” His voice roughened. “You’re relentless. Always pushing. Always prying. And you think you’re ready for every truth you demand.”
“I can handle it. Tell me.” She slammed her palms on the desk, the sound cracking through the room.
A slow breath left him, unbothered by her fury.
“I saw what happened when the seer gave you too much. She peeled you open, word by word.”
His expression darkened, his gaze dragging over her like a touch.
“You looked…unsettled by her words. Stripped bare.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping lower still. “I would know. I’ve seen you naked. It did not unsettle me in the slightest. It settled in all the right places.”
Heat struck her cheeks, but she didn’t let him deter her. “You’re not going to deflect by flirting. Tell me about the Claiming ceremony.”
His jaw worked once, resisting, and then his shoulders eased in something close to resignation. “Fine. It begins at dusk,” he said at last.
Ella waited, ready to curse his ancestors if he stopped there.
“The day after tomorrow. You’ll walk into the arena through the High Cathedral. I’ll be there long before the bells toll, preparing. You’ll arrive with Maeren and Savina, along with Kalenya and some of the other female attendants. The walk is part of it, meant for the people of Dravaryn, and for the realm itself, to see who stands with me, to measure every soul chosen to witness.”
She caught it immediately, the way his words placed her not in the crowd behind him but beside his inner circle, displayed before the entire realm. Ella leaned back in her chair, arms dropping to her sides in a stunned, disbelieving huff. “I’m walking in with your inner circle? Do I get to sit by Maeren and Savina during the ceremony?”
His mouth curved faintly, though his eyes stayed unreadable. “You won’t be sitting. But yes. Something like that.”
Relief loosened her chest before she could stop it. She’d been worried he’d keep her hidden away, that she’d be set apart as an outsider. The thought of being beside them, of not being alone, settled her more than she wanted to admit. She chose not to press him on“something like that.”
Her pulse quickened, but she kept her face steady. “And then?”
