My stomach twisted. My mother had been a bastard princess. Auradelle was my uncle. The man who’d captured me, who was trying to use me for some twisted ritual, was family.
“No,” I whispered. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she run? Why would she hide my mother on Earth?”
“Because she saw what she’d become,” he said simply. “And she feared the Bloom would take her daughter from her as a sacrifice.”
“You see, the convergence is in nine days. The celestial alignment accelerated when you went through the lake—the realm recognized your presence and responded. Nine days to convince you to save this realm. Nine days to undo the damage your grandmother’s choice caused.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then the convergence collapses. The imbalance between Root and Bloom becomes permanent. The realm tears itself apart over decades instead of finding harmony.” He leaned forward. “And your Kaelren dies with it. The corruption is eating him alive, you know. Faster now, since you’ve been taken. By the time he reaches you—and he will try to reach you—theremight be nothing left but a monster wearing his face.”
“Don’t talk about him like you know him.”
“But I do know him, Princess. I trained him, once.” Auradelle’s voice went soft with something almost like regret. “After Jo left, my father forced me to face the Bloom. To prove I was worthy despite my bastard half-sister’s existence. The Bloom rejected me. Violently. Left me with these.” He gestured to his corruption marks. “For years afterward, I searched for another candidate. Someone the Bloom might accept where I had failed.”
He smiled, cold and bitter. “A seer told me about a boy. Said he was the key to everything. So I trained Kaelren from childhood. Made him a prince. Taught him to control Root magic, to understand the balance, to be everything I couldn’t be. And when he was finally ready, when I presented him to the Bloom…” He paused. “It rejected him too. Nearly killed him. The corruption you see consuming him now? That’s where it started. That’s the wound that never healed. He carved those marks desperately trying to make the prophecy come true. Little did I know he was the key, the key that unlocked the door to you.”
My heart broke for Kaelren. Knowing all he had sacrificed. Knowing he thought he was never enough, with all the weight of the realm on his shoulders.
Auradelle gestured, and guards stepped forward—not threateningly, but present. Making it clear I wasn’t a guest but wasn’t quite a prisoner either.
“I’ve prepared quarters for you,” he continued, back to that horrible sincere warmth. “Comfortable ones. You’ll find I’m not the villain young Kaelren has painted me as. I’m simply a man trying to save a dying realm with the tools available. A regent holding a throne for a ruler who ran away, waiting for someone worthy to claim it properly.”
“By kidnapping me?”
“By showing you the truth.” His eyes glittered with something cold and hungry, the kind of certainty that had burned witches and started wars. “Your grandmother was a coward who ran rather than face her destiny. Your mother was weak, dying pathetically on Earth rather than returning where she belonged. But you…” His smile turned predatory. “You know deep down, beneath all that defiance, you know what you are. Property of this realm. Mine to shape. Mine to use.”
“I belong on Earth.”
“No, my dear. You belong to the realm. And in nine days, willing or not, you’ll understand why.” He gave me one last evil smile as he stalked out the door leaving me standing in the room full of mirrors.
Through the bond, I felt Kaelren’s presence—distant but furious, corruption spreading with every mile he traveled toward me. “I’m coming,”his feelings seemed to say. “Hold on. Burn the world. Save you. Hold on.”
I pressed my hand to the locket, feeling its unusual warmth against my palm. It pulsed in time with my heartbeat, or maybe my heartbeat was matching it. Jo had secrets—that much was becoming clear. Auradelle had plans that involved using me in ways that promised pain. Kaelren had corruption eating him alive, consuming him from the inside out to reach me.
And I had nine days to figure out how to save them all.
Or how to destroy everything trying.
25
Elle
I woke up slowly, my mind foggy and reluctant to focus. The last thing I remembered were the guards escorting me to my quarters Auradelle promised would be “comfortable.” I opened my eyes to find he hadn’t lied. The room was luxurious to the point of insult: a four-poster bed with purple silk sheets that probably cost more than most people saw in a year, an ornate wardrobe already filled with gowns in my exact size, floor-to-ceiling windows showing a spectacular view of the dying realm below.
But luxury didn’t hide the cage. Root-forged restraints circled my wrists, the living wood humming with wrongness that made my markings writhe and retreat beneath my skin. The chain connecting them to the wall was long enough to let me move around the room but not reach the door or windows. When I tested them—and of course I tested them immediately—they burned cold, spreading frost up my arms.
“Fuck,” I muttered, yanking against them harder. The chain rang out a mocking chime, and my markings flickered like a flame being smothered.
Through the bond—that connection with Kaelren that had become as natural as breathing—I felt almost nothing. Like trying to hear someone shouting through miles of vast nothingness. Occasionally a spike of rage so pure it made my chest ache, but even that was muted, distant. The restraints weren’t just holding me; they were drowning our connection.
“Still there, angry boy?”I thought as hard as I could, pushing against themagical dampening.
Nothing. Not even an echo.
The door opened without warning. A serving girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty entered, carrying a tray that smelled amazing despite my circumstances. A bruise darkened her jaw, carefully hidden by powder but not carefully enough.
“Lord Auradelle requests your presence for the evening meal,” she squeaked, not meeting my eyes.
