He gritted his teeth, forcing down the fury clawing at him with every beat of his heart. One wrong move, and Evelyne would be lost before they ever reached her.
But gods help anyone who tried to keep him from her now.
Because Alaric Soleranos was not leaving without her.
The calling wasn’t just sound anymore. It was a sensation—a vibration threading through the soles of his boots, the fibers of the robes he wore, the beat of his heart. It was in the air he breathed, in the very blood running under his skin.
Magic.
He felt it whispering with a voice that wasn’t a voice at all, beckoning with a promise that tasted like ash and iron. It soaked the ruins, the people, even the mercenaries who shifted uneasily at the edges of the gathering. It pressed down, telling him to kneel. To obey.
The rite was about to begin.
Alaric flicked a glance toward Ravik, catching the older man's eye. No words passed between them. Marshal gave the smallest nod. He returned it without hesitation.
He exhaled once, low and steady, the way Evelyne had taught him—Control. Calm. Focus.
Before stepping forward, something pulled his gaze upward.
The clouds had peeled back just enough to reveal a break in the night. A constellation emerged, crisp and impossible.
Golden threads traced the shape of a lynx. It perched among the stars like a secret held in the bones of the heavens. He hadn't seen that constellation before. It came from the oldest archives—half-forgotten, half-dismissed. Some called it a sailor’s tale, where truth wore the face of myth and no one dared ask which mattered more.
Alaric blinked once.
And then, clear as breath against his ear, he heard it.
Eyes that see what others cannot…
The phrase curled through his thoughts, uninvited but undeniable. A line from a tale. About the Silver Lynx, guardian of hidden paths, patron of those who hunted the truth.
Alaric swallowed hard and looked away from the stars.
Whatever magic had been pulled into this night, whatever gods lingered behind the veil—he didn’t care for their favor.
Chapter 71
The chanting thickened around her, a low, pulsing hum that seemed to bleed into the very stones beneath her back. A rhythm she never heard, music she hadn't recognized.
Evelyne’s gaze flickered upward, heart hammering, and she saw them—strange, flowing lines beginning to ignite in the darkness above her. They shimmered, burning gold against the rotted stone, winding in crooked, unnatural patterns across the ruins.
They floated between the robed figures around her, connecting Halwen’s chest to the other priests like a spider's web spun in fevered devotion. The threads pulsed, twinkling sickly, knotting and binding in ways that made her stomach lurch.
Magic.
Real. Raw. And wrong.
Evelyne stared at it, unable to tear her gaze away. She gasped, but the air filled her lungs too thick and suffocating, as if it didn’t belong inside human bodies at all. Her skin prickled. Her veins felt alight with fever, burning along the surface of her arms and spine, while somewhere deeper, the blood running through her heart turned to ice.
The ruined courtyard around her seemed to sharpen into unbearable clarity. Every line, every crack, every shifting shadow. Even the dark itself felt translucent.
She could see too much and not enough all at once.
The moon hung bloated and wrong overhead, its light was unnatural, pulsing in time with the low, droning chant that crawled out of Halwen’s throat. Her heart matched it beat for beat, traitorous and loud, hammering against the cage of her ribs like it, too, sought escape.
She could almost see the sound.
The chant rose higher, faster, ritualistic, pounding like feet against the earth. It coiled through the air in ribbons of pressure, curling around her limbs, her throat, dragging her deeper.
