We approached the obsidian table that dominated the space, it’s surface gleamed, reflecting distorted images of ourselves and the misty chamber around us. The others began to drift away, leaving only Varyth, Fenric and Darian to sit at the table. I started to follow Shaelith, but Varyth gripped my hand, his fingers intertwining with mine in a gesture that was both electric and comforting.
“No,” he said, low, but absolute. “You stay with me.”
I hesitated, uncertainty threading through me. “I don’t belong?—”
“I don’t care.” His eyes burned, the quiet fury in them not directed at me, but at the very suggestion of distance. “You’re by my side, Isara.”
I found myself nodding, allowing him to guide me towards the table. We moved as one, my dress whispering against the smooth stone floor. The obsidian table stretched before us, its surface dark as spilled ink. As I neared, my reflection twisted and wavered across it. It shifted, contorting, the stone itself knowing this meeting would rewrite me into someone unrecognisable.
I settled into the high-backed chair beside Varyth, Darian took the seat to my right, his usual jovial demeanour replaced by a focused intensity. Fenric settled himself on Varyth’s other side, his posture rigid and alert.
The air in the chamber thickened, charged with anticipation. Motes of silvery light danced through the misty veils surrounding us, creating an otherworldly atmosphere. The stonewalls hummed with ancient magic, murmurs that slithered through me, unseen and uninvited.
We didn’t have to wait long.
The shadows in the corner of the room began to shift, stirring in the depths of the darkened space. A cool, almost imperceptible breeze whispered through the room. It traced along my skin, slipping beneath my dress and settling against my spine. The air grew heavier, thicker, the atmosphere drawing tight, before suddenly parting, the curtain of darkness ripping aside.
They stepped through the tear in reality itself.
Ashterion entered first, striding the chamber with the grace of a predator. His movements were slow, an elegance that came from knowing no one would ever stop him. Shadows clung to him, poured from him. They writhed around his legs, licked up the walls, consuming the light in its path.
His power wasn’t just overwhelming, it was suffocating. A force, ancient and unending, pressing against my skin, sinking into my bones.
Varyth had always filled a room with his power.
Ashterion stole the air from it.
He stood well over six and a half feet tall, his powerful frame corded with muscle that spoke of centuries of battle and conquest and skin the rich brown of dusk’s first shadows.
His face was a masterpiece of rugged angles and brooding intensity, with high cheekbones and a strong, defined jaw that look like it had been carved from shadows and light. But it was his eyes that truly commanded attention, piercing blue orbs flecked with silver, twin pools of midnight sky studded with stars. There was a weight in them, ancient and boundless, edged with a sharp, feral intelligence.
But it was the scar that transformed him.
A jagged slash began at his right temple and carved a merciless path down his cheek, across the angle of his jaw, and into the thick column of his throat. It wasn’t a scar that healed clean. It looked torn, as if something had tried to rip him open and failed. Old magic shimmered faintly in its depths, a faint silver burn that crawled like veins of frost beneath the skin.
My breath stalled in my chest, and Varyth’s hand tightened around mine, his thumb tracing soothing circles on my skin.
Ashterion’s eyes locked onto mine, and the earth—the foundation beneath my feet—lurched. I thought the world might snap under the weight of that single glance. He wasn’t looking at me. He wasseeing. Peeling back layers I hadn’t even known existed, prying into corners of myself that had long been buried.
Ashterion’s wife, Xyliria, followed in one smooth step behind him, her presence as eerie as the first time I saw her. Her body was wrapped in another flowing gown of blood-red silk, exposing the ivory skin of her bare shoulders and adorned with thin silver chains that glowed faintly.
Varyth’s grip on my hand tightened further, almost painfully so. Tension radiated from him, a stark contrast to his usual composed demeanour.
Ashterion’s smirk widened fractionally as he took in our joined hands, before meeting Varyth’s gaze.
The air between them crackled with unspoken challenge.
Before I could dwell on it the next member of the delegation entered.
I recognised Merrick, Ashterion’s second. He looked the same as he had in the cave. Not the storm itself, but the moment before it. Where Ashterion was all control and precision, Merrick was rougher, heavier—the inevitability of impact.
The way he stood, the way he breathed, it all whispered of calculated lethality. Of someone who had been an apex predator for so long, he no longer recognised anything as a true threat.
His gaze locked with Darian’s.
For a single, electric moment, the air between them thrummed, loaded with everything unspoken. A battle waged in the space of a heartbeat, Merrick’s smirk curling slow and easy, Darian’s expression twisting into a snarl.
Merrick tilted his head, the corner of his mouth quirking higher, his hazel eyes gleaming with cold amusement. He didn’t need to say anything. His expression alone was enough. A dare wrapped in the easy, effortless confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
