Reynnar, though—he never broke. Night after night, he stood at the front of his cell, motionless, as if he were carved from stone. His eyes never closed, his body never sagged with exhaustion. He stayed like that, silent, as if he could feel every scream, every cry, like a blade cutting into him. Elara couldn’t fathom why they’d locked him away from the others, why his cell was placed in this nearly abandoned tunnel. But maybe that was the point—a twisted form of torture, making him listen to his people’s suffering, knowing he couldn’t reach them. Couldn’t help.
Osin’s audacity baffled her. Why risk the Mothers’ fury?
What need did Latheria have for captive Fae?
And most concerning of all,howhad he done it?
It shouldn’t have been possible. The Mothers had decreed that neither race could cross into the other’s realm. Yet, there they were, defying the very laws of their existence. And Elara was hellbent on figuring out how.
When Elara did find sleep, she would dream strange, unsettling dreams. They weren’t nightmares, but they left her with the same feeling of being unmoored. Like the visions the river spirit used to give her—fleeting images, fragments of something just beyond her reach. She felt adrift, searching for something she couldn’t name.
And then, always—him.
The Hunter.
Every single night.
Sometimes he appeared as a boy, standing in the court with eyes too knowing for someone so young. Other times, she saw him as the warrior, cutting his way through the forest, thecrackling flames at his back as if they answered to him alone. But it was the other vision that haunted her most—the man on his knees, surrounded by ash, his hollow eyes fixed on her, empty and waiting.
Each time she woke, her heart thundered in her chest, her skin damp with sweat. The dreams left her shaken, so rattled that she’d stumble to the murky, foul water in her cell just to splash some sense back into herself. But it never helped.
In the mornings, when the first round of guards would dole out tooth-cracking bread alongside a questionable, fishy-smelling soup, Reynnar would quietly slide a portion of his food across the cold floor to her. He seemed to think she needed it more than he did. After a while, she stopped arguing and accepted it.
Their shared mornings became something of a sacred routine, a quiet communion in their imprisonment. His voice became her dawn, the exotic cadence of his native tongue weaving a spell of comfort around her frayed edges. The stories he told, indecipherable as they were, carried a beauty that didn't need translation, their rhythm a lullaby that coaxed her into a semblance of peace she hadn't known since being trapped.
In return, she would whisper stories of Aewora’s towering mountains, how she’d spent hours in the Sanct, watching the sun bathe their golden peaks and dreaming of scaling them, just to capture the entirety of Latheria in one sweeping gaze. She spoke of her longing for the ocean, of the pull she felt toward the endless stretch of blue, imagining what it would be like to dive beneath the waves and taste the sweet freedom they promised.
Reynnar listened intently, his eyes never leaving hers, offering soft, empathetic hums, and quiet smiles that kept her grounded, kept her from slipping away into the dark. In a place where it would have been so easy to lose herself, his steadypresence kept her tethered to something real. Something that still felt like hope.
By the fourth or fifth week in captivity—Elara couldn’t be sure—she watched in horror as the guards dragged Reynnar from his cell. His brief struggle barely made a difference, a flicker of defiance snuffed out almost as quickly as it sparked. She had yelled at them to stop, rattled her bars like he had done for her on that first morning. But Elara quickly learned why the others stayed silent, why they didn’t interfere.
For this was a place where voices died on bruised lips.
Malak had burst into her cell, cutting off her plea with a brutal backhand that whipped her head to the side, pain exploding in her jaw. Before she could even recover, his boot slammed into her ribs, knocking the air from her lungs and leaving her gasping, crumpled on the floor. He stormed out without a word, and in the throbbing silence that followed, a cold realization settled over her.
Osin hadn’t just caged them—he’d somehow stripped the Fae of their power.
Reynnar's words should have been imbued with the strength of the ancients, but they were empty, hollow, drained of the ether that was rightfully his. But it couldn't just be him; it had to be all of them. Osin must have robbed every Fae of their birthright, reducing them to mere husks of themselves, powerless against their shackles.
When they tossed Reynnar back into his cell, broken and bruised, Elara had to force herself not to look away, swallowing the sob that threatened to escape. His body was a map of suffering, slashed, and smeared in deep purples, blacks, and blues, each mark screaming of the torment he'd endured. She stood by the bars that separated them, gripping the cold iron as if it could somehow bridge the distance between them, watchinghelplessly as he fought to breath, his chest rising and falling in a jagged rhythm.
Time felt like it dragged on, the seconds heavy and painful, until finally, he stirred.
But when his gaze met hers, there was a trace of something shattered in his expression, a fracture deep within that hadn't been there before. And seeing him like that broke something inside her too.
Their eyes met, locked in a silent exchange of shared pain, until he dragged himself closer, inch by agonizing inch, to where she knelt.
All Elara could offer was the small comfort of running her fingers through his hair while applying salve to the wounds within her reach. A gesture that felt so pitifully inadequate for the magnitude of his suffering.
But when her hand touched him, his eyes fluttered shut, a pained smile tugging at his cracked lips, reopening the scab on his mouth. And in that moment, she knew. It hit her with a force she couldn’t ignore—her purpose, her path, crystallized with a clarity so sharp it cut through everything else she had ever known.
It wasn’t just about escaping her pain or finding freedom. It was aboutthem—the Fae, Reynnar, all those crushed beneath Osin’s power, just as she had been. For so long, she had fought in silence, trapped in her own suffering, numb to the world around her.
Their pain reflected her own, but Reynnar’s presence stirred something deeper—something she’d never felt when fighting for herself. He reminded her that she wasn’t in this battle alone anymore. She wasn’t the only one clawing her way out of the darkness.
And that changed everything.
So, she would play Osin’s game. She would learn, grow, and then turn the game on its head.
