Thaelyn stirred against the chains again, her wrists raw and bloodied, iron cuffs enchanted with something old. Not just elemental suppression. These were ancient ward-craft, the kind usedin rites long forbidden. She had been punched in the face. Her eye felt swollen, and her rib felt as if it had been broken. Her arms stung. She remembered being dragged for miles. Her back and legs burned from them dragging her. Her shoulders and limbs were also dislocated from being hung up and suspended in the air for long periods of time. Cold sank into her bones from the stone platform beneath her. She saw blood on the ground, her blood. The room was round, windowless, and lit only by the flickering green-blue burn of everflame torches embedded in skull-shaped sconces.
A ring of wardlines, etched in blood and something darker, pulsed around the chamber. She’d traced them with the one eye that she could see out of. She followed it so many times she could sketch them from memory now. Symbols she didn’t fully understand. Half Aetheric, half something else. Not quite shadow, not quite earth.
Her body trembled, but not from cold. Her clothes had been torn from the dragging and the beatings. Her body was bare. The absence of the bond was the worst part. The utter void where Nyxariel’s presence should be. She had never felt so alone.
She knew Nyxariel lived. Shehadto. But whatever spell had severed their connection, it was cruelly precise. Aether did not flow through her veins now. It dripped like a dying candle, flickering inside her ribs. Thaelyn slipped into consciousness from a tonic they had forced her to drink.
Thaelyn woke to the sound of dripping water and the taste of iron on her tongue. Her wrists burned even deeper where the shackles bit and chewed through her skin, cold, blackened metal that pulsed faintly like veins beneath flesh. The world around her hummed, deep and unending, like the heartbeat of something monstrous.
When her vision steadied, she realized she was suspended in a cavern vast enough to swallow mountains. Jagged spires of onyx jutted from the floor, slick with Aether rot. At the center, a rift split the air, a vertical wound that bled violet light and whispered in the voices of the dead.
Nyxariel was gone. The bond was muted, cut off, but not broken.Not yet.
Chains of necromantic runes glowed around her, thrumming with a rhythm that made her teeth ache. Every breath drew in the stench of decay and burnt ozone.
A voice came from behind her. Low. Measured. Too calm.
“So this is the Aether-born.”
Thaelyn turned her head.
From the shadowed archway emerged Maelor, the Arch Necromancer. His skin was gray as stone, his eyes twin pits of sickly red light. His robes trailed mist that reeked of grave soil. Around his neck hung a talisman made of fused bone and dragon scale. Behind him came the others, the Shadow King Sovereign and the Triumvirate.
Morcarion, the Shadow King Sovereign, walked like a moving eclipse, his outline constantly shifting, his body half-smoke, almost half-man, but too far gone to be the soul of a man. Even looking at him made her stomach twist, as if her mind couldn’t hold his shape. He had shadows all around him, and his shape was constantly changing.
Vaelgor, the Illusionist, followed next, his beauty cruel and precise. His white hair shimmered with spectral light, and his eyes gleamed silver as quicksilver. Every time he blinked, his face changed. Her mind was not her own. She saw and felt her mother’s smile, then she saw Thorne, his blue eyes and handsome features. Next were her best friends and squad members, and then Commander Dareth’s eyes and that protectiveness that he places around Thorne and extends to her, too. She wanted to scream.
Next came Kors, the Bone Warden, his massive frame wrapped in cracked armor made from the ribs of ancient beasts. His hands were black with decay, each finger tipped with a claw that dripped corrosive ichor, the poisonous blood of the dead.
The four of them stopped before her. The light from the Rift cast them in warped halos. “Welcome, child of Aeromir,” Maelor said, his tone almost kind. “We have waited a long time for your blood to resurface.”
Thaelyn glared at him, voice raw. “You’ll wait longer before I give you anything.”
Vaelgor smiled, and his face shimmered into Thorne’s, perfect down to the faint scar near his mouth. “Oh Thae, my wicked and beautiful little terror,” he said in Thorne’s voice, low and coaxing. “You already have, I know where your heart lies.”
“Get out of my head.”
“For now,” Vaelgor purred, and with a flick of his hand, the illusions dissolved, replaced by black flame. The pain was immediate. The world twisted as the runes on her shackles flared red-hot. Magic tore through her veins like fire and glass. Thaelyn screamed.
Kors chuckled, a deep, broken sound. “She burns well. All that power, fighting to stay inside her.”
“Hault for now,” Maelor said, though there was no mercy in his tone. He stepped closer, lowering his staff until its tip hovered before her heart. “The Aether must be drawn willingly, or it devours what it touches. You cannot hold it forever, girl. Give it to us, and you will live.”
Thaelyn lifted her head, trembling but defiant. “I’d rather die.”
Morcarion’s laughter was a whisper that crawled across her skin. “You think death frees you? How quaint.”
The Shadow Sovereign drifted forward, his body unraveling into ribbons of smoke that wrapped around her throat. The world dimmed as his power pressed into her mind, forcing her memories open.
She saw Thorne’s face, the training field, the night they kissed for the first time, their epic lovemaking, the bond that had burned bright and terrifying. She tried to push him out, but the shadow pried deeper.
“Ah,” Morcarion murmured, his voice a poison in her ear. “So the Flame Prince has marked you. A fitting symmetry. His dragon still roams the skies above, crying for you.”
Thaelyn’s pulse spiked. She fought to keep her breathing steady.
Morcarion watched her, eyes narrowing. “You want to feel him, even now. The bond calls across the Veil. What happens, I wonder, if we drop the wards to get him to come to you? That is too perfect?”
Her head jerked up. “No.”
