Alora’s brief defiance sank beneath the pool in her heart where she’d found it and Rune watched the acceptance dull her honey eyes.
Laurent stood back. “Without you, Argyle has no future.”
“Then I suppose,” Alora murmured. “Mine is of little consequence.”
She rose, dipped in a low curtsey, then excused herself with grace worn like armor.
Rune followed her shadow down the hall to her bedchamber, where she collapsed onto her bed and silently wept. In the cave, Rune paced as far as his chains allowed, the need to go to her sharpening into something feral.
This was the moment he had appeared before her and offered escape. This was the moment everything had begun.
But now he was trapped in stone while she cried alone.
Rune glanced at the mirror on her bureau. Reflective surfaces could carry whispers. Dreams could be doors. But his magic was strangled to mist by the manacles, and they burned more intensely the longer he pushed himself.
But Rune couldn’t help but make the Veil’s Eye stay.
Moonlight streamed in through the windows, falling over Alora’s still form where she had moved to the window seat. Tears glistened on her cheek like dewdrops of silver.
Rune sent a thin petal of shadow and caught one tear as it fell. He breathed it in. Salt and sweetness and her, the scent of her threading through his prison until his sanity tightened like a noose.
His breath left him as smoke. He had to go to her.
He clamped his jaws around the chain and pulled until divine metal scorched his teeth, until his throat tasted blood and holy fire. His shadows thrashed, and his teeth ached against the divine metal, but his prison did not give.
Yet he still came back to the same question.Is this real?
“It is,” said a voice like wind over glass.
Rune lurched back at the sudden and very familiar voice. He hit the cave wall, and his shadows scattered, losing sight of Alora. A surge of bright light burned his vision, and he shut his eyes with a hiss.
A soft laugh echoed around him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s naughty to spy? Then again, what could I expect from he who rules the dark?”
The clack of heels echoed in the cavern and Rune squinted toward the glowing figure standing before him and his eyes widened.
Sunnëva…?
The Goddess of Death stood at the mouth of the cavern, cloaked in silver. Snowflakes hovered around her like motes of light. Her long golden hair was swept over one shoulder, looking at him with eyes like dawn over ice.
Old wounds cracked open at the sight of her, wounds he had thought buried when they parted ways in the ashes of another war.
Rune looked away, grimacing at the light burning his eyes.What do you want?
She stepped closer, smirking at the chains that wrapped around his arms and chest. “Oh? Is that how you greet an old friend?”
Rune bared his teeth a snarl.We ceased to hold to such sentiments the moment you drove a sword through my back.
Sunnëva arched an eyebrow. “Oh, long before that, Rune.”
Came here to gloat?This was your plan, wasn’t it? These cursed chains.
It had been her idea that sparked the creation of Sunstone, leading to his first defeat.
How dare you interfere.
Light burst from Sunnëva in a flash of fury, searing and holy. Rune staggered back with a hiss, shielding his eyes beneath a wing.
“How dare you touch my children again!” she thundered, her voice shaking the stone. Wind lashed like whips through the cavern. Her eyes burned an unearthly blue, radiant with her wrath. “Still so arrogant. So blind. Had you killed my son, that lightning strike would not have spared you. And I would have unmade your soul myself.”
