Polan gripped the mercenary’s shoulder with his good hand, digging his fingers in hard enough to bruise, using the man as a crutch to force himself upright. He breathed through the agony, locking it away in a box in his mind, forcing the world to stop spinning through sheer force of will.
He stared at the spot where they had been.
There was only a crater of blackened, smoking earth. The air smelled of ozone and the acrid, freezing scent of the Void.
They were gone.
But as the shock faded, it was not replaced by self-reflection. It was replaced by a cold, crystalline certainty.
This was not his fault. He had offered her safety. He had offered her home.
This was the Spurs.
It was the same old story, played out across centuries. The Spurs had stolen the maps from his ancestors, denying House Volanus their birthright. And now, they had stolen the key to unlocking that legacy. They had taken his wife, his property, and twisted her mind until she turned her power against her own master. They were thieves, stealing his future to prop up their own crumbling monopoly.
And that instructor...
The image seared itself into Polan’s mind, brighter than the pain in his arm. The “Iron Spur.” The cripple. He remembered the way the man had stood between them. He remembered the way the man’s hand had rested on Gessa’s shoulder—familiar, protective, possessive.
A broken thing like that, touching what belonged to Polan.
A surge of revulsion twisted in his gut, hotter than the burns on his skin. That limping dog had dared to lay claim to a Volanus asset. For that transgression, death was too simple. Polan would devise something special for him. He would make that broken man watch while he reclaimed his property, and then he would finish what the Ley Tunnel had started five years ago.
“My lord,” Kestrel stammered, looking at the burns. “We need a healer. We must retreat.”
“No,” Polan whispered, his voice a dry rasp. “We do not retreat. We hunt.”
He looked at the empty air where Gessa had vanished.
She had hurt him. She had scarred him. The arm would heal, but the insult would remain. She had proven that she was too wild, too damaged by the Spurs’ influence to be trusted with freedom ever again.
She would require... drastic reshaping.
He didn’t care about her spirit anymore. He didn’t care about her “fire.” Those things were liabilities. He needed the bloodline. He needed the vessel.
He would find her. He would drag her back to Ironwood. And if he had to carve away every piece of her personality to ensure she never defied him again, so be it. He would leave her with nothing but her breath and her womb. As long as the body remained whole enough to bear his heir, the rest of her was disposable.
“Get me to the horse,” he commanded Kestrel, turning away from the crater. “And send word to Malak. The timeline has accelerated.”
He would burn the Spurs for their theft. He would crush the cripple for his insolence. And he would take back what was his.
19
STRANDED SOULS
The world was not a tunnel; it was a violent, grinding chaos. Ky felt a pressure in his bones like the world was being unmade, a roar that was not sound but pure, tearing force. One moment he was being pulled into the roaring dark, the next he was being spat out, thrown with bone-jarring force to land hard on unfamiliar ground. The sudden silence was as deafening as the previous roar. His stomach heaved, a sour bile rising in his throat—a violent, disorienting sickness no clean tunnel had ever produced.
He lay on the damp earth, his senses struggling to clear. The scent that had heralded Gessa’s storm of magic was gone, ripped away as if it had never been. In its place was a new smell, thick and wrong. Not the dry pine and dust of the Academy’s valley, but the dampness of loamy earth, and the sweetness of strange, unseen blossoms.
Through the dizzying nausea, his training kicked in. Gessa.
He pushed himself up, his bad leg screaming a protest he ruthlessly ignored. He found her a few feet away, and the sight of her sent a cold spike of fear through him that was sharper thanany pain. She was a crumpled, fragile shape on a bed of thick, green moss, her limbs bent at unnatural angles, flung there like a child’s broken doll. Just moments ago, she had been vibrant, laughing, her face alight with triumph. Now, she was still.
Her dark hair was fanned out like spilled ink against the vibrant green, a stark contrast to the deathly pallor of her skin. He knelt, his own pain forgotten, a singular thought screaming in his mind:Not again. Not another one.The world narrowed to the fragile pulse point beneath her jaw. His fingers, usually so steady, trembled as he pressed them to her neck. For one, two, three agonizing heartbeats, there was nothing but cold, still skin.Please,the word was a silent prayer, a raw bargain offered to any god who would listen.Please.
And then he felt it. Faint. A fluttery, bird-wing beat against his fingertips, but it was there. The breath he didn’t realize he was holding tore from his lungs in a ragged, shuddering gasp. She was alive. The magical backlash had drained her completely, leaving her in a death-like state of exhaustion.
He leaned closer, taking in the lingering echo of crushed peppermint. He gently brushed the tangled strands from her face, his touch impossibly light. A massive, dark shape stirred nearby, and he saw Night shaking his great head, dazed but solid and uninjured. A wave of gut-wrenching relief washed over him, so potent it left him light-headed. But it was immediately followed by the cold tide of rising panic.
