He didn’t mention the real reason Vorian wouldn’t challenge him. That the man wasn’t afraid of losing, but of winning. They all knew what would happen if someone ever managed to take Malekar’s heart.
She wouldn’t just retaliate, she woulderupt.And everyone within ten miles would fall. No one would be spared, including the Horsemen, slain either at the edge of her blade or consumed by the spontaneous white-hot flames.
“Right,” she grunted.
It had been over a century since the last incident, near the plains of Duskmire.
They had ridden for days, alone, chasing rumors—ghosts on the wind—about a hidden village nestled deep in golden grasslands, safeguarding a powerful artifact.
Rynna remembered the scent of smoke in the air. The heat of Malekar at her side.
And the way everything had burned.
The memory.
“I don’t like it.” She glanced at Malekar from the corner of her eye.
Hooves clomped on dry-packed dirt, and the wind whispered through the endless sweep of tall grass. It was the kind of calm that made her skin crawl, too quiet, as if the land itself was scared to look.
He didn’t answer as they drew closer to Duskmire, and rows of massive, rusting cages came into view, lined like livestock pens.
Her eyes went wide.
Inside, women crouched or slumped, their bodies battered, their eyes empty. The guards lounged nearby, laughing and taunting with the same gleeful malice she had seen too many times before.
Her vision went red, and that dreaded spark spiraled within her.
“Run.”
She only had a moment to warn Malekar before it rose. Rage ancient and vast coursed through her far beyond what her human shell should have been able to contain. And with it came the long lost memories, strange and violent, spilling behind her eyes in flashes too quick to comprehend.
She wailed as Malekar dove, pulling his heavy cape over his body.
It tore out of her, splitting the air in a concussive blast before the hot energy exploded from her heart in a dome of pure fury rippling outward.
The cages dissolved first, melting into pools of seared metal and charred flesh. The laughing guards didn’t even have time to yell. They became cinders, scattered in the wind. The women inside the cages, the broken ones—they were gone, too, reduced to nothing.
When the light finally faded, devastation blanketed the village.
Buildings smoldered. Debris burned. And from the furthest edges of that ruin stumbled a few survivors, dazed and coughing.
But she wasn’t done. The curved, gold-tinted sword materialized in her hand, singing as it cut through everyone who remained. There was no flourish or elegance to the slaughter, just precise, unrelenting strikes.
By the time she stopped, even the flies held back. Blood clung to the hilt of her blade, thick and dark, making the grip tacky beneath her fingers with each flex of her hand.
“What…” She blinked around her. “How…”
Her lungs burned, raw from the scream, though she didn’t remember making it. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, like her body hadn’t caught up to what her mind already knew: it had happened again.
She didn’t have to look to feel Malekar move behind her, watching. The weight of him settled at her back, solid and unshakable. A glance over her shoulder revealed his dark hair slightly singed and smoke still curling from the ends of the cape he’d paid a fortune to enchant. The scent of scorched fabric clung in her nose. It had held against the inferno—this time.
When her knees gave out, he caught her without a word, holding her as the fire smoldered around them.
Over the centuries they’d traveled together, there had been moments like that—violent, unexplainable ruptures of power she barely understood. He never asked questions or pushed her for answers. Not about the fire or the buried memories that would leave her senseless for days before sinking back below the surface. He would simply carry her away from the wreckage, find shelter, and wait for her to return to herself.
He was the sanctuary she clung to when her sanity threatened to shatter, or when the suppressed pain and barely contained fury she’d spent millennia burying overwhelmed her.
It wasn’t love.
