Completion.Release.The end of waiting.Peace.
Trik slammed his hand onto the Book.The castle cried out in protest.“You will not touch them!”he roared.“Not Cassie.Not Elora, Rezer, or whoever the hell it is that you claim is his light.Not now.Not ever.”Rezer might have been created a shadow elf, but he lived the life of a dark elf.Trik knew him,hadknown the dark elf a very long time and in all those centuries, he never hinted at being anything other than a dark elf.That meant he had no memory of it either and if he was being drawn like Cassie and Elora, he too, was a pawn in the Chamber and shadow elves’ scheme.
Laughter rippled through the air.You cannot stop the pull.
Trik leaned in until the Book’s glow turned his eyes molten silver.Shadows coiled around his wrists like armor.“Watch me,” he said, voice deadly calm.“Because here’s what you’ve forgotten.”
The presence stilled.
“I am not the king who sealed you away out of fear,” Trik went on, power surging until the air cracked.“I am not light pretending darkness doesn’t exist.”
Light and shadow erupted, ravenous, blinding, twisting together in violent harmony.
“I became darkness,” he said.“There is nothing you can do that would make me flinch.I am Triktapic, king of light, dark, and shadow, and I remember you.”
The Book screamed.
Not sound, something deeper.A vibration that sank into bone, into the fragile edges of the soul.Cush staggered, bracing as the force tore through the chamber, candle flames splitting down their centers.
Then—silence.
The Book snapped shut.
Power retreated, but the impact lingered, painful and raw.Too late.The Chamber had let too much through, and Trik’s magic had already interlaced with it.
Cush stared at him, the air still trembling.“You just announced yourself to every shadow thing in existence.”
“Yes,” Trik said.His breath was uneven, but his tone didn’t waver.“And I reminded the forest, and anyone who’s forgotten, what I’m capable of.There’s no obstacle I won’t remove, no person I won’t end, no civilization I won’t raze to the ground to get my Chosen back.”
He turned.And that composure ignited, quiet, lethal assurance sparking through the wards themselves.“Because I’m done standing still.”
Cush swallowed hard, then nodded once.“Then we stop waiting.”
Trik’s jaw flexed.“I was never really waiting,” he said.“I was preparing.”
The wards flared bright, humming through stone.Far beyond the castle walls, in the oldest corners of the realm, something ancient stirred, no longer amused.No longer patient.Because the King of the Elves was finished asking questions.He’d started making promises.
* * *
The forest changed its mind.
Cassie felt it before she saw it, a shift so sharp it cut straight through thought and hit somewhere deeper.Instinct flared, breath hitched, the pull beneath her ribs twisting from a whisper into a command that stole the air from her lungs and staggered her half a step.Not in pain, but recognition.
Her hand flew to her chest as something vast rolled through her, light and dark braided so tightly it blurred the edges of her vision.This power wasn’t from the forest or the Chamber.It washim.
“Oh,” she breathed, the word snagging on air.“Trik.”
Elora’s head snapped toward her.“Please tell me that’s anoh he figured something out,and not anoh something exploded.”
Cassie blinked hard, forcing air back into unwilling lungs.The bond between them was still blocked, silent and unreachable, but somehow he’d pushed past enough that she felt him.A force so fierce it left her bones vibrating.
“He did something,” Cassie said.Her voice didn’t shake.She wasn’t making an accusation, but stating a fact.“I felt him shift something.I don’t know how to explain it.”
The ground didn’t seem to have the same problem.A deep, thrumming pulse rolled beneath their boots, reverberating through stone and root.The forest rearranged itself subtly, like someone moving chess pieces.Pathways narrowed, shadows thickened, and the sense of wandering vanished.
Elora turned in a slow circle, her posture sharpening.“Well.That’s new.Nothing like environmental manipulation to spice up our stroll of impending doom.”
Cassie’s lips twitched despite the tension.“You’re adorable when you’re pretending not to be terrified.”
