Alarik’s voice rang low and strained. “Let me help.”
Kael’s head snapped up.
The faelight king knelt on her other side with fear.
They were born enemies.
Rivals.
But not in this.
In this, they were simply two broken-hearted creatures watching the love — they both wanted to possess turn out to be a force neither of them could hold.
“She’s burning up,” Alarik murmured, touching her wrist. “Her magic’s still moving inside her.”
Kael nodded mutely, fingers tightening around her waist as if he could anchor her to this world. “Why didn’t I see it?”
Alarik didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Because neither of them had.
“She trusted us,” Kael said, barely a breath. “And we missed it. We missed everything.”
The room was still. No one dared move.
“I thought she was mine,” Kael whispered, bitterness slicing through him.
“She wasn’t yours,” Alarik snapped not cruel, but honest. “She never was. Just as she’s not mine.”
He remembered every time he’d told her she was strong but only after she’d proved it.
Every time he’d quieted her rage, shielded her under the illusion of protection when really, it was control.
Now he understood.
She hadn’t needed a protector.
She’d needed someone who believed in her before she set the world on fire.
Two kings on their knees.
A Veilbreaker in their arms.
And overhead, the sky crackled with divine unrest, waiting for what she would become when she woke.
Chapter sixty-one
Beginning
-Maris-
The storms hadn’t stopped in three days.
Even before she opened her eyes, she could feel it, the world outside churning with fury and shadow, the air thick with static. Magic pressed against her chamber walls like a living thing. Angry. Hungry. Waiting.
Maris exhaled, a shaky breath catching in her throat as awareness returned. Her body ached, not with wounds, but as if every bone inside her had been carved anew.
The vision still lingered behind her eyes. Eiren wasn’t sleeping. She had been bound, imprisoned by the others, sealed away by the same divine hands who had carved her a weapon.
