Chapter seventy
The Death of Light
-Alarik-
He couldn’t breathe.
Elenwe was standing there, across a line he could not cross.
His Elenwe.
Gone, and somehow not.
It wasn’t her.
But the shape of her, the voice, the way her fingers curled ever so slightly when she stood still, he remembered that. He had kissed that hand once beneath moonlight in Nerium’s oldest garden. Had memorized the rhythm of her breath. Had knelt with a crown in his hands and a promise on his lips.
You will be queen,he’d told her.
But she wasn’t crowned.
She was slaughtered.
Because he had bargained her like a coin to buy peace.
Kael had been right.
It was his fault.
All of it.
He didn’t fall like Thauren, didn’t collapse under the weight of grief.
No.
He burned.
From the inside out.
She had loved too fiercely, hoped too openly. Had believed in unity while the gods whispered war. She had died between two kings. A casualty of their ambition. And now she was weaponized, turned into something that made even the stars seem dimmer.
Her gaze hadn’t even flicked to him. Not once.
He would have preferred rage. A scream. A curse.
But her silence?
It was a blade.
And it carved the last soft thing in him into ash.
Alarik’s hands trembled as he stepped back into rank behind Maris.
His magic stirred, lightning racing across his skin like a living thing. His pendant, the storm-glass jewel of Calanthe’s line, pulsed once against his throat. A heartbeat. A promise.
He met Kael’s gaze across the ranks.
Two kings, carved by loss, reshaped by guilt, standing in the shadow of a goddess who would break them both if they let her.
