Not written once, but many times.
At first, Kael thought it was a coincidence. But her descriptions— her aching confusion — the male with violet eyes and a voice that melted into her bones…
It was him.
Alarik. King of Calanthe. The fucking bastard.
His hands clenched the leather cover until it nearly split.
He turned back to the window, gaze locked on Maris as she moved in the ring, every motion now suspiciously graceful, touched by something not entirely of her own making.
The journal fell open again in his palm.
Another entry. Scribbled hastily.
“The male in my dreams— he feels like starlight and sorrow. He speaks in riddles. But he sees me for what I am.”
Kael’s breath caught.
“He called me Veil Breaker.”
Veil Breaker, his thoughts drifted back to a time when he was child.
Stories of the curse freshly cast onto the continent, caused by the creation of children, like himself — nightbound blood. Not Vampire. Not fae. Damned by the gods themselves.
The blood drained from his face.
The words struck like iron through ice.
The Veil Breaker, a story told to children in those early years.
An unimaginable key to end the curse that would come in the form of the unexpected —an impossibility. Considered a useless hope, those stories faded as the centuries went on. A collective lost memory among the continent.
But Alarik had thought broader of Maris, seeing her as the impossible brought to flesh — a beckon. Spoken it into existence within her dreams. Written in a damned journal. Veil Breaker.
His mind flooded with the words of the seer’s taunt. It was so much larger than he had thought. He cursed himself and his ignorance. His memories flared, hot and vicious, the way they always did when he let himself go back.
The night of the peace summit. The sacred hall. Elenwe’s silver-gold gown. Her smile as she reached for him.
The moment the gods seized his hand, bent his mind to their will. The blade in her chest. Her life drained from her. The scream that tore Alarik in two. A re-akined hatred that Kael had been promised to feel the wrath of. And now Alarik had found something Kaelloved,something to rip away from his grasp and destroy. He hadn’t voiced it until this very moment, but the realization was like striking bone.
He loved her.
And Alarik had seen it. Had wormed his way into Maris’s dreams, seeking to twist what was his into something unrecognizable, a force to claim.
He cursed his short sightedness. Thinking of her as an unnatural curiosity. Kael’s rage rolled off his shadows like poison tipped blades ready to unleash.
Not on Maris, never her. But the scheming bastard, playing games.
The sound of Maris laughing below, light — winded from the fight, cut through him like a blade. Kael closed the journal with quiet finality. The shadows at his back stirred, waiting for command.
He did not speak.
He did not tell Maris goodbye.
He simply turned, and slipped into the smoke.
The drapes fluttering like the breath of a ghost and on the low table in the tower suite, Maris’s journal lay shut, untouched.
