Anxiety? Terror? Illness?
No.
Choice.
He cursed under his breath and turned from the cracked skyline, the air around him humming with faelight and tension.
Zairon approached silently, arms crossed, gold cuffs gleaming like small suns against his dark braids. “You felt it again.”
Alarik didn’t look at him. “Yes.”
“You’ve tied yourself to her more than you’ll admit.”
“She opened the door,” Alarik said coolly. “I only walked through.”
Zairon’s expression was unreadable. “And yet you’ve stayed. Lingered. Listened. How long until your dreams and feelings are no longer your own at all?”
Alarik clenched his jaw. This wasn’t the time for doubt.
She had given Kael something tonight —he was certain of it, a sacred vow of promise. A binding he’d felt like a blow to the chest, sudden and searing. But he also felt her hesitation. Her confusion. That quiet whisper of what if.
He had gambled when he sent his first dream. He had been careful to drip fragments into the tomes she studied, to let her stumble upon the name of Eiren in his own handwriting disguised in old ink, hidden in sacred texts.
He had pulled her toward his orbit not with chains —but with questions. And now the questions had outgrown the court that held her.
Now was the time for declaration. He sent a message down their fragile bond:
This is not the end. This is the beginning.
He knew it wouldn’t stop her but he lied to himself anyhow.
The plan to take her had been weeks in the making, the riders already in position to distract Kael's guard, the gateway softened by a blend of blood magic and faelight. He’d meant to wait until she was ripe with power, until the bond between her and hiimselfwas too tangled for her to see clearly. To make Kael's pain greater —to make good on a promise he once gave the rival king. But now —
Now he feared Kael would chain her. Put a crown on her head and a leash around her throat.
No— he couldn't let it happen.
The Veil was thinning — the gods were stirring— and the Veil Breaker could not be buried in a marriage of politics and lust.
“She’s not ready,” Zairon warned softly.
“She doesn’t have to be,” Alarik answered, already turning back toward the shadowed paths that would lead him into Nythra’s edges once more. “She can't be chained in a marriage to that monster.”
The light caught his smile then cold, beautiful, devastating.
“Let Kael offer her a throne,” Alarik murmured. “I’ll give her the damned continent.”
And with that, the plans changed.
Chapter thirty
An Answer
-Kael-
The hall was too quiet, Kael still knelt before her, unmoving, a shadow-drenched monument of devotion. The ring sat in his open palm like something sacred. Moonstone catching the light, it wasn't an offering but a vow. A quiet war declared against fate in its attempt to claim her for its purpose. His silver eyes burned with certainty and restraint.
Maris was yet to move. Her fingers flexing once at her sides like she'd forgotten what to do with them. Her gaze was wide, fixed on the ring, then on him. Her expression held none of the bright clarity a moment like this was meant to bring. Still she didn't speak.
