Every time he takes a hit, the ache echoes in my bones.
His pain is mine now.
And he’s losing.
A guard lunges for Seren—blade aimed for her unguarded back.
“Seren, down!” I scream, throwing my whole body forward. Itackle the guard mid-swing, my pike plunging into his side. His blood soaks into my gauntlets, but I don’t stop—not when Seren scrambles free, not when another slash grazes my shoulder, not when the phantom pain from Kael’s fight somewhere in these tunnels flares again.
His strength is draining fast.
I can feel the tremor in the Shadowweave, the threads threatening to snap.
“Kael, hold on!”
I don’t know if he can hear me.
Don’t care.
And then?—
Like a ghost of a thought, his voice brushes the edge of my mind?—
Raw. Ragged. But sure.
“For you? Always.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
ELYSSARA
I see him then.
Kael.
Buckling at the knees. Sword slipping from his grasp. Sweat slicking his skin, his breath coming too fast, too ragged.
“Kael!” His name rips from my throat, raw, desperate—terror overtaking everything else.
I move, carving a path toward him, but I’m too far, the press of bodies slowing me down.
Too slow.
A guard steps forward, towering over him, blade gleaming as he crouches low—aiming straight for Kael’s throat.
“No—”
The guard pauses, the tip of his sword hovering just shy of skin. A cruel smile spreads across his face. “Well, we’ve been looking for you for years, son,” he sneers, tilting his blade just enough to catch the flickering torchlight. “And now I’ve got myself a pretty little Lightborne and a?—”
He never finishes.
Because something inside me breaks.
Magic slams into my ribs like a living thing, thrashing, fighting against the binds still caging half of it away.
It wants out.
It wants blood.
