The Shade purses his lips together, nodding curtly. “Our messenger network confirms Caeloria are but two days away from breaching the Zerynthian shores, Your Highness. Queen Maireth has sent many units from her army,” the Shade declares solemnly, his words a death sentence for Zerynthia.
Stars fucking save us.
“And the Dravari Starborn army is two days from Kryntar. There’s been no sign of your rebellion,” he admits, hanging his head. “They plan to take The Wastes and Zerynthia at the same time, Your Highness. A massacre.”
Teddy’s face is a canvas of devastated fury, of fractured hope.
The air steals from my lungs.
My thoughts swim inside my mind.
Desperate, clawing.
Like I’m drowning.
But Elyssara’s hand slips into mine, resolute, unwavering.
“They will try,” she seethes, baring her teeth in vicious proclamation. “But they will not succeed! They fight for dominion, for oppression. We fight for our people. We fight for hope. For love. For the future of the children of our kingdoms!” her breaths come in ragged pants, her chest rising and falling in frantic gasps. “I am done feeling broken. I will not let the past write me smaller than I am.”
She lifts her chin, eyes lit like steel under a full moon. “At dawn we take Elandor’s truth and make it a weapon. Let Maireth come. Let Thalmyr march. I am not their wound anymore—” her fingers lace tighter with mine, the tether thrumming, “—I am the blade that will unmake them all.”
Her eyes don’t move from mine, like she’s etching her vow into my skin like holy scripture.
And down the tether, where her promise writes itself into my soul, I breathe my own promise.You are my fucking Queen, and you command the Sky.
She holds my gaze, for one heartbeat, two. Then?—
“I need the fifth relic.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
ELYSSARA
Kael sleepswith one arm curled around my waist, his breath slow against the back of my neck—steady, predictable, a rhythm that grounds me when everything else feels like it’s unraveling too fast. The moonlight drapes across the sheets in silver ribbons, catching on the scars that map our skin, the constellations we both carry. His heartbeat thrums against my spine, an anchor in the quiet.
The world feels fragile in the hours before dawn. Maybe that’s why I finally understand that strength and love aren’t opposing forces. They were never meant to live apart. One only emboldens the other.
For so long I believed I had to choose—to harden or to feel. To lead or to love. But lying here, wrapped in the protective embrace of a man who would raze kingdoms, sacrifice his magic, endure the full force of my wrath, risk my hatred and heartbreak, all to see me safe, I realize the truth is simpler: love is not the weakness I’ve learned to fear. It’s the courage that remains when everything else is gone.
And gods help anyone who mistakes that softness for surrender.
Kael murmurs something in his sleep—my name, or maybe a prayer—and tightens his hold for a heartbeat before letting go. I lie still, tracing invisible patterns over the back of his hand, wondering how long moments like this will exist before the war or the truth takes them from us.
If it can’t break you, it isn’t love.Kael said that to me once, when I told him I feared what would come if we lost each other. I didn’t understand then. I do now. It’s the risk that makes it sacred.
The first light seeps through the window, pale and trembling. I slip from the bed, careful not to wake him, and the chill of the marble floor bites at my bare feet, the warmth of his skin fading from mine. The air smells faintly of rain and parchment—as though knowledge never sleeps, and not even the rain can wash away the truth.
I pull on my leathers and cloak, fastening the clasp at my throat, as my waves of auburn hair spill out beneath it.
“Good morning, my love,” Kael’s low rumble presses against me like velvet, his bare torso—cut from stone or the gods, I’m not sure—is on full display in the four-poster bed.
The stubble on his face grows long and rugged from days away from home, and there’s no hiding the tiredness rimming his eyes. But still, he offers me a sinful smirk, and his eyes rake over my body. But he can’t hide the sadness that weighs on him. The ache for his kingdom. For mine. For the realms. Despite it all, he’s arresting in his beauty—chiselled jaw, stubbled chin, those ocean-blue eyes, the god-spun body that rests between the blankets.
“Good morning,” I begin, holding his gaze with an intensity I want him to feel, “my love.”
Love.
Yes, love.
