“But he would never have known that your father was summoning Morrathys. He would never have been able to create the Marked with such ease. AndIwould never have been the one who helped him,” she admits, hanging her head in anguish and shame. “I dream of them, you know,” she murmurs, her eyes lifting, looking to Teddy and Rubi. “Taali, your little girl, your parents, mine. Every night. There is no end to the nightmare. Asleep or awake, they are all I see.”
Her voice cracks, and it’s like listening to my own ghosts speak.
Grief. Shame. The kind that festers when you realize the monster wore a face you trusted.
She doesn’t ache for him—she hates herself for not seeing it, for mistaking manipulation for love. I know that kind of hate. I’ve lived inside it.
Maybe that’s why it hurts to look at her. Because her ruin looks too much like my own.
Kael straightens, the fury gone quiet and lethal in his voice.
“Then we set it right,” he says, each word measured like a vow. “We break his chains, we erase his reign, and then I’ll flay the skin from his fucking bones.”
There’s my king.
The chamber holds its breath.
But something inside me answers him—the part that remembers fire, violence, and the promise of ruin.
“And keep him alive long enough to feel it. Let the crows pick him clean,” Teddy growls savagely, as if a lifetime of fury isburied in his bones. He’s a General of War, yes. But by what Jax said, he was also a husband, a father, and my throat thickens at the realization.
Ronyn’s jaw goes slack, but his eyes tell a story of primal rage as he fixes them on Jax. “Then let’s reverse this fucking spell!” he snaps, and Seren flinches in the face of his anger.
“So,” Rubi murmurs curiously, piecing something together and snapping our attention back to the spell, “to reverse it—someone of royal blood must die again.” She traces her finger over the parchment of the Codex.
“Yes, and I know we all want it to be Maldrak, but we need him to reverse the rune first,” Seren says, her voice tentative, as if she doesn’t want to admit we can’t simply slay him on sight.
Elandor slides his spectacles to the bridge of his nose. “That’s right, I believe. Reverse the rune,” he begins counting on his fingers, “slay royal kin, you’ll need some of Morrathys’ magic—given freely if we are truly reversing the spell—and have the original Arcanist bind it all together with a simple binding spell.”
He nods curtly, huffing the frayed gray hair out of his face, as if he’s talking about the weather.
“Holy fucking Stars,” Teddy exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Well, I guess that is pretty realm-altering,” Ronyn drawls. “Lady Sylvaine wasn’t lying.”
Jax huffs a soft laugh, and the room exhales for the first time since she stood up.
But Elandor rises from his chair, jittery and nervous. “Ah, yes. Yes, realm-altering is right,” he stammers, moving to his desk stacked high with scrolls and parchment. He shuffles them around, moving strange objects, lifting heavy tomes, searching for something.
“Ah! There it is!” he exclaims, holding a small object in his palm.
The gleaming onyx of his robes glints in the candlelight as he hastens back to the table, setting a small, circular object on the table—silver and glass, no larger than his palm. Inside, threads of light drift like captured starlight.
Seren’s eyes shine with intrigue. “What is it?” she breathes in awe.
“This,” Elandor declares, “is a Nymerian Prism.”
Ronyn’s hand edges in towards it, but Elandor bats his hand away like a child reaching for a cookie.
“A masterful Nymerian invention that allows us to see what lives within Memory Orbs without breaking them,” he explains.
But something about the way he says it—the edge to his voice, the sharp inhale at the end, the way his body moves with frenetic energy—unsettles me.
“Because, Elyssara, there’s one youmustsee.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
ELYSSARA
