When I shift beneath the blanket, he glances over.
“Didn’t think you were much for sleeping,” he mutters.
“I’m not,” I whisper. “Not anymore.”
Outside, the mountain wind howls against the castle spires, a sound that feels almost alive—like the world itself knows what’s coming.
Somewhere below, I can feel Kael through the tether. His energy, controlled and cold, moving with intent. Planning.
Always planning.
I close my eyes, but the memories keep clawing their way back: my mother’s voice, the blood in the street, the look in Kael’s eyes when he realized she’d lived.
Because for a heartbeat it felt like my world knitted back together. But then he said those three words:You left her. And it shattered again.
The illusion of her—the mother who told me bedtime stories, distracted me from the ache in my empty belly, held me close, called me Little Star—disintegrated instantly.You left her.
The words are like insidious fingers poking into a bleeding wound—there is no escaping the agony. There is no escaping the brutal reality that she did not come for me.
I didn’t want it to be true. But it fits too perfectly into the shape of every scar I carry.
Ronyn doesn’t say anything, and for once, I’m desperate for him to distract me. To tell a joke that makes me roll my eyes, to make a crude comment about the things he’ll do with his dragon tail. Anything. Anything but the truth: she did not come for me.
The chamber door groans open, and Kael’s handsome face cuts through the frame, the moonlight landing across the hard line of his jaw. He’s all sin, scars, and strategy—a warrior. No. A weapon. He loves like a blade—sharp, final, and deliberate—and protects like it’s sacred duty.
“Prepare for Zerynthia,” he murmurs to Ronyn, who only nods, striding for the door and linking his arm through Seren’s.
It’s just us.
For the first time since my mother returned, it’s just us.
His ocean-blue eyes burrow into me, like they can see all the way through to the marrow of my bones. I feel exposed. Naked under his stare.
“Elyssara.” He says my name like a benediction. A sacrament.
And it undoes me. Like I am all there is. Like I am chosen, wholly and completely.
It’s all I want: to be chosen, loved as I am, embraced entirely, scars and all.
My eyes turn glassy, as if his presence is the permission I need to unravel.
“Every time I think I’m leaving the darkness behind, it pulls me back,” I whisper, voice breaking. “Like no matter what I do, the past will always steal me from the future.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, his strong hand cupping my jaw, and his thumb tracing the scar at my throat like a vow.
“Then let it try,” he murmurs. “Because I’ll keep dragging you forward until it can’t find you anymore.”
Maybe that’s what love is—not saving me from the dark, but refusing to let me walk it alone.
A ragged breath leaves my lips in a whimper. His devotion—so unwavering, so steady—becomes the place my heart learns to mend, forged in the flames of my own ruin.
Because I know I can protect myself.
But gods, I love that I don’t have to with him.
With him, I am safe. I know that now with the air in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the soul-deep knowing in my chest.
I wrap my hand around the back of his neck, twining my fingers through his hair, and the tether vibrates—happy, content, alive when we touch. “Kiss me,” I demand, but he’s already moving.
