Kael holds it forward, placing it closer to the candlelight, turning the cuff in his palms. “What do you see?” he asks, his finger tracing across the etchings.
I didn’t see it before?—
“The Sky. It’s… your skin markings,” I whisper. I try to speak, to say more, but I’m frozen.
I’ve never noticed. I never saw the resemblance. But it’s undeniable. We’ve been written in the Stars all along.
“How?” I murmur, and I don’t know exactly what I’m asking.
“Elyssara,thisis the fifth relic. Your power will be unbound. You will be free. You can complete the prophecy,” Kael’s voice is certain, clear. Like he’s had time to process it. “Then, my love, you are unfated. You’ll live a life beyond the prophecy. Free to choose who you become, what you do with your power.”
The fifth relic.
Free.
Unfated.
The words feel foreign on my tongue.
Like words that don’t belong to me.
He studies my face like he’s memorizing the last broken part of me. Then, with a breath that sounds almost like a prayer, he brings the cuff between us.
“Ready?”
No.
But I nod. “Yes.”
He pushes the cuff onto my wrist, and pushes it up my skin until it’s wrapped snugly around my upper arm where I always wore it. It’s cool at first—then molten.
Light spears through the seams as it seals, a pulse like a heartbeat reverberating up and down my arm.
The air cracks.
Gold erupts beneath my skin, racing in radiant veins from my wrist to my shoulder, across my chest, over my heart, all the way down to my fingertips. Kael stumbles back half a step, his own mark igniting in mirrored response—shadow answering light. His lines blaze black and violet, winding over his chest and down his arms until the patterns meet mine, merging where our skin brushes.
The chamber floods with brilliance. The candles snuff out. The world is nothing but us—light and darkness colliding, coiling, becoming one.
I gasp.
Power surges through me, vast and wild, a thousand voices singing in my bones. The barrier that once caged my magic splinters; the chains simply fall away. My magic doesn’t erupt like a caged beast. This time, Ifeeleverything—past and present, blood and Starlight, every sensation flares to life, more powerful, more alive than before. My magic isn’t angry anymore.It’s free.Every scent, taste, touch, sound, desire only strengthens, heightens. I feelalive.
Kael’s hand finds mine, steadying, anchoring. “Breathe, my love. You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word has never belonged to me before. But when I look at him—his eyes burning blue in the gold light, his chest rising with the same wonder that trembles through me—I believe it.
The glow softens, curling back into our skin until it’s a quiet hum under the surface. The marks remain, newly written: his a map of the dark, mine a constellation of the light.
“I made a promise to myself that I’d get you back—that I’d burn through gods and galaxies, raze realms, bring down the fucking Stars,” he murmurs, voice rough, reverent. “This is the first time I’ve felt like you’re truly back. Like you’ve come back to yourself.To me.”
My throat tightens. “I have,” I whisper. “You brought me back.”
He brushes a tear from my cheek with his thumb, then presses his forehead to mine. The tether thrums between us, alive and absolute.
“I love you, Kael.”
