The small clearing, just out of eyeshot of the soldiers’ camp, gives me what I’ve so desperately craved: solitude.
The night is still, and even so, I search it for answers.
I don’t know where to go.
The Hollow cleared out—every council member dispersing with haste to enact duties and tasks for their king before the journey to The Underbelly. But me? My role is undefined, my tasks unclear. An acolyte of the unknown, just as Duskae would have it.
I’m going home—back to the slums of Virellin. But for the first time, it doesn’t feel like home at all. It feels like stepping into the shadow of a place I once knew, familiar yet foreign, its heartbeat out of rhythm with mine. Not because Virellin has fundamentally changed, but becauseIhave. Because the vantage point from which I view the city—the world—is different.
Thalmyr is not just an oppressive ruler, he’s a dictator. He’s telling a false history that supports his own agenda. He’s beating out disobedience with force or coercion. And he’s turning the people against each other in exchange for rewards he’ll never deliver. But starvation and fear can drive a person to do the unthinkable.
That’s all it takes; remove everything that makes a person free—coin, strength, food, choice, knowledge—and then keep it just out of reach with a promise of ‘soon’. And just like that, freedom becomes a cage.
Virellin is the only place I’ve ever called home. But now? The veil has thinned to nothing and I see it for what it is: a lie.
The tether snaps taut, pulling me out of my mind and into the moment.
“You trying to get away from me, Duskae?” Kael’s low timbre rumbles through the night, and my heart kicks into a busy flutter of its own accord. His hesitation and amusement mingle together through the tether and I feel the way he doesn’t know how to be with me.
A sigh escapes me, and I turn to his broad frame.
“Kael, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I can’t outrun you. You are in my thoughts, in my breath, in the marrow of my bones. My heart answers to you, whether I will it or not,” I breathe the truth like an incantation. Like an inevitability.
He tips his head back, gazing up to the Stars, and the light glints along his sharp, angular jaw. And despite myself, all I can think is: my Starbound.Mine.
I hate that he can command me without a single word. The way he can make me pliant under his gaze. The way the scent of him can make me yield. After a lifetime of sharpening my edges and blunting my vulnerability,heis the blade that cleaves through it all.
He lets out a long, loud sigh, and drags those godsdamned ocean eyes back to mine. “You’ve bewitched me, Elyssara. It’s only you.Alwaysyou.”
His words do something to me—they mend a small corner of my heart.
I wish I hated him. I wish I could fortify the walls around my heart and mind, and cast him from my body. But I can’t do that. I don’twantto do that, and that’s what hurts the most.
He is my weakness.
The chink in my armor.
The one place I can’t fight my way out.
No, with him, I yield.
With him, I know where to go.
Becauseheis home.
He takes a step forward, slowly, deliberately. “Can I touch you, Elyssara?”
My body tenses at the question. Because touch is the enemy. Touch is where nightmares form. Touch is where minds are controlled. Touch is where the danger of safety resides.
“Yes,” I answer, as if my body cares not for the fears of my mind.
Kael closes the distance between us. His muscled chest inked with constellations peeking above the unlaced collar of his tunic at my eyeline.
I swallow thickly, because gods help me, but my fingers ache to trace every inch of it.
He looks down at me with his sharp jaw, hypnotic eyes, and parted lips that draw me in like a bee to honey.
I’m swept into the vortex of him, his intoxicating pull making me lean in and wrap my arms around his neck before my mind has a chance to register I’m moving.
