The pillar shook as thunder cracked overhead. I could feel the words before I heard them, a vow thrumming through every nerve like lightning made flesh, filling even the hollow my breath until there was no space left.
Mine.
It was not command, not plea. It was truth, spoken the way lightning speaks, absolute, impossible to ignore. I should have run. I should have woken myself with a scream, torn my body out of this dream and into safety. Instead, I stepped forward.
The ravens cry cut overhead, ragged, urging.
I pressed my calm into the pillar, the mark flared silver, flooding into the wood. The chains pulsed in answer, their stormlight rippling like something waking from sleep.
And then the lightning struck me.
It tore through my chest, into my bones, into my blood. It should have killed me, should have burned me hollow, but instead it filled me. The storm didn’t lash at me, it claimed me, fierce and unrelenting, as though it had only ever been waiting for this.
The chains binding him lit a silver-white, splintering under pressure. One after another, they cracked, the sound like ribs breaking, like stone fracturing under frost.
I gasped, my knees buckling, but still I pressed my hand against the pillar. I knew this was not bloodline, not chance, not prophecy. It was something beyond words, the kind of tether even the sky could not unmake.
His gaze caught mine, and for one breathless moment, the storm itself held still.
Mine, the vow hummed through me again, through him, through the chains breaking like glass under the sea.
The last bond split, light searing white and I woke with the taste of lightning still in my mouth.
Lightning split the sky, so bright it burned white against my closed eyes, and thunder followed so violently the cabin shook, a sound that rattled the marrow of the valley itself. I jerked awake with the echo of it still in my chest.
The world snapped back, but I did not.
The cabin stood in darkness, rain whispering against the roof, while my breath tore through me and my heart raged like a storm caged too small.
Silver fire pulsed in my palm. The mark burned brighter than ever before, alive beneath my skin, its light bleeding through the bandage until smoke curled from the edges.
The dream clung, shards of it catching me like glass in the skin. Not just ruins, not just storm. His eyes, the crack ofthunder, the flash of chains fracturing, images too vivid to be forgotten, yet too fractured to name.
The shard of stormglass under the floor hummed once, faint but certain, like it had drunk from the same lightning that had poured through me.
I tried to steady my breath, but the air was too thin. I stumbled to the window, shoved the shutters open, let the night air slap me across the face. The storm had already broken loose, rain lashing sideways in sheets, thunder rolling so hard it felt alive. The sky wasn’t promising anymore, it was delivering, and it would not stop soon.
A raven wheeled above the tree line, its cry slicing through the heavy dark.
“Not real,” I whispered to myself, to the storm, to the mark that blazed like a brand. But it sounded like a lie to even my own ears.
The oak’s memory still pulsed in my palm, the ruins bleeding into waking, the court alive, the chains shattering. The storm was no longer a whisper pressed against the edges of my life. It lingered like a presence in the room, watching, waiting as though the next move was no longer mine to make.
The storm hammered on, thunder rolling over itself, rain clawing at the shutters. Time lost its shape in the noise. I couldn’t tell if hours or minutes passed. Only when the dark began to lift, and the blackness of the night was smudged into gray, did I realize dawn was breaking.
My dream had barely loosened its grip when the sound split the air, three knocks, sharp as a verdict, rattling the wood like chains shaken free.
I swung my legs to the floor, the boards cool under my bare feet, the air heavy with rain and something more. A summons at this hour could mean only one thing. My hand hesitated onthe latch, as if holding it closed might hold the world out for a moment longer.
When I opened the door a Verdant court runner stood there, soaked through, hair plastered to his brow, cloak heavy with rain. His eyes flicked once to the mark seared into my hand, then down, as if he regretted the glance.
“The rulers,” he stammered, voice rough with cold and dread, “summon you. N-n-n-now.”
Chapter 11
The Watching Woods
CAELIRA
