I was losing the one person I could not bear to lose.
And whatever the storm wanted next, it had already begun.
Chapter 28
Worship in the Dark
CAELIRA
Ileft before he could say anything further.
The door to my rooms thudded shut behind me, cutting off the sight of him and the storm struck air still trembling around him. It didn’t cut off the feeling. My pulse was still doing its best impression of a war drum, my skin feeling too tight for my own bones. The storm under the castle hadn’t settled either. I could feel it, low and relentless, like a second heartbeat in the stone.
The corridor outside the chambers was half-lit, morning bleeding in through a tall arched window at the far end. Stormglass veins laced the walls, faintly glowing the color of old lightning. The air smelled of oil and steel and distant rain. Somewhere below, the horn sounded again, the sound traveling up through the keep like a spine.
I put one foot in front of the other and walked.
I didn’t know where I was going. Away was enough.
My hands were shaking, which was ridiculous, because I wasn’t afraid. I knew what fear felt like, Verdant had made sure of that. This was something else entirely, a knot of too many things at once: anger, yes, and hurt, but also a sharp,disbelieving wonder that the shadows had touched me, chosen me, reached for me as if I had belonged to them all along.
All my life, people had talked around me about what I might be. How I needed protection. Containment. Guidance. All my life, I had been treated like a problem someone else would eventually solve.
And now the one person who felt like a choice, not an obligation, was standing on a balcony full of broken glass and secrets, deciding which pieces of the truth I was allowed to hold.
I hated how much that hurt.
Wind slid down the corridor, low and sliding, curling around my ankles with a cool, insistent tug. The tall windowpanes rattled lightly in their frames. The stormglass veins in the walls pulsed once, just once, in time with my heartbeat.
“Stop,” I muttered under my breath, to myself or the storm, I wasn’t sure.
It didn’t.
A pair of junior guards rounded the corner ahead, nearly colliding with each other when they saw me. One of them recovered fast enough to snap to attention, hand pressed against the storm sigil in his chest. The other just stared for a half-second too long, eyes darting from my face to the shadows pooling along the floor at my heels.
They stepped to the side to let me pass; bodies pressed to the stone.
I could feel their fear like a draft.
It slid over my skin, familiar and unwelcome. Verdant had worn the same expression when they’d thought I wasn’t looking. As though I were a blade left unattended on a table, useful, dangerous, always a breath away from cutting someone open by accident.
I kept walking.
The horn’s echo chased itself through the keep, long, then short, then a distant series of shouts as orders rippled outward. The whole castle felt like a creature bracing for impact. Doors opened and closed with more force than necessary. Boots hammered on stairs. Somewhere below, voices were already rising into sharp argument.
The storm inside me responded to the storm outside, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, there was no pretending I didn’t feel it now. No pretending the shadows brushing my ankles were a coincidence. No pretending the pulse beneath the castle the night before had been anything other than an answer.
I thought of Atlas’s face when he’d said the word prophecy. The way his voice had ragged around it. The way guilt and fear and devotion warred behind his eyes.
Some things are dangerous before they’re understood.
Dangerous to who? I had asked.
He hadn’t answered me. Not really.
I reached a landing that overlooked one of the inner courtyards through a row of open arches. Below, where Stormguard usually trained, the space churned with movement: armor flashing, commanders barking orders, couriers sprinting between doors. Stormglass panels mounted along the walls flickered with shifting sigils, the wardline breach pulsing amber.
“Dawnbreak,” someone hissed. “At the east gate.”
