Kastor cleared his throat, attempting to recover control. “Lady Caelira, you are only proving why you must be removed from sight. A Dawnbreak priest will twist whatever he sees, and your lack of discipline?—”
“My lack of discipline?” I repeated quietly.
The shadows stirred.
Atlas stepped closer, slowly, but he didn’t speak.
I lifted my chin, the last of my fury crystallizing into something cold and immovable.
“If Dawnbreak came for me,” I said, “then they can face me.”
That sent a shock through the officers, a ripple like thunder rolling under stone. Kastor’s expression cracked. Maren’s breath hitched behind me.
Lightning flashed once, silver and sharp.
“Let him in.”
Kastor stiffened in disbelief. “This is not your decision?—”
Atlas cut across him, voice low and final. “It is now.”
And just like that, the storm shifted.
Not outside or beneath the castle.
Inside me.
Chapter 29
Her Hunger
CAELIRA
The keep felt different now, too still, too watchful, as if the storm itself had retreated into the stone to listen. Every rune-lit lantern flickered in the corridor, their stormglass chiming with faint, uneasy vibrations that traced themselves along my bones.
Atlas stood a half-pace to my right, close enough that I felt the tension coiling beneath his skin but not close enough to touch. Maren hovered just behind me, small yet steady, her presence a soft constant in the charged air.
Boots echoed beyond the inner doors, measured, deliberate, each step weighted with ritual rather than haste.
Then the guards unbarred the doors.
High Priest Lucen Veylan entered the Storm Court keep like a man walking into a temple he had every right to judge. Rain slicked the gold of his mantle, darkening the embroidered rays of Dawnbreak’s sunburst sigil across his chest. His hair—pale as morning light—hung damp around a face carved in controlled serenity. Two Dawnbreak soldiers flanked him, dripping and rigid, their hands resting lightly on their sunforged blades.
But it was his eyes, calm, pale, unwavering, that made the chamber tighten.
He inclined his head in perfect sequence: first to Atlas, then to Kastor, then, lastly, to me. Courtesy, yes. But the order was chosen carefully, pointedly.
“Storm Court,” High Priest Veylan said, his voice gentle in the way fire can be gentle before it burns. “We come in the name of Dawnbreak to confirm a disturbance felt.”
The words were polite.
The intent behind them was not.
His gaze drifted back to me and stayed there—steady, pale, unbroken. The corridor seemed to constrict around that look, drawing the airtight and thin between us.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but layered with certainty that felt far too confident for a man who had crossed another Court’s wards at dawn.
“The disturbance began where old bindings failed.”
