Not an insult or cruelty, only a jest. A brother’s love sharpened into a blade.
Rain rushed down his curls, down his jaw, dripping from the chain around his throat.
He would not return in three days. He knew it. Ely likely knew it too.
The closer he came to Ryuu, the heavier the weight. The throne waited, looming like a beast in the dark, pressing its collar against his neck.
His people did not need him there. Not to guide, not to oversee. Perhaps they were relieved he stayed away. Relieved that their would-be king was too far to fail them.
He wondered how much they knew, how much of the truth seeped past the barrier. If the dread of the Bale troubled them at all, or if it was only him they found displeasing.
Elysian’s expression dulled, smoothed into obedience as he bowed to his prince and took one small step back.
Ronan’s chest tightened, his mouth opened, hand lifting as he took a step forward, ready to stop him. To tell him to stay.
The words never came.
His lips closed, his hand fell—and Elysian lifted his head, eyes still frost, and opened a void, sifting and disappearing into shadow.
An ache bloomed in his chest as memories surged, dragging from the dark—
Rhydan’s stare, every time Ronan failed the significance of his name.
Rage seared through him, breaking loose, leaking fire from his palm. Black flame roared upward, a funnel spiraling into the storm. Smoke curled after, rising to tangle with thunderclouds as if the sky itself could choke on his shame.
He knelt, fingers tracing shapes into the dirt before his palm stretched toward the skeletal doe, rain streaking down his arms.
His voice rumbled low, meant for gods and shadows both. “For your suffering.” His hand pressed flat against bone. “May the gods guide you to the Aureveil.”
Bone turned to ash. Ink to wings.
And the skeleton vanished into the realm as a beast rose above it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Verena
ISLID INTO MY WORN LEATHERS, comfortable and soft from the years of use, the kind that remembered the shape of me.
I lit a sprig of sage on the way out of my cottage, letting its fragrance mingle with the dawn air as it trailed after, following me through the door.
The sky melted above, spilling in washes of quiet fire, setting the waking village in hues of dawn. Colors that looked spun from a dream, painted careless across a world that did not deserve them.
Csolenia told another story—
The village square stood in its sorrow, weathered walls dressed in tattered posters. Faces half faded. Names blurred by rain. Each sheet clung until the wind ripped it free, only for another to be nailed in its place.
Missing, missing, missing.
Never found.
Hope lingered in the ink like a prayer, but even prayers frayed when no one came home.
Because the truth walked closer than any of them wanted to admit.
Monsters hid in the forest. Monsters hid in plain sight. And those who wandered too far from the village? They were never coming back.
The Luamis palace rose before me, the harrowing view of its walls glimmering against the sunlight, bathing it from every angle.
