Then someone grabs my wrist. An older man, his eyes wide with feverish awe. “Tell us you’ll win. Tell us you’ll save the Rust Hollow women!” His grip is tight and I yank my hand free, heart pounding, but force a smile. He must have a daughter there, or someone else that he loves.
“I’ll do what I must,” I say.
Another voice cuts through the roar. A girl, maybe fifteen, pushes forward. “But what if you fail?” she calls. “What happens to them then?”
The question stings. It’s too honest and I can’t answer it, not without lying. I only nod, once, and move on. But I hear someone else replying, “She’ll win! She’s our ray of light, ray of hope. We’ve been waiting for someone like her for so long.”
Warmth blooms and spreads through every inch of my body, and for the first time in my life, I feel it. I belong here.
“What are those birds?” I ask as we walk through the crowd hand in hand. “They look like they could tear a man apart.”
Kaelzar breathes in deeply. I watch the ink on his chest shift, almost imperceptible. Did I say something wrong? But the chains don’t stir further.
“Elysium wasn’t some untouched paradise when the gods fled there after the Skyburn War,” he says, voice low. “It was already alive, full of things with no names. Predators. Old things. The gods didn’t claim Elysium because it was empty, there for the taking. They tore at it, like starving wolves around a carcass and staked whatever land they could hold.”
He exhales sharply, something like a laugh but without humor. “Calista got the forest teeming with monsters that no one else wanted.”
A pause, just long enough for the weight of it to settle.
“I don’t know how much of it’s true,” he adds, glancing away. “Most of what I know came from her and she never had much use for the truth. I’ve never seen anything beyond the forest myself, except for a few raids along the edges of other gods’ territories.”
I wave to the crowd, brushing a few more hands, but my mind is on Kaelzar, on his story.
“We were told we were chosen,” he continues. “The strongest of us bred to guard the villages that dared grow near the monsters’ nests. A noble duty. Sacred.” He huffs a chuckle and gives a slight shake of his head. “We believed her. Lived by her word.” His mouth twists at this proclamation. “Took me too long to realize those villages weren’t there by accident. They were her line of defense. Her bait.”
The heavy word hangs there for a moment.
“She built her castle deep in the center, where the beasts couldn’t reach unless they tore through layers of us first. Every village is a shield. A distraction. And we, her loyal Shadebloods, bred and trained to hold the line. Not for our sake, but for hers.” He flexes his hands, jaw tightening.
“When I won the tournament Liona mentioned, Calista welcomed me into the castle and called it a reward. She gave me command of her Shadeblood cadre, told me we were her sword against the darkness. We bled for her. Slaughtered creatures she claimed threatened the innocent.” He looks away, voice dropping. “I wish I’d wondered sooner who the real monsters were.”
I feel the tension trembling through him, the pain threaded in every word. The loss of his mother. Mia. Gods know what it cost him to survive it. The ache in his silence sinks its teeth into me. But there’s something else too. A twisted knot forming just beneath my ribs. Jealousy, maybe. Or grief for a version of him I never knew.
It’s bitter. Ugly. I don’t want to feel it, and I hate that I do.
So I clear my throat, forcing my voice steady. “So these shadows… they’re from the worst Origins you ever fought?”
“These?” he echoes, lifting a brow, incredulous, as if the mere suggestion that these creatures were the peak of his ability is almost insulting. Calista slips from his mind, just as I’d hoped. Continuing to talk about her would only wake the chains.
“I’ve fought, and won, against far worse. But those shadows would send your people screaming. And with them would go their prayers.”
I smirk and am about to reply when a boyish voice slices through the cheers.
“Lady Raylane!”
I turn. The young boy is waving frantically, panic etched across his face. He looks familiar.
“Levi,” I breathe, hurrying to him. A stone drops in my stomach at the look in his eyes. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but this can’t wait. Peonica is missing,” Levi says breathlessly. “She didn’t come to see me for the last few days. She always does. We’d been sneaking into the prince’s library. It was fun at first, but I told her to stop. She promised she would, but… I think she went back alone. And now, she’s gone.”
“She never keeps her promises,” I snap, like he should have known better. “Why Mael’s library of all places?”
“He has the largest collection on the gods and their artifacts,” he explains quickly. “She said she needed to research a ring.”
My eyes drop to the thin band on my finger, and a curse slips past my lips. “This thing?” I mutter, letting my hand drop as I stare up at the sky. She’s been eyeing it with suspicion for a while now, ever since Eva brushed it off as harmless. “I should’ve just taken it off.”
“You couldn’t have,” Kaelzar murmurs, voice soft and distant.
