Elyssara reaches for him through the tether, but he shuts her out. Her hand finds his instead, her fingers threading through his, gripping him, holding him here.
Rubi pushes back in her chair, scraping wooden legs across obsidian floors.
She stills.
For a heartbeat, Kael thinks she might cry. Instead, her arm lashes out in a wild swipe, dragging the tankards, decanters, quills, and ink pots across the table until they meet the wall in a clash of clanging metal and shattered glass.
Rubi falls to her knees, and a guttural cry tears from her throat, half-howl, half-lament.
Teddy runs to her, pulling her into his arms the same way Kael had just done to Nalya.
He cradles her the way a brother holds his baby sister during a storm. Tender, protective, wishing he could take her pain.
“I failed,” Rubi sobs. “I failed her, too.”
Teddy shakes his head. “No,” he soothes. “No.”
Elyssara burrows her face into Kael’s chest. “I’m sorry, my love. I’m sorry.”
Jax curses, slamming her fist against the table.
Ronyn drags a hand through his hair.
“This world is so fucking cruel!” he screams, the words ripping free from his mouth like they left without conscious thought. “It takes everything from us. Everything good.”
Kael feels the ache there. Feels every pained experience, every broken memory, every loved one lost.
But Ronyn’s wrong. The world does not just take from us.
It teaches us how to live without what it took.
Elyssara untangles from Kael’s arms, lifts her chin like a queen in the making, and says the only thing left to say.
“Then we remake it.”
The room fills with emboldened agreement. The kind of blind willingness that only comes from people who’ve lost everything, and would do anything to protect the only thing that’s left: each other.
Kael takes in his war council. The easy friendships they’ve developed. The unspoken but undeniable bonds between this group of broken and fallen warriors.
And his chest seizes.
Because this loyalty, this kinship, is both their greatest strength and the easiest thing for an enemy to exploit.
So Kael cuts through the unity like a blade through silk.
“We leave now,” he commands, direct and unwavering. “Gellesk and his rebels are guarding Kryntar, and Queen Ilyra’s Shade will let them know we’re coming. We’re ready. We need to move on Dravara before Thalmyr and Maireth have a chance to recover.”
But Seren’s already moving.
Her hands weave Threads of magic, drawing power from the living. Sparks crackle off the ethereal Threads in the morning air.
“Let’s go,” she directs, leather straps pulled taut around her forehead like a born warrior, eyes bright gold and unflinching.
And the Gateway swallows them whole.
CHAPTER FOUR
Beware the ones the world ignores
