Based on years watching her mind work in wondrous, intricate, strategic ways, Elyssara agrees that it very likelyis.
A conclave, then.
Seren loops her arm under Elyssara’s and cleaves a rip in reality once more.
Elyssara reaches for a blanket, wrapping her bare body in it.
Seren looks over her shoulder with a fierceness she now wears like skin. “I’ll be seeing you,” she vows to the women, and they step through a split in the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The dark may take what once was known
Some truths survive in flesh and bone
Kael cannot findthe surface of himself.
He is drowning—not in water, but in something colder. Heavier. Endless. The Decay coils through him like a living thing, thick and suffocating, dragging him down into a place without light, without breath, without edges. There is no up. No down. No body. No name.
Only hunger.
Only dark.
Pain tears through it.
It fractures the void open just enough for him to breach, just enough for something resembling a body to return to him in a rush of sensation so violent it borders on agony. Air rips into his lungs like fire, and with it comes weight—flesh, bone, restraint. His body convulses against the restraints, muscles spasming hard enough to rattle the chains embedded through him.
Spiked chains of lillath and Aether are driven deep into his skin, hooked and jagged, biting into muscle and nerve with a cruel precision that keeps him upright whether he wills it or not. They hum with power; a low, constant vibration that presses against the thing inside him, holding it in place even as it writhes.
A sound drags itself from his throat. Not a voice. A feral thing—stripped of language and thought. A howl.
The world bleeds back in around him in broken pieces. Stone beneath his feet. Shields of Aether flaring in a tight formation around him, held steady by unmoving guards. The sharp, metallic scent of blood.
And…
Bodies.
Three of them.
Slumped against the far wall.
Broken. Still. Familiar in a way that does not quite reach thought. Something human in him tries to recognize them before the darkness devours the instinct whole.
His chest lurches, a violent, instinctive recoil that has nothing to do with the Decay and everything to do with the man behind the monster.
The Decay surges in response, swallowing it whole before it can take shape.
Irrelevant.
His head jerks, chains rattling as he strains against them, muscles seizing as the thing inside him claws for release. The restraints bite deeper, drawing blood, but the pain only feeds the darkness coiling through him. It sharpens it. Strengthens it.
He pulls harder.
The guards shift, shields flaring brighter as they brace, Aether burning against his skin where it presses too close. Itshould hurt. It does not. At least not in the way he has known before.
He roars. The sound tears through the vault, raw and uncontained, echoing off stone and shield and bone alike.
Measured, unhurried footsteps answer it. The guards part without being told.
