It worked. It fucking worked.
And for one single heartbeat, it feels like enough.
Teddy presses a kiss to her head. “You are brilliant.”
She internalizes the pride, because softness has never protected her—it kept her fragile, idealistic, locked away from reality. For once, she needs them to see something else.
Not a little girl doing something brilliant.
Not a rare moment of growth.
Not a helpful contribution.
She needs them to see her power. Needs them to remember it.
Her gaze drags across the room, and for the first time, no one interrupts her, no one doubts her. And the realization settles somewhere deep in her chest.
“You cannot take them off. If they’re not on your body, they will not work. If you need me to Gateway you, ask, and I will come,” she says, but this time, her voice pitches low and ominous.Serious. “I willalwayscome.”
Kael stands from his seat, brow furrowed and severe. He trains his gaze on Seren, his ocean-lightning eyes pinning her in place. She fights the urge to look away. To cower. Instead, she sits up straight, tilts her chin up ever so slightly.
“Seren, thank you. This is… extraordinary.” Kael’s words are clipped, strained. It feels…wrong. Like he means it, but it costs him.
But he doesn’t linger, just spins on his heel, pushes through the doors, and disappears down the hallways of Elarion Castle.
Seren watches him disappear down the hall, and for the first time, she wonders if Kael is becoming something none of them know how to save.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The cruelest fate the Stars could weave
Is love that death cannot relieve
Kael choosesthe library because it’s quiet, shadowed, and because both have always obeyed him. He has loved shadows too fondly to be afraid of the dark.
The Elarion library smells of dust and oil and old ink, its shelves rising in vast rows that reward order, and the sconces lining the rows invite wandering. Kael is here for the former.
He needs order. And here, knowledge lives neatly. Cataloged. Indexed. Bound. He prefers it this way. Problems should have names. Curses should have rules. Darkness should be something a man can study, isolate, and excise.
His hand brushes the spines as he walks, fingers trailing leather and vellum and rune-etched wood. He does not read the titles. He already knows what he is looking for.
Curses. Corruption. Fragmented spells. God-marked afflictions. Decay that survives its source.
The wrongness under his skin stirs, as if it recognizes the hunt. As if it wants to send him away from his mark. Because this crawling serpent in his blood seeks destruction.
Kael can feel Elyssara searching for him, reaching through the tether. But he shoves her away.
She will not be collateral.
But beneath the sinister Decay that urges him toward violence, destruction, rot, death—love simmers. And he knows he’s fucking it up. He knows he’s pushing her away. To a point that may be irrecoverable.
But the alternative is not an option. The closer she is to him, the more at risk she becomes. He’d rather her hurt like this than let the rot find her through the tether.
Kael moves deeper into the library, away from the ordered heart of it.
The aisles narrow. The ceilings lower. Sconces grow sparse, then stop altogether, leaving the shelves to dissolve into shadow. Dust lies thick here, undisturbed, as though even the librarians have agreed some knowledge is better left alone. He does not light a flame. Darkness has never impeded him. Only offered him a home when he needed it.
He finds the books where he expected to—stacked haphazardly in a forgotten corner by a Shade who valued coin over conscience, bound in mismatched leather, cracked spines stitched and restitched by different hands across centuries. No catalog marks. No sigils of approval. These were not meant to be found.
