Seren nods once. “I’ll come for you when we need you.”
Shouts echo closer now, steel rasping from scabbards, boots pounding against stone. Seren steps back, magic already gathering in her palm, reality thinning beneath her will.
“Keep them safe,” she says.
Revryn meets her gaze, unwavering.
“I always do.”
The world tears open.
And Seren steps through.
CHAPTER FORTY
Beware the light that guides your way
Some suns would rather rule than stay
Elyssara pacesat the mouth of The Perils, skeletons knocking against one another in the breeze like a reminder that death is inescapable.
She pulls the blanket tight around her shoulders, her bare feet scuffing against the jagged rock while she watches the violent, black seas thrash and lurch.
Is this what Seren has been facing each day?
Elyssara peers into the cavernous home of The Dreaded witch coven, but all that stares back at her from the dark are the neutral, unflinching eyes of witches who resent her presence.
She ignores them. Because these unwelcoming witches? They’re the least of her fucking problems.
Her body screams in pain after the escape from Azhareth Castle, but she doesn’t care. Barely even gives it a thought. Because it’s not her body she’s concerned about—she can heal it later. It’s her heart.
It aches. Physically aches with the distance between her and Kael.Her Starbound.
She’s tried to feel for him through the tether, but there’s nothing. Not even the walls he so carefully erects to keep her out. Not even the empty void of darkness she’s felt before. Just nothing.
No way of knowing he’s okay.
No way of knowing he’s alive.
Not silence.
Not distance.
Absence.
Like something has been severed.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She needs to get back to him.
But something else scratches at her mind, like an irritation she could easily ignore, but knows she shouldn’t. Something about that witch.Daphinia.
She seemed familiar. Not her voice or even her appearance. Justher.
The name swims in Elyssara’s mind like a ghost of memory, haunting her. But her thoughts are interrupted by a rip in the world.
Seren steps through, blood smeared across her face like a warrior returning from battle. Fierce, eyes narrowed, chest heaving like she’s been fighting.
