Page 98 of She Who Holds My Wrath

Light flares from the runes around us, bright enough to make even The Void recoil.

“Don’t,” I rasp as she steps closer to the altar, blood dripping from the cut in her palm. The magic in the temple thickens, as old as time itself, as ruthless as the gods who ruled long before I. “Velentha, don’t you fucking dare⁠—”

She smiles sadly as light envelopes her. There’s love in it. For Aran. For Daisy. For all of us. “It was always meant to be me,” she whispers into the nothingness. “A life for a life.”

Images hit me like hammer blows. Aran looking at Velentha like the sun finally rose after eons of darkness. Velentha holding the fractured leyline together with her bare hands.

“Aran needs you,” I growl. “He can’t lose you. Not after everything.”

I don’t know why I’m saying this. She can’t hear me. I know I’m wasting my time, but I don’t want Aran to hurt the way I know I do, despite knowing this may be my chance to return to her.

The temple hums and The Void roars. Then Velentha begins to burn. Not like flame, but like pure starlight. The cracks in her skin blaze gold, spilling light that pours into my body, into me.

The Void tries to snap me back, claws raking at my spine. But the old magic latches onto my soul and pulls the other way. For a horrifying, exhilarating second, I’m stretched between them—oblivion on one side, life on the other.

The world explodes. Light. Darkness. Pain. Euphoria.

My soul slams back into my body like a meteor. Every bone shatters and reforms. My heart, still and empty for three months, convulses once, twice, then begins to beat with a violent, stuttering rhythm. Blood races through veins that haven’t held it in too long, burning hot.

But something else comes with me.

The Void. I feel it, clawing its way with me, refusing to let go. It rides the momentum, crashing into my core, coiling under my skin like a living shadow. Black fire flowers in my veins, swirling helixes of unmaking threaded through my own hellfire.

I gasp, my first breath in months, and the air tears into my lings tasting like dust and incense and blood. My body arches violently off the altar, every muscle locking as a raw, ragged scream is ripped from my throat. It feels as though I am being born and buried at the same time. Agony floods every vein, every bone, and every piece of me that had lain silent too long.

Light erupts around me—white and gold and pitch-black all at once. It pours from my skin in violent waves, shaking the temple walls, rattling stone and bone and memory alike. Power I do not recognise surges through me, ancient and wrong and endless.

I choke on another breath, hands clawing at the altar beneath me as my heart hammers wildly, relearning how to beat. Then slowly, the light dims. The temple falls into a heavy, sacred quiet. Smoke curls lazily through the air. The scent of scorched magic lingers thick in my lungs.

Velentha is gone. No body. No trace of her beyond the faint glow of runes burned into the stone where she stood. The truth strikes harder than death ever did. She gave herself for this. For me.

My gaze drops to the piece of parchment resting on my chest. My fingers tremble as I close them around it, crumpling the edges in my fist. A thousand things try to rise in me at once. Gratitude, grief, fury, guilt. But none of them are large enough to hold what she has done.

“You stupid, brave girl,” I whisper hoarsely. “Thank you.”

I step out of the temple and the ancient magic tears me through spaces between the realms. It’s like falling and flying at the same time, threads of old power wrapping around me, tugging me through the cracks between the worlds. The Void inside me growls, pressing against my bones like it wants out, but the line is older than it is.

When my feet hit stone again, I’m standing in one of the narrow tunnels beneath Zeriavoss. The air smells like dust and sulphur. It smells like home.

I breathe in deeply and the magic in the air around me shivers. I feel it instantly, the way power recoils around me. Torches gutter down the hallway, and a ward sigil carved into the wall flickers, dimming like someone choked the life out of it.

“Oh,” I say softly. “So, that’s what you did to me.”

The Void purrs, pleased with itself. But that doesn’t matter, not right now. Because I feel the bond pull. It’s not a gentle tug, it’s a hook in my sternum, yanking me forwards, dragging me through the corridors and stairwells, up, up, up.

Guards I pass go wide-eyed, some dropping to their knees as I storm through the halls. Others flatten themselves against the walls, too stunned, or too afraid, to move. I don’t stop moving though.

“All of you—what month is it?” I bark without slowing.

A young guard nearly trips over himself trying to answer. “M-May, Your Majesty.”

May. The word hits and has me stumbling in my stride. Three months. I have lost three months. Months while she grieved. Months while she ruled alone. Months while she suffered and I rotted in darkness.

Rage and pain and grief surge so hard, it nearly chokes me. I keep moving, faster now, boots striking the stone hard enough it sounds like thunder echoing through the hall. All I care about is her, somewhere ahead. All I hear is her heartbeat, echoing through the tether like a war drum.

By the time I reach the indoor training arena, the air is thick and strange. Power here is used to being flung around, but today… it’s still. I push the doors open and my vision zeroes in on her. She’s in the centre of the arena, sword in hand, sweat sticking her tunic to her back, braid swinging down her spine. Maelkar stands opposite, blade raised, smirk in place.

For a heartbeat, I can’t move. Three months of watching her through glass and dark and distance, never being able to touch her. And now she’s right fucking there. Real. Breathing. Alive.