Page 155 of A Sunwoven Ascent

“I’ll keep her safe,” Evelyne said quietly.

“Thank you.”

“Go,” Alaric urged. “And please, do everything in your power to stop him from summoning from the tree.”

Holden’s expression darkened with confusion. “What?”

“Just listen to me, please?”

After a tense beat, Holden nodded. “Fine. I’m going.”

He set off with several of Ironwolf’s strongest, Heidara among them. Alaric watched them disappear into the night, unable to shake the cold certainty settling in his chest that they were already too late.

Chapter 62

The Noskari followed him, exactly as Kaldrek had hoped they would. It bought Evelyne time. It bought his pack time. For now, that was enough to make the risk worth it, even if the cost would be his own.

The thought had been building for days. Kaldrek knew drawing from the soil, the stone, and the natural elements of the land would never be enough. It was useful, yes, but not for this. Not for battle. Not for what was coming. He needed something greater, something deeper, something powerful enough to meet the darkness hunting them. He did not understand what thrummed through the Solwyn Tree’s roots, and he did not have time to. But it was a possibility. A chance. And if he had even a fraction of Vaelora’s capacity for power, then maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.

The Noskari were coming. He could feel them pressing closer with every passing second, like a storm gathering just beyond sight. So he ran. The grove rose before him, ancient and silent beneath the night sky. At its heart stood the Solwyn Tree, unmoving, yet alive in a way that made the air vibrate with quiet power. Kaldrek shifted mid-stride, bones cracking and reforming as he returned to human form, then dropped to his knees at the base of the trunk and pressed both palms to the bark.

The tree answered with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. Power roared beneath his hands, ripping through his arms and into his chest, rattling his bones so violently it nearly threw him back. This was nothing like the soft, responsive hum he had seen when Alia or Cillian touched it. This was recognition. Recognition of his blood. And beneath it waited something colder.

A warning.

The bark pulsed beneath his palms as the energy gathered, rising through the trunk and thickening the air around him until a voice pressed into him from every direction at once. It did not sound as much as it was felt, ancient and feminine and unyielding.

You are Velenshire-born.

Kaldrek swallowed hard.

A witch, the voice continued. Born of a powerful bloodline.

“Yes,” he said, though the word felt dragged from him.

The energy beneath his hands sharpened, as if the tree were studying him through skin and blood and bone. Kaldrek clenched his jaw. He had no patience left for ritual, no reverence for ceremony. He needed power, and he needed it now.

“They’re coming,” he muttered. “I don’t have time for this.”

Power taken without purpose becomes hunger, the voice said. Power summoned from the Solwyn must be bound by promise.

Promise?

He did not know what that meant. He did not have time to ask.

Before he could protest, the words rose inside him. Not from the voice, but from some buried place in his own blood. They surged through his chest and climbed into his throat, vibrating behind his teeth, repeating with more force each time until holding them back became impossible. He had never learned them. He did not know how he understood them. Yet they felt familiar, as if they had been waiting for him long before he was born.

So he spoke them. Over and over.

The first time, the grove trembled. The second, the air shifted. By the third, the words were no longer only words. They became a vow, torn from him and offered to the roots beneath his hands. He did not know every meaning hidden inside them, only that he now felt bound to protect.

The power answered.

It flooded him, tearing through his veins and filling every hollow place inside him until nothing remained untouched. His body shook beneath the force of it, but he kept speaking, kept promising, kept pulling until the magic surged higher, stronger, wilder.

A final wave of heat flared through his fingertips before everything went still.

The silence that followed was not empty. It was clear.