Page 24 of A Sunwoven Ascent

Kaldrek kissed her cheek. “You are good, Evelyne,” he murmured. “Always. So good I still don’t understand how you ended up with me.”

Despite everything, a small smile tugged at her mouth. She leaned into him.

“And you’re well?” she asked, because she needed to hear it aloud.

“Yes, love,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

Her body loosened, just a little. Then the question that had been clawing at her finally escaped. “What do we do when Alaric wakes?”

“Don’t you worry about it, little viper,” Holden called from the other side of the door. “Nathan and Obren are already on patrol duty.”

Evelyne’s eyes widened. “We really have no privacy.”

“Holden,” Kaldrek said flatly, warning threaded through his tone.

Holden went quiet. Wisely.

Kaldrek exhaled and returned his attention to her. “Lorena’s been gathering the strongest tonics she can to keep him under as long as possible,” he said. “But the truth is… we don’t know what happens next.”

Evelyne’s throat tightened. “Then what do we do?”

“I do have one idea,” Kaldrek said carefully, watching her face. “I wanted to run it by you.”

“Yes.” Her voice didn’t shake this time. “Anything to help him.”

Kaldrek hesitated just long enough that her stomach sank. “We know someone who has brought another back from the darkness.”

The room seemed to tilt beneath her.

Cold tore through Evelyne so fast it hollowed her out. In an instant, her mind filled with the image of Cillian, burning with light as he forced the magic from Vaelora’s body. She saw him crumple to the throne room floor, heard the ragged pull of his breath, remembered the fear that he had burned himself out. That it had nearly killed him.

Not him.

Not her brother. Not again.

“No,” she said, and the word came out as a vow rather than a plea. “Cillian has spent enough of himself being the answer to everyone else’s desperation.”

“We do not have to ask him,” he said, his voice quieter now. “Not unless you want to.”

Evelyne swallowed, her pulse pounding.

Because that was the cruelest part of it. Wanting had nothing to do with it.

Chapter 13

Wrenford’s daylight had a way of pretending everything was ordinary.

Sun pooled through the warped slats of Alaric’s tiny room, turning dust into drifting gold, warming the rough boards beneath Evelyne’s boots. Outside, the village carried on in muted rhythms. Inside, the air tasted like tonic, old blood, and fear.

Alaric lay on the narrow bed, swaddled in bandages that climbed his throat and wrapped his arms and ribs like someone had tried to stitch him back together with cloth. His skin looked too pale and every breath he took was shallow. Two Glaciermaw wolves stood like carved stone near the door, broad-shouldered and silent, their eyes never leaving the bed. Beau from Moonshade lingered in the corner as if he’d been told not to move, not to blink, not to breathe too loud. The lodge felt too small to hold what Alaric had become.

Evelyne’s gaze drifted to Heidara, who hadn’t moved from the bedside. She still wore her moon-ritual leathers, rumpled now and smeared at the hem with dirt and dried blood. Her hair had come loose and tangled over her shoulders, and her hands rested on her knees like she was afraid to touch anything. But she stared at Alaric’s chest with the intensity of someone keeping a candle lit through sheer will.

Lorena had checked Evelyne hours ago, declared her “well enough” with a look that dared her to argue, and sent her away to rest. But Heidara hadn’t left Alaric’s side once. Her eyes tracked each inhale. As if counting them could keep him here.

She felt guilty. Evelyne recognized the shape of it in Heidara’s stillness and in the hollow quiet where her fire usually lived. If anyone understood what it meant to miss the signs until it was too late, it was Evelyne, and her throat tightened watching her friend drown in guilt.

A scrape of boots sounded as Beau stepped toward Heidara with cautious softness, like he was approaching a wounded animal that might bolt.