Page 73 of Where We Belong

“Please,” I soften my voice until it’s barely a whisper. “Just… as your sister.”

His jaw tightens as he dismisses the servant. Looking away for a second, then back at me with shiny eyes. He sniffs sharply once the door clicks closed.

“I don’t know what this is,” he admits, downing one of his drinks. “This, it’s like grief for someone. Me. Like something died, but it was me, I died. And I’m grief. Grieving. But I’m sad. Free. But nothing, empty. Is free empty?” His voice breaks slightly. “I don’t know what’s real. What is me and what was him. If I only ever saw what he wanted me to see. If I only loved what made me think to love.” He swallows hard and I try to make sense of his words. “Is he the reason no one has ever loved me. Apart from mother, father. That was— that was the last time I was a person. My own person. He saw me the night I vowed at the basin, you know. Told him what I was going to do and he let me. He let me go. Did he make me vow? He— he didn’t love me? Why?” He lets out a shaky breath and a bitter laugh when he slaps a tear from his cheek. “I don’t know. What thoughts are now. And then. Ashley. Ashley. I open my mind and… nothing. It’s, I’m broken.”

I climb onto the bed, shuffling up beside him while he swallows his other drink in one gulp. Close enough that our shoulders touch. Part of me half expects him to pull away from me. But he doesn’t. “You’re not broken.” I say softly, sifting through all the great advice I’ve been given in my life, trying to find something that fits. “You’ve been told what to think. Who to be. Who to trust. But this is where you get to grow. To be whoever you’ve been trying to be, to be good and kind. All the things he told us he was. And isn’t.”

His bloodshot eyes search the ceiling and I tell him what I needed someone to tell me. What Kaed, Eira and Cook showed me. “You don’t have to be ready today. Or tomorrow. But don’t disappear, okay? We still need you.” My voice cracks. “And you are loved Aiden. Simply for being you.”

I close the door behind me. Some battles have to be fought alone, and this is his. All I can do is give him a place to go when he’s ready.

*

By the next morning, Summer and Mari are gone, summoned back to Ashen Reach with promises of secrecy and hurried goodbyes. There are things they need to secure. People to warn. Hunah and Xalan take us straight to the palace’s legendary library. The air smells of ink and the sizzle of magic. Kaed, Eira, and I sit at a long, crescent table, while Hunah spreads scrolls and maps bigger than her between us.

“If we are going to figure this out,” she says, “we start here.” This library isn’t anything like the one in the palace. Here, the books are quiet. Old. Slow. Some of them actually cough and sneeze, little puffs of dust drifting from their pages. Like a retirement home for knowledge. The ivory stone walls stretch high, they’re perfect symmetrical rows, and instead of shelves, the books are pushed directly into the stone itself. Old Aiden would love it. Maybe new Aiden will too. Hunah and Xalan carefully place a weathered journal wrapped in silk on the table between us.

“This diary belonged to Azezos,” Hunah explains quietly, “the son of Feye, who saw the thoughts of the God of the Future that fateful day.” Xalan opens it reverently, tracing a finger over faded ink. I read it over his shoulder. “On the last equinox, the offering of the blood of the Black Flame was sacrificed, enough to fill the basin completely. When the blood reached the top and covered the inscriptions, it was consumed by the black flames and the Chasm opened permanently.”

“So, if I drain some each day and store it...” My heart leaps, and Eira puts her arms around me. “I won’t have to die.”

We cling to each other, jumping up and down, her laughter wild and loud in my ears. Kaed shrugs with a little smirk and a wink, as if to say he knew all along I wouldn’t be dying on his watch.

Eira stops jumping abruptly, almost winding me with her elbow. “Isn’t the basin cracked? How are we meant to fill it with blood? It’ll just drain out.” My heart drops and Xalan sighs, scratching the back of his head. “I am unsure. That fracture appeared when Prince Joash opened the Chasm to let the Mer through.”

Something twists in my stomach. “If Aeron is a liar, then maybe we shouldn’t believe any of those stories either. Who knows what thoughts he’s planted in everyone about our history. Or my dad.”

Hunah’s eyes sharpen. She and Xalan begin pulling tomes from the walls, thick scrolls and brittle parchments piling up around us, accounts of King Herod, dad, Aeron, wars, treaties, purges, until we’re buried in history. We read for hours, losing track of time as servants bring fruit, bread, and tea, replacing empty plates. Cook eventually wanders in, eyes bright and full of stories from his mum and sisters. We fill him in between laughs and groans until he settles beside us. Then, sometime later, Aiden appears. Barefoot in the doorway, wearing only his boxers. A wine glass dangles loosely from his fingers. I’m struck by how wrong it looks.

“Hey,” Eira says, like she’s trying to coax a scared kitten into the vet. He hesitates before drifting into the room and perching on the arm of my chair for a while. Then, apparently decides that isn’t strange enough, and climbs directly onto the table, settling cross-legged in the middle of it. I glance at Eira, relieved to find I’m not the only one trying to hide my bewilderment. When we catch him up, he listens silently, then reaches for a scroll and starts reading, teeth worrying at his bottom lip. And, though he gestures for servants to refill his glass more times than I can count, he looks like someone who might be finding his way back to himself. Or whatever version of him we might meet soon.

Chapter 68

Kaed

He stands unshaken through endless peril,

the thicket, turns and twists,

Aiden hasn’t contributed a thing for the past two days. He simply yawns when we ask his thoughts and goes back to reading, wine glass replaced by a full bottle now, lifting it absently between pages. So far, all we’ve managed to piece together is that the basin must be restored before the ritual can work and the only ones who might know how, are Joash, Aeron and the Mer. One dead, one trying to kill us and one stationed to keep us trapped here. Whilst also trying to kill us. This is unhelpful, to say the least. Tonight, we are long past exhaustion, all slumped around the main table. Aiden is dozing, sprawled out like a centrepiece, drool slipping from the corner of his mouth while Eira watches him with quiet heartbreak.

“Oh my fucking hell,” Ashley mumbles into a weathered piece of parchment, a broken purple wax seal on the back. Her hair is a mess, clothes mismatched and she lost her shoes days ago. But still, beauty pours from her. From her heart. This is my favourite version of her thus far. The rising Queen. Choice maker. Leader. The one thing I am certain of in my life.

“Listen to this. To my beloved Azezos, I miss you, blah blah.” She skims to the bottom of the page. “I can’t shake what you said about our beautiful Dracure. I know offence overtakes you, and you are correct, my love, of course, they should submit to you and your brothers now your parents are gone, but you cannot destroy them. If you saw them fuse to the Black Flame and the Collision of the Four,” her green eyes glance up at me, “then they are needed for our freedom. I do not wish to anger you, I know we will not see it in our lifetime, but should that mean we should take it from our future children, or grandchildren?”

Her eyes are wide. “We need the Dracure for the ritual.”

Something twists uneasily in my mind. The Creed. And when they were bonded and fused, we were released. Ashley and I were always part of it. The bond. We know that much. But fused… My thoughts snag on the word. I have heard it before. Not in The Creed. In the library that day with Aiden. My mind drifts back to the books from Vale’s quarters scattered across the table between us, pages filled with frantic annotations and underlined passages. One word had been gouged so deeply into the parchment it nearly tore through the page. Fused. I remember skimming Vale’s note beside it, then dismissing it in favour of freeing Nyk. Something about the word only ever being used to describe the bond King Feye and Aislinn shared with the pair of Dracure. My pulse stutters. Ashley. Me. The Dracure. “She’s right,” I say quietly. Thinking of the royal crest a little differently now. The black iron gates surrounding the palace. The crown the King wears.

“But they were destroyed. The brothers hunted them down and killed them.” Eira slouches in her chair and runs a hand down her face.

“But what if they weren’t?” As much as tiredness weighs on Ashley’s shoulders, she looks more alert than ever. Her green eyes blaze with something familiar. Hope. She wears it well.

“I think at least one person would have seen colossal pitch-black beasts somewhere in this land,” Cook says, scratching his head.

She starts pacing, “I know, I just, I think they’re alive. Everything has gone the way it’s supposed to, so far. I think fate or destiny, The Creed, whatever you want to call it, has orchestrated all of this. So why bring us to this point only for us to miss a key ingredient?”

A Pyreling bursts into flame above the table. My heart leaps and I nearly knock over a stack of scrolls. The warm strip of parchment drops into my hand. Ashen Reach’s bright orange seal burned into the edge. I read it once. Then again. My vision blurs and my heart folds in on itself. “The King has publicly named Nykholas head of the rebels,” I say hoarsely. “Says he was jealous of my position. That he tried to poison Ashley, kidnap her because of some misguided religious psychosis. He wanted Aiden dead so he could have Eira.” My hands shake as I finish. “They’ve set an execution date.”