The goddesses’ faces stayed calm, but their eyes were sharp with rage. Kaerani’s voice cut the air like a bell. “Blood binds what belongs. And the rites know their own.”
Kaerani leveled her gaze at him. “Kaelith, she is not yours to claim.”
The words landed with a collective intake of breath. The goddesses’ eyes found me.
Kaelith’s laugh was a dry crack of sound. “Ah. But she is already mine.” He turned then, his voice dropping low and velvet-soft, intimate enough to chill bone. “You know blood bonds cannot be broken. You said it yourselves. And you—of all beings—know how little patience I have for rules. This one, even you cannot sever.”
Nerissa’s gaze cut to the sea. The tide surged like something waking, white columns of spray leaping the sea wall. Water lifted from the harbor in a spire and speared for Kaelith’s chest.
He flicked two fingers. The spire flowered into rain and hissed harmlessly against the stones.
Sylvara’s hair shuddered. Vines burst from the altar’s base, thick as a man’s thigh, thorns slick with sap. They coiled for Kaelith’s ankles, for his wrists, for his throat.
Flame crawled lazily over his skin. The vines blackened, curled, and sifted to ash before they touched him. The air tasted of sweet burn, like sugar gone too far.
Kaerani’s staff struck stone, a bell-note of heat. Fire folded itself into a bright cage around him, latticework of molten lines crossing tight as a net. “Enough!” She commanded, voice ringing.
He inhaled, and the cage inhaled with him. Exhaled, and the bars bowed outward. “Everything will be mine,” he said softly. “Even the laws that swore to stand beyond my reach.”
The words struck colder as the prophecy crawled back to me—script I’d once traced into memory: “Balance cannot be ruled. Balance cannot be kept.” My blood had been called balance—unruly, ungoverned, the one thing not meant to bend. But blood isn’t one's own once it’s shared. And Kaelith carried mine now. Whatever was promised of me, whatever storms were meant to rise in my veins, he had stolen a taste of it. If balance could not be ruled, then neither could he.
The square held its breath. Even the gulls went mute, slipping the wind without a cry.
“Malachi,” Kaelith said, as if resuming a conversation. His eyes did not leave mine. “Tell me—did you do as I asked?”
A stillness fell over Malachi at the sound of his name.
I felt the world narrow to the point of his question. Malachi stepped half a pace forward, close enough that his shadow touched Kaelith’s boots. His shoulders were set in the old soldier’s brace, jaw locked, eyes bright with that terrible gold.
“Her power has started to manifest,” he said. His voice was even, stripped of the softer edges it had held in the dark. “She carries the mark of all four—water, root, flame, night. It emerged under duress.”
“Mm.” Kaelith’s mouth curved. “And how did it emerge?”
Malachi didn’t glance at me. “I was… stabbed.”
“Ah.” Kaelith’s smile sharpened. “And she got upset. Emotion-driven. Of course.” His attention slid across me like a blade across whetstone. “What did it look like?”
Heat crawled up my neck. The crowd pressed closer. I felt their listening like prying fingertips. “Malachi.” I meant it to come out as a warning, but even in my own mouth it felt more like a question I didn’t want answered.
His gaze stayed on Kaelith. “She bends fire. She binds shadow. She can use them together. I suspect the mark awoke more than we’ve yet seen. Her body heals fast. Faster each time.”
“Very good,” Kaelith crooned, enjoying himself. “Did you fuck her?”
The ground tilted. I tasted iron.
For a heartbeat Malachi didn’t answer. Then, flat: “Yes.”
He looked away as if to scan the crowd. For a sliver of a moment, I caught his face before it shuttered. Something raw flickered there, satisfaction or regret, gone too fast to name.
It knifed through me. Humiliation flooded hot, my face burning as if the whole square had watched me unravel. Trust, fragile as spun glass, split down the center. Had he been using me from the start? A pawn to maneuver, a body to claim, a mask to wear when it suited him?
The urge to lash out surged—fist, blade, anything to make him bleed truth instead of poison. But all I could do was choke it down, the fracture widening with every breath.
I hadn’t noticed Hayat shift to my side, his hand pressed against my back, a touch that made room for collapse. But I wouldnot collapse. Not here. Even with my eyes burning and the threat of tears rising, I locked it down. I would not be weak.
“Good. I missed the show, but eternity is generous. There will be others.” Kaelith said, almost bored. “Bind her. We’ll be heading back now.”
“Don’t—” Hayat started, stepping in front of me, Kaerani’s mark burning bright at his neck.