Sora inclined her head, her face expressionless. “Then place your hands upon the stone.”
A slab of pale marble rested at the garden’s center, etched with the sigils of old magic that seemed to glow with a faint, inner heat.
I reached out, laying my palm flat upon the cool surface. Hera did the same.
The stone felt alive beneath my skin, humming faintly.
Sora began to chant. The words of the Lunthra spilled like ice water across the still air.
A faint glow bloomed beneath our hands, silver light stitching itself between my wrist and Hera’s. The hum deepened, spreading up my arm in a quiet ripple. Inside my chest, everything tightened and then went still.
“Seal the connection,” Sora commanded.
Hera stepped closer. Her eyes met mine, steady and clear.
When her mouth touched my cheek, it was brief and cool, smelling faintly of salt and night air. The silver thread brightened once between us, then smoothed into a steady line as we parted.
Dropping our hands, the glowing thread dissipated, no longer visible.
I was officially bound.
Bound in law yet untouched in spirit.
Sora’s quill scratched across parchment, the soft drag of ink on vellum unnaturally loud in the still garden. She rolled the record with precise fingers and slipped it into her sleeve.
“You have done what was necessary, Kaelia,” she said, her voice gentler now. “The council will see the record. You are free of the dark.”
Free.
I was safe, but I was incomplete.
I attempted a thankful smile, but my face only twisted in a grimace of discomfort. Sora disappeared into the trees, leaving us in the moonlight.
Hera lifted her hand, flexing her fingers slowly as if testing sensation. The bond left no visible mark, yet her gaze lingered on her wrist as though she could feel its presence there.
“May peace find you, Kaelia,” she said quietly.
“And you,” I replied.
I stood beneath the flowering arch long after she had gone. I pressed my fingers against my wrist where the silver thread rested unseen. It was steady. Lawful.
And yet, when I closed my eyes, I did not see peace. I saw dark water. I saw silver light answering from the depths. And I saw the face of the man I had just betrayed to stay alive.
I had survived, but I had left the best part of myself behind in the shadows of the lake.
14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Kaelia Vaser,” Lord Evander’s voice rolled across the vaulted chamber. “You stand before us today with a complete soul.”
Light filtered through the stained glass windows high above, casting fractured gold and amber across the marble floor.
I stood at the center of the radiant circle, my hands clasped so tightly the bones in my fingers throbbed.
Twenty-one.
For years, that number had stalked me like a sentence. I had imagined chains. I had imagined being led away beneath the unblinking eyes of the Court. Instead, I stood here ‘saved’ by a lie they were all too happy to swallow because it fit their narrow definition of order.