“Why?” I asked, voice low. “Why help me? You barely know me.”
She reached for my hand again, her grip warm and sure.
“Because you’re my friend. And you deserve the truth. That’s it. Now sleep. I’ll be here.”
Exhaustion crashed into me. The fear, heat and words unspoken, leaving me hollow, stripped bare as bone.
All I could manage was a crooked half-smile that was small, but felt real.
She lay beside me, the mattress dipping gently with her weight, grounding me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
I stared at the ceiling, the moonlight carving faint lines across the stone. Elarion was reshaping me, breaking me down, piece by piece. Remaking me into someone I didn’t yet recognize.
Elarion would forge my enemies, cruel and unyielding. But maybe my fiercest alliances were also blazing bright in the darkness.
Soehl wasn’t just an ally. She was a friend.
And I hadn’t had many of those. Not real ones.
Not the kind who stood by you when you nearly died.
Not the kind who stayed after you failed.
The twins. Shakari. Even Thalen, in his fractured way.
They were the ones who kept pulling me back together.
Chapter 16: Wrong Place, Wrong Time
The courtyard was drenched in late Sunday light, shadows of the ancient sequoias stretching long from the King Forest that wrapped Elarion Academy like a living wall. Their trunks, wide as towers, glowed copper-red where the sun touched them.
Shakari, Soehl, and the twins had claimed one of the benches at the edge of the courtyard, carved straight from a fallen sequoia, its wood so dark and smooth it gleamed like polished stone. Our plates of dinner balanced on our knees, but none of us was eating anymore. The breeze shifted, rustling through the branches, and the glow of the setting sun spilled between them in fractured beams, painting everything gold.
Me, Shakari, Soehl, and the twins, Rowan and Tran. My core. My family was here, whether I admit it aloud or not.
But the dream still clung to me, heavy as ash in my lungs. The screams. The fire. The female’s voice curling in my ear, screams I couldn’t forget. Words that felt less like a dream and more like a warning. I couldn’t shake the fear that it wasn’t aboutwhat might happen, but about what I might do. What I already was. Dangerous.
Once, I whispered the truth to Shakari between classes. Soehl was left out until last night, my screams woke her. The twins, Rowan and Tran, had stood by me through bruises and drills holding me upright, pushing me forward. After all they'd given, didn’t they deserve honesty? I owed them this.
My throat cinched tight, and my fingers dug restless patterns against my knees. “I need to tell you something,” I said, quieter than I intended, but the words still sliced the air.
Four pairs of eyes locked on me.
So I let it spill, the fire in the village, the screams, the Siren’s warning: that Solenharts had not always belonged to Emberkeep.
The confession left me raw, exposed, as if I’d peeled my skin back and set my heart in their hands.
For a moment, no one spoke. Even the forest seemed to hush.
The twins, usually the loudest, shared a glance. Rowan snorted, elbowed my arm, and grinned. “Dreams, secrets, sirens. It is never dull with you, Thea. We got you,” he said.
Relief came sharp and sudden, like a breath after drowning. The knot in my chest loosened, and a shaky laugh escaped me. For the first time since I’d arrived, I didn’t feel like I was carrying it all alone.
“I’ll help with the research,” Soehl said, bright as ever. “I’m in the library anyway.”
“But enough of my drama,” I said, forcing a smile. “Tell me everything about yesterday in Wolventon. I need adistraction. I’ve never been to that town, and I doubt I’ll ever get to if I don’t start winning fights.”
That set them all off at once, the mood shifting just enough to pull us out of our worries and into raucous stories. Laughter echoed, carrying us from confessions to the cheerful chaos of their night in Wolventon.