“I’ll come back,” Max said, voice softening. “I promise. Now go back. Don’t follow me.”
The lightning retreated. Strand by strand, the silver fire withdrew, arcing back to the chasm, dipping into the lava.
“Well done,” Max whispered.
The remaining Coldiron swam above the lava in lazy ribbons, and I swore they moved faster at her praise—circling, looping, liquid metal wagging its tail.
“Guard the Veil. Don’t let anything out.”
The Coldiron pulsed once, a bright silver flare across the chasm. Acknowledgment.
Together, we turned toward the wall of shadow and pushed through the DarkVeil.
Chapter 9
Max
We fell through the DarkVeil in a tangle of limbs.
One second, we’d been inside the Veil—sulfur and Coldiron lightning and crushing pressure—and the next, cold earth and gray dawn were splitting my vision.
Aelindor’s arm still locked my waist. Caspian’s wolf pressed against my hip, fur bloody. Drakken’s hand gripped my neck hard enough to bruise. Four bodies, one graceless collision with the dirt.
The Spartans stood in a semicircle, weapons drawn, faces taut. Relief broke across them as we materialized, chased by shock so sharp several stepped back.
We’d gone in. We’d come out. For eighty-one years, no one had done that.
They looked at us like we were legends.
I didn’t want to be a legend. I wanted a cup of coffee and for the world to stop spinning.
Blood dripped from our noses. I’d have been fine if the princes hadn’t followed me in. Every shred of power I had, everyounce that could command Coldiron, went to shielding them from a sea of sentient lightning. Alone, I could’ve navigated it, tapped their network, learned the Veil’s interior. Instead, I spent everything keeping three stubborn princes alive.
Now the weight was gone—the pressure, the pull, holding back a thousand strands—and the absence hit worse than the burden. Gravity slammed me. My muscles went slack. My stomach lurched.
I dropped to all fours and heaved.
Nothing came up. Dry heaves, violent, my body trying to purge something not physical. The Coldiron voices, tens of thousands, still echoed in my skull, fading like the ring after an explosion.
Aelindor knelt beside me, hand moving slowly between my shoulder blades. On my other side, Caspian—naked, human, shifted the moment we cleared the Veil—gathered my hair, held it back. His voice murmured soft and low in my ear, words I couldn’t hear over the buzzing in my head but felt in my chest like warmth through cold glass.
The last thing I wanted was to puke in front of the heirs. Especially with Drakken three feet away, cold gray eyes watching, like he couldn’t decide whether to court-martial me or carry me.
What unnerved me wasn’t the nausea. It was that I hadn’t been afraid.
Standing close to the edge of that chasm of hellfire, facing Coldiron lightning, I’d felt no fear. I’d felt alive.
And the familiarity, the ache of recognition, wasn’t mine. My demon passenger had felt the DarkVeil the way a prisoner feels fresh air after years in a cage.
What are you?
I asked the question for the first time without hostility. Whatever lived inside me recognized the Veil like a childhood home.
The creature stayed silent. Not smug. This silence had texture and weight. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it grief.
I let it be.
The heaving subsided. I sat back on my heels, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I was grateful the heirs had come for me. But then, if they hadn’t entered, I wouldn’t have needed to shield them.