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October 24 - October 27, 2025
“If it were not for me, you would not be facing this decision,” Talwyn said. “So let me make it for you. I stole from you. From both of you. Let me give it back.”
Saylah had told her the lock could change forms, and that Moranna, the female who had hidden it, had likely disguised it somehow. That female was also apparently Alaric’s mother, and Rayner had killed her.
“I thought if I could do something from here to ease the burden of my people, it would not matter how long it took for the Wards to come down. If I could get word to the Fae that they could seek refuge here, not be trapped behind the wards they’d put up, I could help more than just our people until Saylah was ready to make her move. So I figured out a way to get word out through Blood Magic.” He glanced over at her. “I did not understand the cost. And when I started practicing with the ability to let people into the Wards, I did not realize it was not only these Wards that I could allow
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“I watched you through your dreams, but I could not truly learn of your life. Dreams are often skewed and unreliable. I knew of Sorin, of course. And Cassius, although I did not know his name until you found the mirror gate. I assumed they would come with us when the time came. But then you arrived on these shores with a number of ships. With children who adore you. With friends. With family. And I … I did not know how to tell you that you would need to leave them.
“Saylah bound you to the Wards?” Scarlett said in horror. “Yes, but she had little choice. My actions had inadvertently opened a rift in the enchantments, allowing other beings to enter. It is how some of the Maraan Lords got here. The cost to close it was my ability to let people in all together. In order for me to still control the Wards, I had to be bound to them. If I leave, the Wards fall and take my life with them. It leaves my people vulnerable.
“Taking down the Wards could potentially kill you?” He nodded, bringing his drink back to his lips. “Razik seems confident it won’t. He is very knowledgeable when it comes to ancient magic and Marks, but the possibility still exists.”
What would the gods and Fates do when they learned she did not play by their rules?
His thumb brushed along her pulse point. Then he did it again. And again. He still held her by the throat, but the hold was loose. She could easily break it if she wanted to. Razik knew that too. Knew she was allowing him to hold her that way. She could tell he knew it by the way his thumb kept making those light passes on her neck. By the way his gaze had zeroed in on her mouth. How that frantic mania that had been in his eyes was shifting to something else despite everything he’d just said to her.
Her flames almost entranced the way a Night Child could entrance another. That was an ability unique to the Night Children, but they were descended from the Legacy. The Night Children had been cursed by Arius for continuing to feed on the blood of Fae instead of taking Sources, but what had happened to that entrancing ability in the Legacy and Avonleyans?
“Are you going to take it all?” she asked hoarsely. “If you’d let me, I would take everything.” Her breathing stuttered, air getting stuck in her throat that he was still caressing with his thumb. She could tell h...
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“I will leave some,” he replied. “But I will need to draw again when your reserves have refilled. Before I can go.” “If you drain it this much, it’ll take a few days to get to that point.” “I am aware. I had a Source before.” Her lips pursed. As if she could forget that. “It was nothing like this,” he added as an afterthought. “I don’t care,” she snapped. “Of course you don’t.”
“Come sit down, Eliza. I should not have taken so much at once. I apologize.”
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” he said, ignoring her small outburst. “Like what?” “We are not supposed to be separated by an ocean, Eliza.”
“When you offered to do this, I assumed you understood we could not be separated. Part of that lifelong commitment we discussed,” he was saying.
This relationship is supposed to be a give-and-take, Eliza. You give me power; I give you protection and care in return. I have nearly drained you of your magic. It is instinct for me to watch over you when you are vulnerable.”
“I know more than you think.” His eyes dipped to her chest, to where a Curse Mark adorned her skin beneath her tunic, before he met her gaze once more. “Who told you about that?” she hissed, the sting of betrayal making her ears ring. “I’ve seen it before. That night you reacted poorly to the Healer’s tonic.” “I know you’ve seen it. Who told you what it was?” “No one. I have studied ancient magic and Marks for decades. The first time I saw it, I knew what it was.”
At a blade being dragged across her mother’s throat. At men holding her down while the male she’d known to be her father gave her the Mark. Curse Marks were just that. A curse. From the moment they were given. They burned when etched into one’s skin. She’d never experienced the pain of a burn until that day—not with fire in her veins—and this one seared her very soul.
“I know those feelings, mai dragocen.” She’d forgotten he was still sitting there with the flood of memories. Her emotions had to be screaming at him down the bond she did not want. “Who gave you that Mark, Eliza?” he repeated. “It does not matter. It’s done.
Those two mighty powers together? They could literally burn the world to ash. Add in the ability to communicate down their twin flame bond, and they would be virtually unstoppable.
Continent.” Queen of the Continent.
You never know what rebellion will cost you.”
“Why is it so difficult to understand?” she asked absent-mindedly. “It is a sub-sect of the Celestial Language,” Razik answered.
“The language of the gods.”
For the next two hours, Razik entertained her questions and taught her the basics of the Avonleyan language. It was only when the candle had indeed burned all the way down and the words on the page blurred that Razik gently closed the book in his lap. “You need to sleep,” he said. She was nestled against his side where she had been leaning to see the book better as he’d explained things to her. “I do,” she murmured, eyes already closed. A palm ran down her hair. “I want you to stay,” she added in a whisper. “I know, mai dragocen,” he answered, the whisper of lips brushing against her temple.
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She’d figured it out during her many hours behind bars. Finally saw what had been right in front of her all this time. What she’d been too lost in anger and grief and hurt to see. What Tarek had taken advantage of. She hadn’t been wrong. Not entirely. She’d felt a twin flame bond. But it hadn’t been Tarek. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. Azrael still clutched her to him as he began filling a tub with hot water.
It was when he was wiping dried blood from her skin that he said, “I wanted you to be happy, Talwyn.” His voice was low and soft, just as gentle as he was being while he washed away traces of the last several weeks. “And if he … When you came to me, you were so lost. You were hurting. You felt abandoned and betrayed, and after all of that, all you had endured, I just wanted you to experience happiness. True happiness. And you did. With him. For a little while, at least. I could feel it. I wasn’t about to take that away from you.” “You chose me,” she whispered. “I have always chosen you. Even
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“Not right away,” he answered. “I began suspecting some months after you had appeared at the Alcazar. We had not spent much time alone together before then. After that day, though, we spent nearly every day together. But if you are asking if I knew before I found you on that veranda with Tarek the first time, the answer is yes.”
“The fate of this world is more important than what we could have been. Things could stay the same, or we could be part of changing it all,”
“I love you, Talwyn Semiria,” he said, and her heart was both healed and broken all at once with those words. “I do not need any type of bond to choose you.”
“We will see each other again. We might not survive this war, but I will see you again. And maybe then—” Her voice cracked, her words getting caught in her throat. “Maybe then we can have what should have been.” He kissed her then. Soft and tender and full of the sorrow that was consuming them both.
she moved on to Mordecai. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “You smell of the one of other worlds.” Talwyn looked up at the seraph. He hardly blinked at being addressed. “I am not from Halaya.”
“No, Seraph of Chaos. You smell of another who smells of other worlds.”
center of her cell now. She lifted her arms and began turning in a slow circle as she sang, “There is no Fae Queen here, Alaric.”
“There is no earth or wind in her veins. Her wolf slumbers, never to rise again,” the Sorceress continued, dropping and beginning to draw in the dirt at her feet. “Even if she did, your Wraith of Deceit challenged her and won. She is not Fae. There is no longer a Fae Queen. Not in this world.”
Nuri sauntered forward. “You finally learned to play the game.” Briar stepped closer, trying to come between them. “Whose side are you truly on, Nuri?” he said in a tone Talwyn rarely heard from the male. It was icy and full of promised threats. It was why he was the Water Prince. “The side I have always been on,” she replied.
Nuri was at fifteen when Talwyn took off. She was at ten when the insane female started laughing. She was at five when male hands scooped Talwyn up and hauled her into the sky.
There was no way he was risking having her—or anyone, for that matter—around while he worked with the new depths of this power. It felt like his, but it felt …wilder. More chaotic.
“Saylah told me of them. That night in Shira Forest. But even she does not know if these are all of them in this world,” she answered. “They were once all gateways, as the one in Shira Forest is.” He stared at her, knowing there was more. But she didn’t offer it, so he said, “And what is your interest in them? Why do they matter?” “If they once were that, could they not be that again?”
“Because if I cannot change fate, I will be forced to leave this world, and I would like to think I could come back some day.”
“Achaz will not stop, Sorin. This is an ancient war. Even if we defeat Alaric and the Maraans here, Achaz will still come. He will not leave this world in peace as long as a descendant of Arius still lives in it.”
“You have your own fire magic, you know,” he said, his voice gruff as ways to elicit that same sound tonight started forming in his mind. “I know,” she sighed. “I just prefer yours.”
a Mark she had drawn on the palm of her right hand to guide her. How it worked, he had no idea.
There were doors and balconies. There were buildings. Bridges spanned between various levels, a network of paths connecting it all. They spanned farther than he could see. Up, down. Left and right. They seemed to be standing in the very heart of whatever this was. Everything was stone, and there were several places where the rock was crumbling or gone all together. Ancient and lovely and— “Ruins,” Scarlett whispered. “These are the ruins of a city.”
“That you believe I’ve followed fate more than I care to admit.” “All evidence does seem to point in that direction.” She hummed in response. “I suppose we shall see who wins in the end.”
Doors. Giant onyx doors stood before them. Numerous Marks were etched into the doors, but in the center were three that were bigger than the rest: Arius, Achaz, and another he did not know. A triangle inside a circle.
“These are the same as the language we found in the snow,” she murmured.
The same symbols surrounded the mirror, and she again began tracing them with a slight frown.
Scarlett stood directly in front of the mirror, and someone was on the other side. It was a male with clean cut brown hair that matched his russet colored eyes. His hands were shoved into the pockets of pants from material Sorin had never seen before. He had a thick wool shirt on and some type of large satchel slung across his chest. The male tilted his head, watching Scarlett curiously as he rocked back on his heels. “Where are you?” she asked cautiously, bringing her fingertips to the mirror. The male glanced between them, then shook his head as if to tell her he could not hear her.
There were various lines written, all in languages Sorin did not recognize except for one. “This one,” Scarlett said, tapping on the one written in the Avonleyan language. The male looked at which one she’d pointed to, then back at her in surprise.
“He is asking if we are Legacy,” she said with a frown. She gave him a tentative nod, and he quickly began scribbling on the paper again. “Which god,” Scarlett read
