4
The chamber felt cold, though the air beyond the stone walls had already turned to spring.
Eliane sat at the edge of the chair, hands folded so tightly in her lap that her nails pressed half-moons into her gloves. She watched Justin breathe—slow, ragged—as the brazier burned low in the far corner. It had been months since he was carried back half-dead across the threshold, but little had changed.
A few shallow scratches along his ribs had closed, leaving silvered scars. The deeper wounds—the ones that mattered—refused to heal.
His torn face was still a raw mess—the skin pulled hard over jagged seams that had not softened since the day he was carried back. His right side remained a patchwork of blistered burns and puckered skin. His crushed leg was swollen, discolored, stiff with rot—the flesh sunken around the break, skin drawn too tight over splintered bone that still jutted faintly under the surface.
It was as though the body itself had given up on mending.
He slept more now than he woke.
At first, they had called it exhaustion. Wound-fever. The lingering madness that sometimes followed great battles. They had said, give it time. He had survived a dragon curse, after all—who could expect anything clean from that?
But time had only carved him thinner.
Some days Tomas could barely coax a cup of broth past his lips. Some days he did not stir at all except to shudder under the weight of fever. And every time he slipped further into sleep, the heat spiked. Like something deeper was dragging him closer, and his body knew it couldn’t follow.
The amulet at his chest—once a dull, unremarkable ruby—sometimes caught the firelight strangely now. There were nights Eliane could swear it pulsed faintly with its own life, a slow throb that seemed to sync with the rasping drag of his breath.
Tomas, patient and terrified, stayed at his side. But lately, even Tomas’s voice could not rouse him. Justin would open his eyes when called, unfocused and glassy, his mouth fumbling at words he could not form. Once, he had looked at Tomas without recognition, blinking slow and bewildered, as if the boy had been some stranger fetched out of a dream.
But when Eliane touched his hand—when she called his name—something inside him stirred.
He would flinch faintly, as if startled by her voice—but his hand never found hers. His fingers would curl against the sheets, slow and uncoordinated, groping for something that wasn’t there. His mouth sometimes moved, shaping sounds that broke apart before they became words.
Not her name. Never hers.
As if he were reaching for someone else.
And even as his body burned and broke beneath him, even as the fever scalded the life out of his frame, Justin sometimes smiled.
Not the grimace of a man clinging to the edges of pain. Not the frozen rictus of delirium.
Something soft. Quiet. Almost peaceful.
As if whatever world he drifted in was kinder than the one that waited when—if—he woke.
Eliane pressed the heel of her hand hard against her mouth, willing herself not to break here, not to shatter in the stillness.
She had fought so long to save him. Had spent every favor, every prayer, every thread of influence she had left trying to buy him more time. Even Leonard had told her she should let go—not as a brother, but as a king who could no longer afford to hope.
And now she sat and watched him smile, thin and withering, at a world she could not reach.
The last light of day bled into the stonework of Aurelle’s outer wall, turning the pale towers a muted, bruised gray.
Vaeril stood motionless along the road’s shoulder, watching the gates without hurry. The city bustled inward still—farmers and traders pressing toward home before nightfall closed the roads. No one looked twice at two cloaked figures standing in the dust.
Sira shifted beside him, her senses stretched outward, testing the weight of the air. The Keeper’s magic shimmered somewhere beyond the walls—faint, tangled, but stubbornly alive.
“It’s here,” she said, quiet.
Vaeril’s jaw tightened. The trail had frayed thinner with every league they crossed, but it had not broken. Somewhere inside the city’s stone and smoke, the Keeper’s mark endured—battered, corrupted, but still present.
Sira pulled her cloak tighter against the rising chill. “She’s hurt.”
Vaeril’s gaze remained fixed on the gates, where the guards leaned into their pikes, half-asleep and careless.
“We follow it,” he said.
When the next wave of travelers pushed through, they moved with it. No one called out. No one looked twice. The press of bodies carried them past the gate unchallenged and into the deeper streets beyond.
The city’s breath closed around them—sour with damp stone and smoke, the close press of too many bodies behind old walls. Torches guttered against the wind, casting long, broken shadows against the shutters and alleys.
The thread pulled them deeper, past the market squares where vendors were shuttering their stalls, past the inns spilling light and noise into the night. Stronger now—but sickened, frayed.
Sira glanced sideways once. “Not far.”
Vaeril only nodded. His expression did not change, but the air around him sharpened, colder than the night.
Whatever they found at the end of the thread, it would not be clean.
The meadow stretched out in endless gold around them, the river humming its lazy song beyond the low hills.
Justin lay with his back against the warm grass, one arm curled behind his head, the other resting around Castella where she leaned against his side.
The sun warmed his skin, and the world smelled of earth and water and the sweet green of growing things.
Castella shifted, nestling closer, her hair spilling across his shoulder.
For a long time, they didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The world had narrowed to this—breath, warmth, the steady thrum of life that didn’t ask anything more of him than to stay.
A low tremor rolled beneath them—not violent, but enough to ripple the grass, enough to make the river’s song catch and falter.
Justin stirred, lifting his head a little. “Did you feel that?”
Castella didn’t answer at first.
He turned, frowning—but she only smiled, small and sad, and drew him closer, tucking herself into the crook of his body as if to ward off something unseen.
Justin hesitated, a flicker of unease stirring in his chest, but he let it go. He pulled her closer in turn, pressing his face into her hair.
The room smelled of burnt herbs and old stone, thick with the kind of stillness that settles when hope wears itself thin.
Eliane sat by the narrow bed, her cloak thrown over the back of the chair, sleeves rolled to the elbows. She had not moved much in hours. Only to wipe Justin’s brow, to shift the cooling cloths, to listen for the thin, rasping thread of his breath.
He had not woken. Not for days.
Sometimes he murmured, words too shattered to make sense.
Sometimes he smiled, and the smile cut deeper than any wound, because she knew it was not for this world he smiled at.
The amulet against his chest pulsed sharply—not with light, but with something deeper, like a heartbeat hammering out of rhythm with his own.
Eliane pressed the cloth gently to his forehead again. His skin burned, but the healers had long since thrown up their hands. No spell touched it. No medicine lingered long enough to matter.
She stayed anyway. Because to leave would be to surrender the last thread tying him to the living.
The door shuddered once—not from any knock, but from something heavier, something wrong sliding through the threshold.
Two figures stepped into the dim light.
They did not announce themselves. They did not ask permission. They moved like a blade slipping through cloth—silent, sure, inevitable.
Eliane was on her feet before she could think, her body between them and Justin. Her hand went to her dagger, but she did not draw. It would have been a laughable defense.
The taller of the two—a man, broad-shouldered under his cloak—tilted his head, studying Justin where he lay.
“He’s drifting too far. We need to break this now.” he said, his voice flat and clipped, without softness.
The second—a woman by her slight build—moved closer to the foot of the bed. She carried no weapon, but something in the way she moved made the hairs on Eliane’s arms prickle with warning.
“The rupture will be violent,” she said. “His body may not bear it.”
For a moment, there was only the low crackle of the dying fire.
“Then bind the body while you sever the link,” the man answered. “He must not die—not yet.”
Eliane took a sharp step forward, placing herself between them and the bed again.
“Stay back—what are you doing?” she snapped, the fear raw in her throat.
Neither answered.
The woman lifted her hand—not toward Eliane, but toward Justin—and the amulet where it lay against his heart flared with sudden, sick light.
Eliane moved without thinking, lunging to grab Justin, to shield him somehow, but the magic hit first.
Justin’s body arched sharply.
His skin flushed hotter, slick with sudden sweat as the fever surged. His only hand clawed blindly at the sheets, seizing in helpless, jerking spasms. His breathing stuttered, then broke into shallow, ragged gasps, as if his body no longer remembered how to hold itself together.
Eliane caught his flailing wrist, trying to steady him—trying to do anything—but the violence was too much, like holding back a river breaking loose.
“Stop—!” she gasped, voice ragged with panic. “You’re killing him!”
The woman stepped closer, her movements calm but swift. She did not touch Eliane—only spoke, quiet and firm.
“Move aside,” she said. “If you want him to live.”
The man’s voice followed, measured and cold. “His body cannot survive this without aid. Let us work.”
Eliane clutched tighter for a breath, staring down at Justin—at the way his body twisted against the sheets, fever-slick and broken, at the way his breath faltered dangerously in his throat, at the way silent tears slipped down his face and vanished against the burning heat of his skin.
She could see it—not in magic, but in the brutal truth of him slipping beyond reach.
Her hands shook. She hated the thought of yielding, hated the cold certainty in their voices—but worse than all of it was the helplessness sinking into her gut.
Slowly, her fingers loosened. She drew back, chest heaving with shallow, angry breaths.
The woman dipped her head once—neither thanks nor apology—and knelt by the bedside, hands already weaving a different spell.