Kael POV
The clearing is empty.
Scorched earth. Broken sigils. The lingering echo of her power—faint, torn, retreating like a wound that refuses to close.
Elowen is gone.
I stand where she left me, fire still licking at my feet, shadows coiled tight around my ribs like they're holding my heart in place so it doesn't rip itself apart.
I let her go.
The thought repeats, useless and sharp.
Not because I couldn't stop them.
But because she asked me not to destroy the world for her.
A mistake.
A fatal one.
The cultists flee when they realize I'm not chasing. Their terror tastes thin, unimportant. I don't care about them yet.
I care about what I broke by choosing restraint.
Lyra's blood stains the ground where they dropped her—alive, barely. I kneel beside her, hands already glowing with infernal heat, sealing the wound at her throat before it can finish what the blade started.
She gasps, coughing.
"She went with them," she rasps. "Kael—she thinks leaving you will keep us safe."
I close my eyes.
"She thinks wrong."
Lyra grips my sleeve, panic flaring in her gaze. "They want her desperate. Isolated. If they break her belief in you—"
"They won't," I say.
The certainty in my voice startles even me.
Because it's no longer born of hope.
It's born of inevitability.
Elowen POV
The chains don't hurt at first.
They're warm—too warm—wrapped around my wrists like living things, humming softly as if they're trying to soothe me.
I hate that.
I hate that even my imprisonment is designed to make me compliant.
I stare ahead as they drag me through the ruins, jaw clenched so tightly my teeth ache. Every step away from Kael feels wrong, like walking without a shadow.
I chose this.
I remind myself of that over and over.
I chose to leave so Lyra could live. So the cult couldn't keep dangling bodies in front of me like bait.
But the farther we go, the more something inside me fractures.
The bond doesn't sever.
It stretches.
Pain blooms low in my chest, sharp and hollow, like something vital has been pulled too far from where it belongs.
I stumble.
One of them yanks the chain harder.
"Walk," a voice snaps.
Fire flares instinctively beneath my skin—and then dies.
Gone.
Just… gone.
Panic slams into me.
"No," I whisper. "No—come back—"
Laughter echoes around me.
"You feel it, don't you?" the cultist says, stepping into my path. "How empty you are without him."
I lift my head, eyes burning.
"Don't say his name."
"Oh, we will," he says softly. "Over and over. Until you believe what we need you to believe."
My heart stutters.
"And what's that?"
"That he abandoned you."
The words land like poison.
I shake my head violently. "He didn't. He let me go."
The cultist smiles.
"That's what makes it easy."
Kael POV
I return to the castle alone.
The halls feel wrong without her presence—too quiet, too obedient. Every surface still remembers her heat, the way her power brushed against ancient stone like it was alive.
I stand in her chambers.
Her scent lingers faintly—fire and fear and something softer she never admitted to herself.
I let the door seal behind me.
And then—
I lose control.
Flames tear through the room, exploding outward, shattering furniture, blackening walls. Shadows roar to life, crawling, twisting, answering the rage I've kept chained since the moment I met her.
"She chose mercy," I snarl to the empty air.
"And now they'll pay for teaching her that lesson."
The bond pulses weakly.
Not gone.
Never gone.
I press my hand to my chest, teeth bared.
"Hold on," I growl into the silence. "I'm coming."
But not as her protector.
As her reckoning.
Elowen POV
They lock me in a cell of black stone.
No windows. No fire. No warmth.
Just silence thick enough to suffocate.
I slide down the wall, hugging my knees, breath shaking as the truth finally sinks its claws into me.
I didn't escape him.
I abandoned myself.
Tears slip free, hot and silent.
"Kael," I whisper into the dark.
The bond trembles faintly in response.
And for the first time since I left, I feel it—
Not his control.
His fury.
It coils around my heart like a promise.