Chapter 112: Back

“More dramatic. New beasts might appear. New magics discovered. Old powers waking up.” A pause. “And you might not be the only one who gains awareness.”

That stopped me cold.

“What?”

“Someone else has noticed a crack in the world.” Orrian’s expression went serious, all traces of playfulness vanishing. “It’s only a matter of time before they discover the truth. Before they understand what you understood.”

“Who?”

He shook his head. “Can’t tell you. Rules, remember? I’ve already bent them so much they’re practically in knots.” A wry smile. “But maybe you should watch for signs. Someone acting strangely. Questioning things they shouldn’t question. Seeing patterns they shouldn’t see.”

I thought of Caelen’s eyes in the palace, the way he’d looked at me in that hallway like he was seeing something for the first time, like pieces were clicking together in his mind that shouldn’t have fit.

Was it him?

Was my ex-husband waking up to the truth that his world was written, that his heroism was scripted, that everything he’d believed about choice and destiny and his own righteousness was built on lies?

“I need to know who… ”

The pull hit without warning.

Like a hook caught under my ribs and yanked, like reality remembered I had a body somewhere and wanted it back now, like the in-between was done with me and was evicting me with extreme prejudice.

“Wait!” I reached for Orrian, for answers, for anything that might make sense of this. “Tell me… ”

His voice echoed as the void began to collapse, as light and dark swirled together and the formless space started forming into something else entirely. “You must allow fate to take its natural course…”

“That’s not an answer!”

But he was already fading, becoming translucent, becoming memory, becoming nothing but a voice in the dissolving grey:

“Trust the ice, Eris. Trust the cold. Trust… ”

Everything went black.

….

The first sensation was cold.

Real cold.

Physical, tangible, freezing cold that wrapped around my body like a blanket made of winter and possibility and relief so profound I could have wept from it.

Because I had never… never… been cold before.

Not in my entire life.

Not when I was four years old and my father sealed a god inside me, turning my blood to liquid fire and my bones to kindling. Not when I was thirteen and discovered I could burn people with a thought, could reduce flesh to ash with barely an effort. Not when I married Caelen and tried so hard to make him love me that I’d scorched everything we might have been.

Not even when I died.

I had been burning for years.

And now, finally, blessedly, I was cold.

My eyes fluttered open.

Water.

I was surrounded by water that glowed blue-white and moved with purpose despite having no current, no flow, no natural reason to behave like it was alive.

But it was alive, wasn’t it?

Or something close enough to alive that the distinction didn’t matter.

I could feel it caressing my skin, gentle and curious, cooling the heat that lived in my veins and had been trying to cook me from the inside out. The sensation was so foreign, so impossible, that for a moment I couldn’t process it.

I was floating.

Held up by liquid that shouldn’t be able to support my weight but did anyway, cradled like something precious, like something worth saving.

The cave around me was beautiful in a way that transcended words… crystalline walls that glowed with internal light, formations that sang when the water moved, colors that shouldn’t exist painted across surfaces that looked carved by gods instead of time.

But the first thing I became aware of wasn’t the water.

It was warmth. Solid and human and heartbreakingly familiar.

Soren.

I was curled against him, half-submerged in the glowing pool, our bodies tangled together in the shallows. His chest was pressed to my back, his arm draped over me, his hand resting loosely over my heart as if to keep it beating. His breath ghosted against the curve of my neck—slow, uneven, exhausted.

The water moved around us in soft waves, brushing over our skin with strange tenderness. It cooled the fever that had been burning me alive, whispering against my scars, chasing away the pain I’d carried for so long. Every ripple seemed to hum with power—his power—woven into the pool itself.

The cave surrounding us was otherworldly, glittering with crystalline walls that glowed from within. Colors I had no names for painted the stone, shifting as the water stirred. It was quiet, but not empty; it sang. A low, resonant sound that seemed to vibrate through both of us.

Soren’s head rested near mine, his face pale in the soft light, lashes wet, lips parted just slightly.

He looked exhausted.

Not just tired but spent, like he’d given everything he had and then some, like there was nothing left but the shell of him and the stubborn refusal to stop existing until he knew I was safe.

His hair was longer than it should be, wet, pale strands plastered to his face and neck in a way that made him look younger somehow. More vulnerable.

His lashes, also wet, darkened by water, rested against sharp cheekbones. His lips were parted just slightly, like even in unconsciousness he was still trying to breathe through exhaustion.

The runes on his visible skin glowed faintly. Pulsing. Rhythmic. Like they were tied to his heartbeat or his breathing or something deeper that kept him tethered to whatever power he’d channeled to get me here.

His clothes were soaked through, steam rising from them in gentle wisps where his unnatural cold met the cave’s ambient temperature. And even in sleep, even with his guard supposedly down, his expression was tight. Worried. Like some part of him hadn’t quite accepted that the crisis was over, that I was alive, that we’d made it.

My chest ached.

Not from the dragon fire that had nearly killed me. Not from the god sealed in my bones or the heat that lived in my veins or any of the physical ways my body had tried to destroy itself over the past days.

This was different.

This was emotion. Raw and honest and almost painful in its intensity.

Because I’d let him in.

Past the walls I’d spent two lifetimes building. Past the fire and the cruelty and the carefully maintained distance that kept everyone at arm’s length where they couldn’t hurt me, couldn’t use me, couldn’t see the broken thing underneath all the flames.

He’d gotten in anyway.

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