Page 66

All this time, I thought no one came because they couldn’t break the magic. Because I was beyond reach. But they didn’t come … because they didn’tknow.

“They locked me in a tower.” My voice is soft. “Bound me by spellwork.”

At the edge of my attention, the woman rises, her dagger drawn halfway from its sheath. Her eyes are locked onto my face, her expression cycling through suspicion and disbelief. The man beside her mirrors her emotions.

My gaze locks onto her, as memory rises. That stance. The way she holds the blade. Even after decades, Iknowthose controlled movements. “Mira?”

For a moment, she’s as still as Varam was, recognition warring with impossibility on her features.

“By the shadows,” she breathes. “Is it really you?”

I feel rather than see Ellie move beside me. A subtletensing of her posture, the change in her breathing as she registers the emotional undercurrent of the room. She can't understand the words, but she's reading the body language—the shock, the disbelief, the way these hardened warriors stand frozen before me.

“They believed me executed. They’re seeing a ghost.”

“They didn’t know you were in the tower?”

At the sound of her voice, Varam straightens slowly, shock still visible in the tight set of his jaw. I can almost see his mind working as his gaze moves over her, before returning to me.

“You said they took you prisoner?”

“Yes. They sealed me inside a tower in the Sunfire Dunes.”

“And she was with you?” He nods toward Ellie.

“Not until recently. She broke the spell holding me there. Her presence disrupted the magic enough to allow escape.” I don’t elaborate further. The full truth of where Ellie came from would only confuse and complicate an already fragile moment.

“How is this possible?” The other man asks, finding his voice at last. I don’t recognize him, but he’s old enough to have been there during my years with the Veinwardens. “You stand before us unchanged.”

“A consequence of the binding. Time passed differently within the tower’s confines.”

Varam rounds the table, and approaches me slowly. When he stops in front of me, the emotion warring with discipline is visible in his eyes.

“Thornreave Pass.” His voice is rough. “Authority forces overwhelmed your position. We couldn’t reach you in time.”

“You followed my orders.” I hold his gaze. “It was the right decision. I would tell you to do the same, if you asked me now.”

He reaches out and grabs my forearm. When he pulls me into an embrace, it’s not formality. It’s confirmation of something lost made real again. It shocks my body into stillness. I track each element as it registers. The weight of his arm across my shoulders, the grip of his fingers on my arm. But I don’t move.

My body remembers how to tense before it remembers how to yield. It takes another heartbeat before I raise my arm, and return his embrace.

“The Shadowvein Lord, our Vareth’el, has returned.” His voice is grave, formal, and choked, when he steps away.

“We need to testify,” Mira says. Her caution speaks of long service, not distrust. I would expect nothing less from her. Sharp-minded, steady under pressure, she served as Varam’s lead scout during our final campaigns, one of the few entrusted with code dispersal and field strategy. She’s older now, leaner, her eyes more guarded. “The Authority has attempted infiltration before.”

“Mira.” There’s a hint of rebuke in Varam’s tone.

“No, Mira is right. Caution is warranted. You haven’t survived this long without it. Ask what you need to confirm my identity.”

Varam steps back, and thinks for a moment. “The night before Thornreave Pass,” he says finally. “What did you tell me when we were alone, after the final strategy session?”

It’s the perfect test. That conversation is known only to the two of us. I can remember it clearly, our final private discussion before my entire worldupended.

“I told you that if I fell, you needed to destroy the eastern archives rather than risk their capture. You argued against it. I made you swear on your family’s honor that you would carry out my order. You swore, although we both knew you’d try to find another way to save it first.”

“It’s him.” Varam turns to look at the others. “No one else could know that.” His voice is thick with emotion.

The atmosphere shifts. I feel it in the change of breath, in the alignment of bodies. All but Ellie drop to their knees, heads bowed in a show of deference I never required.