Page 52

52

VEYLAN

T he battlefield is still.

Not with peace. With emptiness.

The sky hangs low, choked with the last remnants of smoke and magic, the stench of death thick enough to rot the air itself. The bodies of fallen warriors are scattered across the bloodstained ruins, their lifeless eyes reflecting the eerie glow of dying embers.

But none of that matters.

Not to me. Not when she is walking away.

Sera moves like a shadow, her steps eerily silent as she drifts through the carnage, her figure barely touched by the war she helped end. She should be dead.

She was dead.

Yet here she is, alive.

And she will not look at me.

I should say something. I should stop her. But the words do not come. I have nothing left to offer.

The wound I left in her was deeper than any blade, worse than any spell.

I killed her. With my own hands.

Her blood stained my palms, her body crumpled beneath me, her last breath stolen because I made a choice.

A choice I thought would save us.

A choice that destroyed her instead.

The brothers stand nearby, silent as everything settles over them.

None of them dare speak. None of them meet my gaze.

Drathis runs a hand through his bloodied hair, exhaling sharply. "We should… move the dead," he says, voice gruff, but his focus never wavers from where she is fading into the distance.

I don’t respond to him, as Sera shove me away and leaves.

After moving the bodies, I find her later.

Not in the remnants of the battlefield. Not in the ruined fortress.

But in the quiet.

She stands at the edge of a cliff, the wind pulling at the remains of her torn cloak, her silver hair too white under the moon’s cold light.

She is different.

Not just in power, not just in the way magic now coils beneath her skin like something breathing—waiting.

She is different in the way she holds herself. In the way she does not react to my presence.

Once, she would have tensed. Braced herself. She would have prepared for my words, for my touch, for whatever cruelty I had planned next.

She does not acknowledge me at all.

I step closer, but she does not move.

She simply exists.

Like a specter.

Like something not entirely human anymore.

I open my mouth but I hesitate to say anything. I don’t have the words to articulate myself.

She saves me the trouble.

"You got what you wanted."

Her voice is raw, low, devoid of anything but cold acceptance.

I exhale slowly, watching as her fingers curl at her sides, barely restrained.

"Sera—"

She finally looks at me.

And I wish she hadn’t.

There is nothing left in those eyes.

Not rage.

Not sorrow.

Not even hatred.

Just emptiness.

A hollowness so vast it makes my chest ache in a way I did not know was possible.

"You killed me."

It is not an accusation.

It is a fact. A truth we both have to live with.

I grind my teeth, my jaw clenching so tightly the tension threatens to crack my skull. "I?—"

What?

What could I possibly say?

That I had no choice?

That I never wanted this?

That I would have died in her place if I could?

"No," she murmurs, shaking her head, voice distant. "You wouldn’t have."

I flinch. She is right.

I did what I had to do.

To stop my father. To end the war. To end Hazeran and his cruelty.

But at what cost?

"You think I am still the same girl you stole from that cage?" she asks, tilting her head, studying me the way a predator studies something beneath it. "Tell me, Veylan—what do you see when you look at me now?"

I do not have an answer because she is not the same.

She is something more.

Something less.

Something new.

I swallow, hating the way my throat tightens.

"I see you."

Her lips twitch, a cruel, bitter mockery of a smile. "You don’t. Not anymore."

Her fingers twitch at her sides, and I feel the pulse of power, thick and volatile, a dark hum slithering through the air between us.

I created this.

I broke her. And now I am watching as she chooses to leave.

Not in body. But in spirit. By heart.

"You should rest," I say at last, my voice low, steady. Useless.

She exhales sharply, shaking her head. "Rest?" Her laugh is dry, humorless. "I don’t think I remember how."

I step forward. This time, she does move.

She steps back. It’s a sharp, deliberate retreat.

One that cuts deeper than any dagger.

"Sera."

"Don’t."

She does not raise her voice. She does not need to.

The gap between us feels like a battlefield all its own.

She looks at me one last time, and it is the last time.

Then she turns and walks away.