Page 36

Chapter Sixteen

SACHA

“The bond between two carries further than the strength of one.”

Veinwarden Prayers

After Ellie retreats into her bedchamber, the room falls silent. I let the quiet wash over me, and alone in this space preserved from a life I lost, I finally drop the mask I’ve worn since our escape, and look around chambers kept like a shrine to a dead man who never actually died.

I wander the room, fingertips trailing over surfaces that feel both foreign and familiar.

The heavy wooden table where we planned the stand at Thornreave, the shelves still holding books and scrolls I collected, the tapestries I selected to mask the cold stone walls.

Someone, Varam most likely, has looked after this space, keeping it frozen in time, for a person he thought was dead.

My familiar responds to this place, sending tendrils of awareness through the chamber, recognizing spaces it once knew intimately.

It’s strange to stand here, physically unchanged while everything around me has altered.

The binding that held me in the tower preserved me in ways I’m still discovering.

A paradoxical gift from those who meant to imprison and contain me.

My eyes move to the door Ellie disappeared through.

She looked different tonight. A far cry from the terrified, alien creature in odd clothing who arrived at the tower.

Her eyes have lost the dull, exhausted sheen, and seemed brighter, if tired.

Her light brown hair, freed from tangles and sand, framed features more delicate than I initially registered—high cheekbones, a determined set to her jaw.

The clothing Mira provided accentuates curves the borrowed mountain garments concealed, and I find the change … unsettling.

In the tower and during our journey, her otherworldly origin was constantly apparent, emphasized by inappropriate clothing, unfamiliar mannerisms, and the visible discomfort of someone thrust into a reality not her own.

My lips twitch as the image of her stumbling into the tower fills my mind.

Sunburned. Wind-scoured. Dust worked into every seam.

Now, clean and properly attired, she could almost pass for a citizen of Ravencross. Only her strange accent would betray her.

I push thoughts of her aside with more effort than I care to admit, and focus instead on the shadowblade now resting in its rightful place at my hip.

The weapon pulses faintly against my thigh, a heartbeat that matches my own, as it stabilizes its reconnection with my powers.

With each passing hour, the link between us strengthens, shadow magic flowing more easily.

The blade remembers me, as weapons of such power always remember their masters, carrying echoes of battles and choices made a lifetime ago.

Its edge gleams with darkness rather than light, a sliver of the void made tangible through my will alone.

A quiet knock at the stairway door interrupts my thoughts. I recognize the pattern immediately—Varam. He doesn’t wait for me to speak, pushing the door open and stepping through. He’s alone, carrying a bottle and two silver goblets.

“Decades gone,” he says without preamble, setting the glasses down and filling them with amber liquid that catches the lamplight. “And you still stand at that table like you never left it.”

I accept the offered glass. “Mountain spirit. You kept it all these years?”

“For a special occasion.” A wry smile tugs his lips up. “The return of the Vareth’el seems an appropriate time to open it.”

We drink in silence, the liquor burning pleasantly as it goes down.

Mountain spirit, distilled from rare berries that grow only in the highest reaches of Thornevale Ridge, aged in barrels made from ancient silver oaks.

A luxury few could afford during the final years of our war.

The fact that Varam preserved this bottle, one I acquired shortly after our first successful battle, speaks not only to his loyalty, but his refusal to lose hope in our cause.

My power resonates with the faint traces of natural magic remaining within the spirit. There used to be power in the mountains, in the plants that grow there, in the very air itself. Power the Authority did everything it could to destroy.

“Tell me the truth.” I break the silence. “Not the official report you gave earlier. Tell me what really happened after Thornreave Pass. ”

His eyes close, and for a moment he doesn’t speak. The air changes. The man who stepped in with a bottle and a toast is gone, and what remains is something rawer. Not the commander who took up the battle when I fell, but the man behind it that no one sees.

“Chaos.” The word is both simple and complex.

“The Authority didn’t just tell the world you were dead.

They made a ritual of it. A warning. They dressed the body in your robes—black, embroidered, your seal stitched at the collar.

They cut the hair to match yours. Bound the hands behind the back like they had you in Ashenvale.

Then they lit the pyre and made us watch. ”

His voice doesn’t shake, but it sinks lower. He isn’t looking at me anymore, he’s reliving that moment.

“I was so sure it wasn’t you, that you tricked them …

right until the moment they brought you out.

” His fingers tighten around his glass. “They traveled around the settlements closest to Ashenvale, and paraded your body through them. Then everyone was instructed to return to the city for the ceremony. No one was allowed to leave or speak. We had to stand there while the fire rose, and the smell of it—burning leather, burning flesh—soaked into our clothes and skin.”

He drains his glass and refills it.

“After, there was food. Music. A declaration read aloud about the end of heresy. People clapped. The Veinwardens who witnessed it were still, silent. I couldn’t move. I thought if I did, I’d vomit in front of everyone. They would have executed me. So I waited. I held it until I got back here.”

He lifts the goblet to his lips.

“I spent the night on the floor. I couldn’t stop shaking, I couldn’t speak.

I tried to scrub the smell out of my skin.

But it was there for days. Mira, Lisandra, myself …

we locked ourselves in here, and we mourned.

And all the time, we kept thinking … we never protected you.

We never said goodbye. We never buried you. We just … watched.”

I don’t speak. There’s nothing I can say that will lessen the weight of what he’s carried in my name. It won’t change how he feels. His faith. His failure.

They mourned me while I still breathed. Watched me burn, while I stood behind impenetrable walls, alive and bound and helpless to stop it. And they kept going. Not because they believed they could win, but because stopping would have made the fire true.

I look at the man before me, who stood in the ashes and continued to lead. There's no apology I can give him. Only the knowledge that I remember. That I will not forget what it cost him to survive me.

Reaching for the bottle, I refill his glass, then mine, and set it down between us.

It’s the closest I can come to say ‘ I see you. And I am still here.’

He takes another sip from his glass before continuing. “I gathered what remained of your inner circle. Lisandra, Tallis, Mira, Kelren, Narina. We debated whether to continue or go dark. The vote wasn’t unanimous.”

“Narina wanted to go dark,” I guess. She never let conviction override caution. When others followed instinct, she counted risk.

“Yes. She said with the increased ferocity of the purges, and without your abilities, we wouldn’t be able to keep people safe.” Varam’s expression darkens. “We disagreed, but she was right in the end. We lost the eastern knots within months. Authority trackers found them without your protection.”

Anger surges through me at the thought of those lost because I wasn’t there to shield them all. Faces I trained, trusted, stationed across the eastern outposts flash through memory. They died because I wasn’t there. Because they still believed in what I died fighting for.

“But you continued.”

“We adapted .” Varam refills our glasses.

“We went deeper underground. Smaller knots. Less exposure. What they didn’t know, they couldn’t reveal.

We preserved what we could. Gathered intelligence however we could.

But once you had fallen, the usual routes became too dangerous.

So we reverted—physical messengers, coded phrases, birds.

” His voice roughens. “Slower. Riskier . We lost people we shouldn’t have. ”

The weight of those losses are etched into his face, in the gray threading his once-dark hair, and in the additional scars that weren’t there when I knew him. Years of leading a broken rebellion, of making impossible decisions, and watching friends die while continuing the fight.

I watch him for a moment, then ask the question I already know the answer to.

“Why did you continue?”

He tips his glass toward me. “You know why, Nul’shar .”

His sister. A Tidevein. One of the first taken when the Authority was rising. She was six, just coming into her power. Varam ten. They never saw her again.

From there, the movement grew. And Veinbloods, once revered and turned to in moments of need, became feared. They were driven out of villages, towns, cities that they once called home.

I shake my head, disrupting the memories, and focus on immediate concerns.

“Did Narina remain?”

“On the outskirts.” He hesitates, lashes dropping to hide his eyes.

My shoulders tense, and I brace myself for the words I know he’s about to utter.

“She was captured five years after Thornreave.” His voice drops.

“She never broke. Never revealed any names. They executed her in the same spot they burned you.”