Page 159 of Stormvein

She nods, but I can tell her mind is still turning over everything we’ve learned.

“It still seems impossible. The idea that I might have been born here, taken from this world, and then brought back by your spell.”

“More impossible than healing a man tortured beyond recognition?” The question comes out soft. “More impossible than our powers merging at Blackstone Ridge in ways that terrified Sereven?”

Her lips curve. “When you put it that way …”

She looks up at me, and for a moment, we’re back in that space where barriers fell and connection deepened beyond anything I’ve ever allowed myself.

“Whatever we find out, it doesn’t change what I’ve seen in you since you arrived in this world.”

“And what’s that?”

I hesitate, unaccustomed to giving voice to such thoughts. For decades, I’ve considered every word before speaking, measuring impact against intention. But with her, the walls I’ve built around myself have begun to crumble. It should terrify me, this vulnerability. It should register as a weakness to be eliminated. Instead, it feels like finding firm ground after years adrift.

“Courage. Resilience. The will to face the impossible and still move forward.” I allow myself a rare moment of complete honesty. “Qualities I recognize because I’ve had to cultivate them myself. Qualities that kept me sane in the tower while the world moved on without me.”

Her eyes widen, and her hand rises to my face. The contact sends tendrils of silver dancing across my skin.

“Before the tower, I fought because it was my duty, my responsibility as Vareth’el. During those years of imprisonment, I fought because I refused to break.” Bitterness enters my voice before I master it. “But now, after everything we’ve been through together, I find myself fighting for a future worth building.”

I lean back, and tilt her head up, one finger tracing over her lips. An action that would have been unthinkable for me not all that long ago, yet has become second-nature.

“Whatever lies ahead. The Authority, Sereven, this prophecy that seems to have ensnared us both. You won’t be facing it alone.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

ELLIE

What you bind in shadow may one day rise with a name.

Writings of the Flamevein Oracles

Whatever lies ahead,you won’t be facing it alone.

He means the words as a promise, but instead, they make the ground beneath me feel less stable. Not because of what he’s saying, but because of what it means.

Four Veinblood masters sacrificed themselves to hide me. A child Sereven hunted personally. A name that struck terror in him at Blackstone Ridge.

"I need …” My voice breaks. I press my palm to his cheek. His skin is warm beneath my touch, real in a way that nothing else feels right now. “I need a few minutes to process all of this."

Sacha’s eyes search mine, the usual intensity of them tempered with something I rarely see—concern. He covers my hand with his. "Take the time you need. There’s nothing we can do until tomorrow now."

I nod and pull away, afraid the comfort of his touch might unravel me completely. Turning away and crossing the chambertakes every bit of willpower I have. Everything feels like it’s shifted out of alignment with what I believed was real.

Alone inside the bedchamber, I find myself drawn to the small polished metal mirror on the wall. The metallic sheen in my eyes has grown even more pronounced since Blackstone Ridge. No longer just flecks but rivulets of silver flowing through the brown of my irises. A stranger’s eyes staring back at me. My hair shows the same changes. What started out as pale strands now runs in thick streaks through the brown.

I lift a hand, focusing on the power inside me until my skin begins to glow. It responds instantly now, no longer requiring effort or fear to call it forth, pulsing with my heartbeat, tracing the veins in my wrist.

This isn’t something that Sacha caused by sending his raven to me at River Crossing like I’ve been desperately telling myself, but something that was likely always inside me, dormant and waiting. The evidence has been blazing before me since my power first erupted—the way the storm bent to my grief when I thought Sacha dead, how it wove through his darkness to rebuild his body after Glassfall Gap, how it twisted with his power at Blackstone Ridge and made Sereven recoil.

I press my forehead against the cool metal of the mirror. I’m not questioning what power I have anymore. I’ve seen it, felt it,usedit. What I can’t grasp is why it makes me so important. Why would Sereven, the High Commander of the Authority, hunt a three-year-old child? What could he possibly have seen in me before my power had even awakened?

"The end of everything the Authority had built," Forsala had said. "A child who could unravel the very foundations of Authority power."

"Who am I?" I whisper to my reflection.

Elowen. My name … myrealname. Chosen by birth parents from another world. Maybe parents with power. With history.