Page 63 of Stormvein

His eye closes, the smallest nod acknowledging my words.

Night has fallen completely by the time we reach the ravine’s floor. Somehow, the mist stalker is already there waiting for us, sitting with its head tilted, tail swishing. The fighters produce small lightstones that cast just enough illumination to move without revealing our position to anyone watching from above. I keep my cloak wrapped around me, hiding the shine under my skin that refuses to dim as best I can.

“We’ll continue for another hour, and put distance between us and the path. Then we’ll rest until dawn. Moving in complete darkness will be too dangerous.”

No one argues. We’re all exhausted. The carriers physically, the rest of us mentally, from hours of hypervigilance and dread.Sacha continues to drift in and out of consciousness, each return to awareness briefer than the last.

When Varam finally says we’ve found a place to stop for the night, the fighters create a small sheltered space against the ravine wall. There’s a small stream nearby. I can hear the water trickling in the darkness.

The stretcher is lowered for the last time today, and Lysa immediately assesses Sacha’s condition.

“The fever is getting worse again. Several wounds are reinfected. He needs proper treatment I cannot give him here.”

“How far to Southernrock?” I ask Varam.

“Another two days at least.” His eyes are on Sacha’s inert figure.

If Sacha survivesis the unspoken condition. If the Authority doesn’t find us. If we don’t lose him to infection before we can reach safety.

So many ifs, each one a knife edge we balance on.

I arrange my cloak beside him, and seek out the stream so I can wet a cloth. Then I return to Sacha and lie down, pressing the cloth against his burning forehead. In the darkness, I listen to his shallow breaths. Each inhale sounds harder than the last, each exhale potentially his last. The space between them stretches longer each time, leaving me suspended in dread, holding my own breath, until his next one finally comes.

I think of the prophecy, of the whispers that followed me in Stonehaven, of the title they gave me—Varel et’Arvath. I still don’t know what it means, and right now I don’t care. Because all I can think about is how losing him now will be losing part of myself. A part I didn’t even know existed until I touched that tower wall.

“Please stay with me,” I whisper. He gives no sign of hearing me. “You don’t get to die yet.”

Whether command or prayer, the words hang in the cold night air, unanswered but necessary. Because giving voice to fear is better than letting it consume you in silence. Because hope, however fragile, is still hope.

And right now, it’s all I have.

Chapter Fifteen

SACHA

You cannot grieve what you never admitted to loving.

The Healer’s Codex, ancient Tidevein manuscript

Pain has becomea language I speak fluently.

It has its own grammar, its own vocabulary, a rhythm that settles into my bones with every beat of my heart. The different agonies write themselves across my consciousness in a dialect uniquely crafted by Sereven’s torturers. Sharp punctuation from cracked ribs, broken one by one, while they counted aloud. The slow burn of infected wounds left open by design, and allowed to fester. The throbbing insistence of the brands on my chest and face. Each session a lesson. Each lesson a new dialect of suffering.

Pain has been my constant companion since Sereven claimed his victory at River Crossing. It speaks in his cold voice, reminding me with each throb that loyalty means nothing when power is the goal.

There was a brief respite in the cave, when Ellie’s power and essence blended with mine. But that’s a dim memory now. Smothered by the return of pain from forcing my body to takea journey it was in no way prepared for. I knew that when I insisted, but the alternative was for that cave to become their …her… tomb. Because none of them would leave me behind to save themselves.

I float in a half-conscious state, aware of the ravine around us, and of Ellie nearby, but unable to fully engage. The stretcher beneath me presses against torn flesh despite the fighters’ best efforts. Each jolt reopens what shadows struggle to repair. Fever burns through my blood, creating a peculiar disconnect between mind and body—a sensation not unlike soaring with my raven, yet this is tainted by agony rather than power.

Through it all, Ellie’s voice keeps me here. Anchors me. She speaks softly, telling me things about her world. Stories of tall buildings of glass and steel, machines that carry people through the sky, and devices that connect people across vast distances. Marvels I cannot hold in my mind. Her words drift in and out, catching on the edges of my thoughts before slipping away.

The one constant is her presence.

Now that we’ve stopped, she sits beside the stretcher, her body close enough that I can feel her warmth even through the fever. Her fingers rest lightly on my arm. Present.Real. Her voice carries qualities no one else’s does—a cadence from another world, an emotion meant only for me.

Even in my semi-conscious state, the irony doesn’t escape me. I, who once manipulated her every response, calculated her every reaction to ensure my freedom, now hold onto the hope that she chooses to remain, to wait with me until I sink into the void.

The Shadowvein Lord, the Vareth’el of Meridian, reduced to tracking the sound of her breathing to know I’m not alone, while the silver energy running through her pulses gently, casting strange patterns across the ravine walls, despite her attempts to hide it.