Page 28 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

I remember the night in Ashenvale, how her silver called to my shadows in a way I couldn’t understand. How our powers danced together. This is that connection magnified beyond imagination, forged in desperation and survival, when all barriers between us have been stripped away by necessity.

Her presence anchors me while the shadows work, as awareness returns in painful increments.

I can feel her heartbeat against my chest, her breath against my neck, her fingers entwined with mine.

I can feel her power flowing into me, freely given, a gift I have no right to take, but desperately need.

For the first time since my capture, since the crystal, since the restraints, I am not alone inside my skin. The void is filled. The emptiness recedes. The shadows— my shadows, changed but returned—flow through me, restored to their purpose.

My hand moves, fingers curling around Ellie’s, and the contact sends another surge along my nerve endings. Shadows leap in response to her touch, to her power, to her presence that somehow called them back from wherever they were scattered.

“Ellie.” Her name breaks on my lips, carrying all the gratitude I cannot express, all the wonder at what she’s done, all the debt I can never repay.

“I’m right here.” Her voice washes over me, warm and steady amidst the chaos of returning power. “I’ve got you.”

Thunder shatters the silence outside wherever we are. The storm responding to her emotions, to the power flowing between us, to the miracle of shadows returning from dissolution. The sound rumbles through stone and into my newly awakened senses.

“Rest.” Her fingers touch my face, carrying more tenderness than I deserve, more care than I’ve known in my entire adult life. “I won’t leave you.”

The shadows hear her promise. They settle deeper, continuing their work slower now that the initial crisis has passed. They move through my body with purpose, with memory, with determination to reclaim what was lost.

Consciousness begins to slip away. Not toward death this time, but toward a healing sleep. The difference is profound. One surrender meant oblivion. This surrender means chance, means possibility, means defiance.

I hold onto Ellie’s hand as darkness takes me, anchoring myself to her warmth, to her power, to her presence that somehow reached into the void and called me back.

I am not whole. But I am alive …

“His breathing is getting stronger.” Varam’s voice cuts through the darkness.

I surface slowly, dragged reluctantly toward consciousness. Pain returns with awareness. Not the all-consuming agony of before, but a symphony of distinct hurts vying for attention.

I’m breathing without a wet rattle now, although each breath still sends knives of pain between broken ribs.

The brand on my chest throbs, but infection no longer spreads from it in poisonous tendrils.

The whip marks on my back pull with every slight movement, but they’re no longer the raw, seeping wounds they were under the torturer’s ministrations.

“I think the shadows are fighting the infection.” Ellie’s voice, close by. “Look at the wound in his side. It’s almost closed.”

Their voices fade as I slip back under, while the shadows continue their work.

Time loses meaning, measured only by brief moments of surfacing between stretches of darkness.

Sometimes I feel Ellie’s presence, her hand in mine, her voice guiding me back when I drift too far from shore.

Sometimes I catch glimpses of Varam’s worried face, of a woman tending my wounds, of a large silvery creature watching from the corner.

When I finally wake fully, the transition is jarring. Pain comes first. No longer mortal, but still insistent, and impossible to ignore. I force my eyes open. Only one responds. The other remains swollen shut from repeated blows by Sereven and his torturer.

Light filters between my eyelashes, showing shadowy movements as hands change bandages.

My vision blurs, focuses, then blurs again as I struggle to orient myself. Stone walls come into view, unfamiliar yet clearly a shelter of some kind. The stone is damp, the air cool … We’re in the mountains, but this isn’t Stonehaven.

How long have I been unconscious?

How did I get here?

My last clear memory is the cage, the convoy, and the approach of death. I recall Sereven’s satisfaction as he watched me being loaded into that metal prison, his promise that Blackvault awaited me. Everything after that exists only in fever dreams and disconnected impressions of pain and darkness.

I reach for my shadows cautiously, fearing they might also have been a dream born of desperate hope.

They respond immediately, flowing toward consciousness like loyal creatures greeting their master’s return.

Their eagerness is tempered by weakness.

They’re present but depleted, their strength going toward rebuilding mine.

“Ellie?” It hurts to speak, but I need to see her face. I need the confirmation that she’s real and not another hallucination. My throat feels raw from screaming, from thirst, from days of silence.

She startles at the sound of my voice, head snapping up from where she was focused on the bandages covering my chest. Her eyes meet mine, and for one unguarded moment, everything she’s feeling shows itself.

A relief so intense it borders on pain, exhaustion bone-deep, fear still lingering at the edges, and something else …

something I have no right to see, but can’t look away from.

She’s changed since I last saw her at Ashenvale. The silver flecks in her eyes have multiplied, capturing the lantern’s flame like tiny stars. Light pulses beneath her skin in time with her heartbeat, not the chaotic bursts of before but more controlled and purposeful now.

“Sacha?” My name on her lips carries desperate hope. “You’re awake.”

“Tell me.” It’s all I can manage through my damaged throat. But it’s enough for her to understand what I need.

“It’s been four days since we rescued you.” Her voice falters, then steadies. “The Authority is searching the mountains. They know we got you away, but I don’t think they know if you’re alive or dead.”

She falls silent as footsteps approach. I turn my head carefully, the movement sending spikes of pain down my spine.

Varam has paused halfway across the chamber, shock coating his features.

For a split second, I see the boy I first met, before he became my closest friend, my most trusted commander.

He crosses to me in three strides and drops to his knees beside me.

“Sacha.” His voice beaks, revealing everything he won’t say aloud.

Relief. Joy. Disbelief that borders on awe. His eyes, usually so guarded, shine with unshed tears. He believed me dead, and yet here I am, defying death once again. My second impossible return in his lifetime.

I try to piece everything together. The cage, the torture, the journey toward Blackvault, then Ellie’s presence, my shadows returning. But everything between remains dark, lost to fever and near-death.

“Situation?” Each word costs more than I can afford, but information is currency I need more than comfort.

“There are Authority patrols in the mountains.” Varam falls immediately into soldier reporting to commander. “They’ve set checkpoints on all major passes. Our scouts report at least fifty soldiers within a day’s march of here.”

“Stonehaven?”

“Compromised.” His face darkens. “The ambush at Glassfall Gap. Someone betrayed our plans. They knew we’d be there, where we’d strike, when we’d strike. We lost two people getting you out.”

Glassfall Gap. Ambush. Two dead. Betrayal.

The words connect to nothing in my memory. They float disconnected from anything I know, pieces of a narrative I should be part of but cannot recall. But their meaning is clear enough.

A traitor among our own ranks. Someone close enough to know our strategies, our movements. The thought sends a chill through me that has nothing to do with my physical condition.

We’re in danger if we stay here. And I’m broken, but breathing. More liability than asset to those who risked their lives, those who died , to save me.

“Options?” My voice sounds wrong to my ears. Shadows surge to my throat, strengthening it enough to be heard.

“You’re in no condition to move.” Ellie’s hand tightens on mine, the silver pulsing in counterpoint to the shadows moving through me. “You nearly died . More than once.”

“Authority …” I pause, trying to gather what little strength I have. “We die.”

Varam nods, understanding what I’m trying to say. He doesn’t argue, doesn’t try to deny what I’m saying. He simply acknowledges the truth of it. The expression in his eyes shows he’s already calculated our odds and found them wanting.

“Where? Stonehaven is closest, but?—”

“Dangerous.” From the limited information he’s given me, there could be someone waiting to betray us there, and I’m not in a position to defend anyone. Not yet.

“Southernrock.”

Varam considers my suggestion. “That’s at least two days from here. It will be a difficult journey, especially with Authority patrols in the area.”

“Three days.” I’m not sure how I know this with such certainty, but the shadows working hard beneath my skin pulse with confirmation. “Defensible.”

“You can’t travel,” Ellie objects. “The damage you’ve suffered is going to take more than a couple of hours to heal. You can barely stay conscious.”

Movement at the edge of my vision captures my attention.

Something large shifts in the shadows of the cave.

A creature is standing there, watching us.

For a moment, I think my fever has returned, bringing hallucinations with it.

It looks like a mist stalker, but that’s impossible. They never leave the Veil Mists.

Yet there it stands, watching me. When our eyes meet, it steps forward, coming closer, then lowers itself beside me.

“What is?—”

“It’s with me.” Ellie touches the top of its head with one hand. “When your familiar touched me … everything changed.”

The pieces connect slowly in my pain-fogged mind, images joining to form a picture still not quite complete. I sent my familiar away before I was captured. One last desperate command to find her. Had doing so caused something that made this creature form?

Questions will have to wait. Survival comes first.

“Leave tonight. Under darkness.”

“With all respect, Lord Torran … Sacha .” Concern is etched into the lines around Varam’s eyes. He gestures subtly toward my damaged body, towards bandages still coated in fresh blood.

“We’ll die here.” The effort is costing me strength that the shadows rush to try and replenish. “Better to try.”

Through my damaged vision, Ellie’s skin shimmers with a silver light that seems agitated by my words.

It pulses faster, stronger, mirroring the distress in her eyes.

She doesn’t want to move me, doesn’t want to risk what little healing I’ve managed.

But we have no choice. The Authority is closing in, and I refuse to let those who rescued me die for their efforts.

Varam’s gaze moves between us, his expression shifting from doubt to something close to hope … a willingness to believe in the impossible. After all, I’m alive when I should be dead. Perhaps the impossible has become merely improbable.

“Tonight.” He rises to his feet. “I’ll tell the others.”

Ellie’s hand tightens around mine, her light feeding strength to the shadows still working through my body.

The girl who arrived in this world through my summoning has been transformed. By the power. By me. By what happened when my familiar found her at River Crossing. The realization carries a weight of responsibility I’m not sure I can bear in my current state.

“You’re going to need more than luck to survive this journey.” Concern fills her eyes.

I try to smile, but I’ve exhausted every bit of energy I have.

“Don’t need luck.” My fingers twitch against hers, shadows briefly wrapping around our hands. “You.”

I meet her eyes, feeling the power that’s flowing between us. My shadows respond, reaching toward her.

We’ve been changed. Both of us. What was separate has become connected. What was distinct has become intertwined. The prophecy I denied now weaves us together in ways I’d never have foreseen when I cast that summoning spell all those years ago.

We’ll survive together. Or not at all.