Page 31 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

Chapter Fifteen

SACHA

You cannot grieve what you never admitted to loving.

The Healer’s Codex, ancient Tidevein manuscript

Pain has become a 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 take a 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.

“You need to rest,” someone—Varam?—tells her. I recognize the concern in his voice, and note the care he’s showing toward her.

“I’m fine.” Her voice carries that quiet determination I heard the day we met. That stubborn refusal to yield that first infuriated me, and then made me believe she could be my salvation. “I’m staying with him.”

The shadows inside me respond to her presence.

My powers have always been mine alone, never influenced by another.

Yet since their return, they’ve been working through my body differently.

Fighting infection, knitting torn flesh, but moving with a silver-edged purpose that isn’t entirely my own.

The journey has made their efforts futile.

For every wound they begin to heal, another tears open.

The night deepens around us. Fighters settle into watch rotations, voices fading as exhaustion claims them one by one. Only Ellie remains awake, her breathing soft and quiet beside me, her hand occasionally adjusting the cool cloth on my forehead.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she whispers. “But you need to keep fighting. I need you to keep fighting. We’re almost there. One more day. Please keep fighting.”

One more day.

The words pierce through the fog. One more day carried like cargo. One more day of wounds reopening. One more day of fever that will not break.

I’m not certain I have one more day left in me.

I don’t know if she senses the direction of my thoughts, but her fingers tighten around mine.

“Don’t you dare give up.” Her voice is fierce. “Not after everything. Not when we’re so close.”

The light flares brighter in response to her emotions.

I wonder if she understands the connection.

It mixes with my shadows and moves across her face, features drawn tight with exhaustion and worry.

She’s been keeping vigil for days, fighting for my survival with a determination I don’t deserve. A loyalty I’ve done nothing to earn.

“Sleep.” I force the word out.

“I’m not tired.” The dark circles beneath her eyes say otherwise.

“ Sleep .”

She hesitates, her eyes moving over my face, then nods. “I’ll rest, but I’m staying here.”

She stretches out beside me, arranging herself so that her fingers are curled around my arm, just above my wrist. Within minutes her breathing changes, slows, turns deeper, exhaustion claiming victory before she can even put up a fight.

In the silence that follows, I fall deeper into fever. The pain has receded a little, becoming the background chorus rather than an immediate assault. The shadows continue their work, making use of this stillness. There is too much damage for them to fully repair before sunrise, but they try.

As consciousness fades, my mind returns to the dungeon beneath Ashenvale.

They’d broken my fingers one by one, working from pinky to thumb. I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I kept my gaze fixed on Sereven’s face and remained silent. At first, he was satisfied. Then irritated. Then cold with fury.

“You misunderstand our purpose, Sacha,” he’d said, while they reset a bone they’d broken. “We don’t seek your death. We seek your submission.”

I spat the blood filling my mouth at his feet. The only answer I had left. Something solidified in that moment. Not rage, which burns quick and bright, but hatred. Focused, cold, and patient.

And not just for Sereven. For all of them. The Authority. The system that caged me not for what I did, but for what I am. Their hypocrisy runs deeper than most suspect. Condemning magic publicly, while harvesting it secretly. Preaching righteousness, while practicing evil.

That hatred became my tether. When pain blurred everything else, I held onto it. When death felt like relief, I breathed through it. When surrender would have ended it, I counted the names I would one day return to.

The memory fades …

… And something else begins.

It starts where Ellie’s fingers rest against my arm. A sensation unlike anything I’ve experienced before. A white glow rises there, reaching for the shadows inside me. Where they meet, they don’t simply touch but merge, creating something neither silver nor shadow but both.

The feeling climbs up my arm. Not pain, at least not pain as I’ve known it these past days. This is more intense. Every nerve ending fires at once, bringing awareness so acute it borders on agony, without quite crossing that threshold.

The silver-shadow energy reaches my chest, and that’s when the real transformation begins. Where prophecy becomes flesh and legend becomes reality.

My back arches involuntarily. The restraints across the stretcher constrict, then snap like thread. My body locks in a full spasm. The brand on my chest burns anew, not with infection but something closer to ice than fire.

Energy pours into the wound. It doesn’t numb, it rebuilds. Dead flesh sloughs away, new layers forming beneath, accelerated beyond anything natural. The marks they gave me aren’t just healing, they’re being destroyed. Removed until my skin carries no trace of them.

Cells split and realign. Destruction and creation happening at the same time. My body becoming a battlefield between what was and what will be. Between the broken prisoner and the reborn Shadowvein Lord, the Vareth’el. Between Sereven’s victim and his potential executioner.

I want to scream, but my voice is locked in my throat. My lungs convulse. This is not repair. This isn’t healing. It’s reformation. Transformation on a level I’ve never experienced or heard of.

The merged current spirals deeper. Silver and shadow intertwined.

They reach broken ribs that shift beneath my skin, finding their proper alignment with a painful accuracy that stops the breath in my lungs.

I hear the whisper of bone against bone as shards that had been floating free reconnect.

I feel the rush of heat as marrow regenerates at impossible speed.

The sword wound in my side that’s been festering since my capture burns cold, infection dying beneath this new power that consumes everything in its path.

Through it all, Ellie sleeps beside me, unaware of what is happening, of the way her body has become a channel for this inexplicable energy. The silver current continues to move from her skin to mine. The connection between us strengthens with each passing moment.

The boundary between us thins, and I catch fleeting impressions of her dreams. Glimpses of her world.

Echoes of emotions not my own. A city shrouded in winter.

Tall structures of glass that catch the sun.

Loneliness that echoes my own, but with different origins.

A persistent feeling of not belonging. Fear mingled with determination.

And beneath it all, a fierce protectiveness directed at me that I’ve done nothing to deserve.