Page 4 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

“It was built on blood.” Her gaze remains fixed on the distant city. “That’s what they never told you. What they never told him, either. Until it was too late.”

“Who are you?”

She turns to me with a smile both sad and knowing. “Someone who tried to stop this long ago. Someone who chose love and lost everything.” Her hand lifts, almost touching my face before falling away. “Someone who recognizes what’s happening to you.”

I wake with a gasp, the dream fading, leaving me with a strange feeling of foreboding. The power responds instantly to my distress, flaring in painful waves before I wrestle it back under control.

“Bad dreams?” Mira’s voice is soft, but still reaches me from where she sits near the cave entrance, her silhouette outlined against the fading daylight.

“Not bad, but strange.” I push myself upright, wincing. My body aches in every joint, but at least the agony has subsided into something almost bearable.

“I need to get out of these clothes.” I pluck at the Authority’s servant’s uniform still clinging to my skin. “I can’t wear their uniform anymore.”

Mira nods, and stands up. She crouches beside me, and takes the pack I was using as a pillow. The action makes me realize I must have lost mine somewhere. It must have been when we crossed the river. Opening it up, she pulls out a tightly wrapped bundle.

“Tunic and pants. We’re not quite the same size, but they’ll do until we return to Stonehaven.”

She hands it to me. Shaking it out, I discover dark pants, a loose tunic, and a hooded cloak that should help conceal the occasional flickers of light that are still escaping my skin.

I retreat to the shadows at the back of the cave, stripping away the Authority uniform with barely controlled revulsion.

With each removed garment, I reclaim something of myself—not the Ellie who walked home through Chicago snow, but someone new emerging from her chrysalis.

As I pull on the new clothes, my fingers brush against something tucked against the underwear supporting my breasts. Dipping my fingertips beneath the material, I touch something firm that wasn’t there before.

When I draw it out, the world stops. My breath suspends in my lungs. Time stands still.

A ring rests in my palm. Black as a starless night, with a stone set inside the band that doesn’t reflect any light. It seems to consume it, creating a tiny void against my skin.

I’ve never seen it before. But I can guess what it is.

Sacha’s ring. The one he went to Ashenvale for. The object he was willing to risk everything to retrieve.

And now it’s here. Tucked into my clothes like it belongs there. My fingers tremble as I hold it.

How did it come to me?

The raven must have brought it. He must have sent it to me during whatever moments he had left.

My eyes burn, and I blink rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall.

But why? What does it mean?

"Ellie?" Varam’s voice cuts through my thoughts. "We need to move soon. Are you ready?”

I close my fingers around the ring, its heavy weight centering me. Instinct warns me to keep this discovery private. This connection to him belongs to me alone, at least until I understand what it means.

“Yes, I’m coming.” I tuck the ring back where I found it, finish changing, and then rejoin the group.

The mist stalker’s eyes track my every movement, its gaze lingering where the ring now hides beneath my clothing. Maybe it knows I have it. Maybe it knows more than I do. Nothing about this creature would surprise me right now.

We leave the cave under the cover of complete darkness, a small band of broken survivors moving through the forest as quietly as possible.

Varam leads, choosing paths invisible to me, moving through gaps between dense undergrowth, dry stream beds, and passages beneath fallen trees.

Mira stays beside me, one hand never far from my elbow, ready to steady me if the power surges again.

Rasha and Mishak guard our rear, alert for pursuit.

The ring rests against my skin. With each heartbeat, I feel it there, real, heavy, unmistakably his. A touchstone of certainty in a world where everything else has dissolved into chaos.

What does this mean? I keep circling back to the same questions. Why would his familiar bring it to me in its final moments? Was it instinct, or purpose? Did he send it knowing he wouldn’t survive?

We walk through the night, the forest gradually giving way to rockier ground as we approach the mountains where Stonehaven lies hidden. My body protests every step, but it’s normal exhaustion now, and not the magical agony of before.

The power continues to settle, finding a rhythm that no longer fights me with every breath.

It remains unfamiliar, unwelcome, a constant reminder that something has changed inside me.

I’m no longer simply Ellie Bennett lost in a strange world.

I’ve become something else entirely. Something this world recognizes, even if I don’t.

Dawn breaks when we reach the first true mountain path, a narrow trail winding between stone outcroppings. The mist stalker moves ahead of us, navigating the uneven ground with ease, occasionally pausing to wait when we fall too far behind.

I watch it, still trying to understand what it is, what it means that it formed from the power that exploded out of me. Another mystery in a world that’s given me nothing but questions.

The path narrows until we’re forced to press our backs against the cliff face, sidestepping across ledges barely wide enough for a foothold.

The fighters display surprising gentleness, guiding me with careful hands and watchful eyes.

These hardened Veinwardens, who have known nothing but war and loss, treat me with a reverence that feels unearned.

Then it hits me. The way they’re all positioned to catch me if I fall, the protective formation they maintain, the deference in their eyes.

They’re protecting me the way he would have wanted them to.

They’ve lost everything. I need to remember that.

Sacha wasn’t just my ... whatever complicated, unfinished thing he was becoming to me.

He was their leader, their beacon in darkness, their living embodiment of hope after years of believing he was dead.

The Shadowvein Lord, their Vareth’el, returned, only to be taken from them again.

Yet here they are, still following his orders.

I catch Rasha watching me when he thinks I’m not looking, his face a mixture of awe and desperate hope. Varam doesn’t look away from me for long, tracking every movement I make. Even Mira, steady and practical, treats me differently now.

Are they measuring me, evaluating whether I might somehow fill the void Sacha left behind? Or blaming me for what they’ve lost?

The thought paralyzes me more than any cliff edge could.

I’m not a leader. I’m not their prophesied savior.

I’m not even supposed to exist in this world.

I’m just a woman who walked down the wrong street in Chicago and fell through a crack between worlds.

A woman who lost someone before she even understood what he might have been to her.

“How much further?” I ask when we pause to rest.

“We should reach Stonehaven before nightfall, if we keep up this pace.”

The unspoken condition hangs between us. If my unstable power remains contained. If I don’t collapse again. If the Authority hasn’t somehow tracked us.

So many precarious ifs.

I take a sip from the waterskin Mira offers. Stonehaven is so close, yet it feels too far away. My body is protesting every step I take. But what choice do I have? Where else could I possibly go? No path leads back to my world, especially now that Sacha?—

I shut down the thought before it fully forms, clamping mental doors against the tidal wave of grief waiting to drown me.

My hands shake, and I curl my fingers into fists, nails digging into my palms until pain gives me something else to focus on.

If I allow myself to truly feel what happened at River Crossing, to process what I saw—his body, torn apart by that crystal—I’ll shatter completely.

And I can’t break. Not yet. Not until we’re safe.

We continue our climb as the sun rises, moving higher across the sky. The scenery doesn’t change—stone and scraggy trees clinging to impossible angles, cliff faces scarred by wind and weather, and I allow my mind to drift back to the dream woman’s words.

It was built on blood. That’s what they never told you .

Who was she? What did she mean? Was Ashenvale built on sacrifice? Was it the Authority? Or was she speaking of something else entirely? Something tied to whatever is still unfolding inside me? Was it a random dream brought on by the pain, or was it something more?

I want to ask. I want answers. But the only person who might have given them to me is gone. Every thread of thought inevitably leads back to him. Sacha—manipulative, secretive, frustrating—was my only anchor in this world. Without him, I’m blind again, fumbling in darkness I don’t understand.

"We’re nearly there." Relief floods through me at Varam’s announcement as afternoon fades toward evening.

The sun is setting, casting shadows all around us.

Nothing about our surroundings is familiar, which makes me think we’re approaching Stonehaven from a different path than the one Sacha led me through.

I follow Varam’s lead, focusing solely on the mechanical process of putting one foot in front of the other, taking step after step.

Each one carries me farther from the river where Sacha fell and closer to ... what? Safety? Purpose? Vengeance? The future stretches before me, formless and terrifying.

Only one thing remains certain. I can never return to who I was. Ellie Bennett from Chicago died at River Crossing just as surely as Sacha did. That Ellie is gone now, changed beyond recognition by power and loss.

The mist stalker pauses ahead, turning to look at me, head tilting. I’m sure it’s sensing my thoughts.

I press my fingers against the hidden ring as we finally crest the last ridge, Stonehaven’s concealed entrance becoming visible in the mountainside ahead. The metal pulses once against my skin, so faintly I might have imagined it, before going still again.

This is all I have left of him. A token of power and memory, of questions that may never be answered, of something unfinished between us that can never be completed now.

I’ve never felt more alone in my life. Yet somehow, I know I’m not. Whatever part of him remains, in the ring and in the shadows that now mingle with my power, they are with me still. Whether as a burden or blessing, I cannot yet tell.