Page 37

Rowen

I stared out the window of my chambers, watching as the perpetual twilight of the Underworld cast long shadows across the obsidian gardens.

The dark flowers swayed in a breeze that carried the faint scent of brimstone and night-blooming jasmine.

A scent I'd grown so accustomed to I barely noticed it anymore.

So much had changed in such a short time.

My life had been upended, transformed into something I never could have imagined.

Not just by Sierra. Though she was certainly the catalyst with her silver hair and defiant spirit.

No, it was by the reformation of bonds I'd thought severed forever.

My brother. Callum.

Even thinking those words together felt strange, like trying to fit pieces from different puzzles into the same frame.

The syllables tasted foreign on my tongue, almost forbidden after so long.

For centuries, we'd been adversaries, circling each other with the wary distance of predators sharing contested territory.

Now he walked these halls freely, shared meals at my table, helped protect our mate.

The very walls of my realm seemed to hold their breath at this change, as if uncertain whether to embrace or reject him.

Our mate.

I ran a hand through my hair, the strands catching between my fingers as I tugged, still adjusting to the reality of it all.

The possessiveness I felt toward Sierra hadn't diminished, but it had.

.. expanded, somehow. If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be sharing Sierra with Callum and Archer, that we'd form this peculiar four-cornered bond, I would have laughed before ripping out their throat for the insult.

The sound would have echoed off the obsidian walls as their blood stained the floors of my throne room.

Yet here we were.

My mind drifted back through the centuries to when everything first fractured between us, memories crystallizing with painful clarity. The day my father died.

I remember the skies darkening over the Underworld, not the usual dimness but a true, oppressive blackness that seemed to swallow all light.

The air itself grew heavy, difficult to breathe, as if the realm itself was suffocating.

I was young then, still learning to control my powers, still believing in the permanence of things.

Still foolish enough to think that some bonds couldn't be broken.

The attack came without warning. My father, Darius, ruler of the Underworld, had many enemies.

His mere existence was an affront to some, his power coveted by others.

But none had ever managed to breach the inner sanctum before.

I was training in the lower levels, practicing creating fire from shadow, when I felt it.

A seismic disturbance in the power that flowed through our realm. The ground trembled beneath my feet, and something primal in me recognized the taste of death in the air. By the time I reached the throne room, it was too late.

My father lay on the obsidian floor, his immortal light fading from his eyes.

His blood pooled black against the stone, viscous and shimmering with power even as it leaked from him.

The assassin was gone, but they'd left their signature—a silver dagger embedded in his chest, the handle carved with the mark of the Celestial Court.

The blade glinted mockingly in the dim light, as if pleased with its work.

I remember falling to my knees beside him, my hands slick with his blood as I tried uselessly to staunch the wound.

The warmth of it against my skin felt obscene, wrong.

He was already gone. The great Lord Darius, who I'd believed invincible, who had taught me to wield both sword and magic, reduced to a cooling corpse on his own throne room floor.

His eyes. Eyes that mirrored my own, stared sightlessly upward.

Claudia, my mother, arrived moments later.

Her scream still haunts me sometimes, that raw, primal sound of utter devastation.

It ripped through the chamber, shattering the silence and something fundamental within me.

She collapsed beside me, her power flaring wildly in her grief, shattering the crystal fixtures throughout the room.

Shards rained down around us, catching firelight like falling stars, cutting our skin as they fell. Neither of us noticed the pain.

And then Maxiun came, with young Callum at his side.

The Fae King's face was ashen as he took in the scene, his normally proud features crumpled with shock.

He reached for my mother, pulling her into his arms as she sobbed.

I remember hating him in that moment. Hating the gentle way he stroked her hair, hating that she turned to him instead of me, hating that he had any right to be there at all.

My claws extended involuntarily, drawing blood from my palms.

But the truth was, Maxiun had been my father's closest ally for millennia.

When they met my mother, the three of them had formed their own bond—not unlike what I now shared with Sierra, Archer, and Callum.

They had found a balance that worked, a harmony in their triadic relationship that sustained them through countless conflicts and challenges.

History repeating itself in the strangest of ways, a cosmic joke I was only now beginning to appreciate.

The aftermath was chaos. I was thrust into leadership before I was ready, the crown of the Underworld heavy on my head. Courts needed managing, treaties needed honoring, enemies needed dispatching.

My mother, broken by grief, allowed Maxiun to take her back to the Fae realm to recover.

The verdant forests and clear streams of his kingdom offered a respite from the constant reminders of loss that permeated every corner of the Underworld.

She took Callum with her, of course. He was still just a child, half-Dark Fae and heir to that realm, with powers he barely understood.

His eyes had been wide and frightened as they left, looking back at me with a silent plea I chose to ignore.

I felt abandoned. By my mother. By my half-brother.

By the man I viewed as a second father. By every single damned person who should have stayed to help me navigate my new role.

Bitterness took root, growing deeper with each passing year like a poisonous vine around my heart.

When Mother would visit, I was cold to her, dismissing her attempts to explain, to reconnect.

When Callum tried to maintain our brotherhood, sending messages, gifts, even visiting despite my coldness, I rebuffed him.

I nursed my resentment until it calcified into something hard and immovable within me.

It was easier to be angry than to admit how much I missed them. How much I needed them. How the vast emptiness of my palace echoed with their absence.

I sighed, watching as a crimson butterfly, one of the rare living things in my realm, fluttered past the window, its delicate wings carrying it effortlessly through the darkness.

For centuries, I'd blamed Maxiun for taking my mother away.

For creating the rift in our family. I'd convinced myself that he'd manipulated the situation, used my father's death to finally claim Claudia entirely for himself.

I'd painted him as the villain in my mind, recasting a family tragedy as betrayal.

But now...

Now I understood. If anything happened to Sierra, I would be destroyed.

Not just sad or angry, but fundamentally broken in a way that might never heal.

The thought of her silver hair dulled with death, her fierce eyes closed forever.

.. it was unbearable. If Maxiun offered Claudia shelter from that pain, how could I blame her for taking it?

If he provided a safe haven for her to raise Callum away from the politics and dangers of the Underworld, wasn't that an act of love rather than selfishness?

Wasn't he simply offering her what I would offer Sierra in the same circumstances?

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, closing my eyes. All those years wasted on resentment. All that time I could have had a brother, a family, instead of the lonely existence I'd carved out for myself. The regret tasted bitter on my tongue, sharp as unripe fruit.

The Shadow Beast's threat loomed over us now, making these reflections seem both trivial and vital. What good was power, what good was ruling a realm, if you had no one to share it with? No one to protect? What purpose did my crown serve if all it did was isolate me from those who mattered most?

"You're brooding again."

I didn't turn at the sound of Callum's voice, but I felt my lips curve into a small smile despite myself. "I'm contemplating. There's a difference." The familiar cadence of this exchange, one we'd had a dozen times since his return, was oddly comforting.

"Not from where I'm standing." His footsteps were nearly silent as he crossed the room to join me at the window, a testament to his Fae heritage.

"You get this little crease between your eyebrows when you're thinking too hard.

Always have, even when we were young." He gestured vaguely toward my face, his pale green eyes reflecting the twilight beyond the glass.

I glanced at him, surprised. "You remember that?" Such a small detail to have carried through centuries of estrangement.

"I remember everything about you, brother.

" The word was gentle, an offering. "You were my hero, you know.

Before everything fell apart. I used to follow you everywhere, trying to walk in your footsteps.

Literally. I thought if I could just step exactly where you stepped, some of your power would transfer to me.

" A rueful smile touched his lips. "Mother found it hilarious. "

Something tightened in my chest, a pressure both painful and welcome. "I wasn't much of a hero afterward."