Page 45

??Ashes and Oaths

Dorian

The candlelight flickered against the stone walls like dying stars.

One long table, scratched and blood-marked, stretched between us, each of us cloaked in shadow, in secrets, in truths we hadn’t yet dared to say aloud.

Ember sat beside me, her hand grazing mine, fingers curled into her palm like she was keeping herself tethered.

I could feel her magic under her skin, electric and sharp, reacting to the energy in the room. She was the storm they didn’t see coming. And I was the quiet ruin that would bury them all.

I looked around at the allies we’d summoned, the desperate, the damned, the powerful.

Vaelith, the Bone Seer from the Hollow Marsh, stood in silence near the far end, her face veiled in a sheer cloth threaded with ash runes.

She saw death like others saw stars, mapped across the sky, stitched into flesh.

Her magic worked through bone and memory.

She’d once foretold the fall of five kingdoms in a single breath.

Next to her leaned Mirek, half-vampire, half-wraith, born of fire and feral hunger. His right hand had been replaced with obsidian steel, carved with burning sigils that glowed when death was near. His magic fed off blood, his or his enemy’s.

Then there was Thalia, the serpent witch who knew how to read the Veil like scripture. Her presence reeked of incense and venom. She sat with one bare foot propped on the edge of the table, amused, deadly. Her voice had called armies of shadows to their knees.

And last, Noxen. A reformed Hollow Beast. Once a creature of nightmare, now a man laced with the same magic that broke him. He had no soul left to lose. That made him valuable.

“You’ve seen the cracks forming in the Veil,” I said, voice low. “The first creature that slipped through was just a whisper. There will be more.”

Vaelith’s veil shifted as she tilted her head. “The prophecy is changing,” she said. “The Watcher of the Veil and her Keeper have awakened. That much is clear. But the path forks.”

“Forks?” Ember asked, her voice tight.

“One future ends in flame,” Vaelith said. “One in ash. And one in a storm of silence where neither of you remain.”

Ember went still beside me, but she didn’t flinch. That’s the thing about her, no matter how much fear clawed at her throat, she didn’t run.

“Then we pick the ending ourselves,” she said. “We burn the other paths down.”

Thalia snorted. “Careful, little flame. Some paths burn back.”

I growled low, just enough to earn her silence.

“We know Kreed and Cassian are working together,” I continued. “But that thing inside Cassian... it’s not him. It’s wearing his face. A demon, possibly from before the Veil closed. It killed him and took his name.”

“And now they want to open the Veil fully,” Noxen said. His voice was gravel. “To let the rest of them through.”

“They want power,” I said. “Not just chaos. They want dominion. But they need Ember to do it.”

“She is the Watcher of the Veil,” Thalia said. “Her blood. Her breath. Her bones. She opens the passage.”

“And I am her Keeper,” I added. “I shall close the Veil.”

There was silence. Then Mirek leaned forward. “So what’s the plan, monster prince?”

I smirked. “We go to the next rift site. Seal it. Fight whatever they send. And when Kreed and his pet demon show up, we end them.”

Vaelith murmured something in a forgotten tongue. “To close the Veil permanently, you’ll need more than teeth and spells. You’ll need to merge your magic completely.”

I glanced at Ember, and her gaze met mine without hesitation. “We’ve already started,” I said quietly.

Thalia raised a brow. “Ah. So the bond is forged.”

“Stronger than they expected,” Ember said. “And growing.”

Mirek muttered something crude under his breath.

A knock thundered at the far door. One of Thalia’s familiars slithered in through the crack and hissed, low and warning.

“Another rift just opened,” Noxen said, standing, hand going to his blade.

Vaelith’s veil fluttered. “This one brings a hunter. Something old. Something that knows your names.”

I stood, Ember beside me. “Then we hunt it back.”

Everyone stood as one.

There would be blood.

There would be battle.

But we weren’t alone anymore.