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RHAEGAR

N ora is unraveling.

I see it in the way she flinches at the edge of her vision, in the way she grips the fabric over her ribs like it will steady her. I can hear it in her breathing, tight and erratic, a sound that wasn’t there before. And I can feel it in the bond that tethers us—a constant, electric hum that pulses between us like a second heartbeat.

She won’t say it, but the presence of those things is eating at her, slipping through the cracks of her mind. I should have left the Wastes long before we ever got this deep.

The Wraithborn aren’t attacking.

They’re waiting.

I sit across from her, sharpening my blade with slow, deliberate strokes. The scrape of steel against whetstone echoes into the stillness. The fire casts an unsteady glow over the hollow beneath her eyes, deepening the shadows in her face.

Her fingers twitch over her knee, a nervous tick she’s never had before.

“Nora,” I say, low and firm.

Her head snaps up. Amethyst eyes, too sharp, too bright. She’s barely holding it together.

“They won’t stop watching,” she murmurs.

I follow her gaze past the firelight, past the fractured ridgeline, into the smothering dark. There’s nothing there now. Not to her eyes. But I know better.

“They aren’t watching,” I say. “They’re studying.”

She presses her lips together, staring at the embers. “Studying me for what?”

I don’t answer.

Because I won’t say it aloud.

Instead, I stand. “Come with me.”

She hesitates. “Where?”

“I need you to see something.”

Her brows furrow, but she rises, wrapping her arms around herself as she follows. The Wastes stretch in all directions, a land broken and skeletal beneath the weight of its history.

I guide her along the path we’ve been avoiding, the one that dips into the valley where the air thickens, where the ruins are older than time itself. The closer we get, the more I feel it.

The pressure in my chest. The tug of something that wants to be remembered.

We descend into the belly of the land, past jagged rock and fractured columns half-buried in dust. A graveyard of the forgotten.

The moment we reach the bottom, Nora stops.

She stiffens, fingers curling at her sides.

“What is this place?”

I don’t answer immediately. Because she isn’t asking out of curiosity.

She already knows.

Her magic reacts before her mind catches up, sending a shiver through the air around her. Her breath shortens. The whispers return, I can feel them latching onto her, curling into the corners of her mind.

She doesn’t fight it.

She listens.

“Rhaegar,” she whispers, turning to face me, her voice fragile but sharp. “Tell me.”

I exhale through my nose, dragging a clawed hand over my jaw. This is a mistake. Letting her feel it before she’s ready. Letting them feel her before I can tear her away.

But I have no choice.

“They were once men,” I finally say. “Warriors, soldiers, kings. Before they became something else.”

She shudders. “What happened to them?”

I hesitate.

Not because I don’t know the answer.

But because the truth will change everything.

“The Wraithborn were cursed,” I murmur. “They weren’t always this way. They were given a choice—serve eternity or cease to exist. They chose to stay.”

Nora sways slightly, her breathing uneven. “By who?”

I don’t speak.

I don’t have to.

She knows.

Her eyes widen as she takes a slow step back. Away from me.

“You knew,” she breathes.

“Nora—”

“You knew what they were. You knew why they were following me.”

I grip her wrist before she can turn away. “I knew they’d come for you.”

She trembles. But it’s not fear—not of me, anyway. It’s something worse.

Something closer to realization.

I lower my voice. “If they want you, it means they think you belong to them.”

Her breath catches.

“No,” she whispers, shaking her head. “No, that’s not?—”

She tries to pull away, but I tighten my grip. “It’s why we need to leave. Now.”

She stares at me, half-defiant, half-lost. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

She says it with conviction, but the bond entwines sharply—and I feel the doubt creeping in.

The whispers inside her head are growing louder.

And if she keeps listening…

She will hear them.