Page 40 of Touch of Oblivion (Woven in Time #1)

“In the Summer Court, I found some answers. My power doesn’t belong to any of these factions but to the earth itself. Yet, I can’t use it whenever I demand it. It only flows through me when I serve its will.”

My gaze swings to Torryn. “You saw the long hours I spent trying to force it.”

A beat of silence follows before he nods. “I did.”

I swallow hard and my head shakes. “I don’t know how the threads of fate and my connection to the earth work yet. I just know right now that I can’t belong to one side of this war.”

Then my gaze slides hesitantly toward Azyric. If I’m getting all of the truth out now, I need to tell him what I saw that first night.

My voice wavers, but I force the words through.

“And there’s one more thing I haven’t told you.”

His silver eyes narrow.

“It was the first night,” I say, “when I was staying in your castle…when I sat at that dinner and then you escorted me back to my room.”

My hands fall to my front, tangling with each other as I lift my chin and admit, “I saw two threads then, coming from Ilyria. One where the fae and wraiths made a deal with her and one where you didn’t. ”

He turns to me fully then, straightening to his full height. “Tell me.”

“The future of the decision made then resulted in me seeing an image of your castle burning and crumbling. I don’t know when or why.”

The words hang between us as I see Sylvin’s head jerk back in surprise and Torryn’s brows raise. Riven’s gaze is so closely guarded now that I can’t even see the hurt that was just lingering there.

I expect a multitude of questions from everyone, not the silence that follows and definitely not the walls I see rising up. My throat clogs with emotion. Part of me wants to take it all back and move forward as we were, but as I swallow and pull my shoulders back, I choose to stand in my truth.

They can take it or leave it.

Azyric takes in a deep breath before taking two slow steps toward me.

“You saw our home in flames,” he says slowly, voice low and hollow with disbelief. “And you kept it to yourself.”

His tone aches with betrayal, yet there’s a calculating edge to his gaze, like I’ve just confirmed what he needed to know about me.

“Do you have any idea what that knowledge could’ve changed?” he continues, louder now, silver eyes catching the firelight. “What you’ve risked by staying quiet? ”

My heart lodges in my throat at the implication that I did this purposefully.

“I didn’t know what it meant,” I say, voice trembling. “I didn’t know any of you or who I was, which in case you’ve all forgotten, I still don’t know that! I’ve tried to navigate all of this to the best of my ability, and maybe I’ve made missteps, but it was never with the intent to cause harm.”

“Save your excuses!” Azyric snaps as his shadows suddenly lash out.

I step back as Torryn’s growl breaks through the air before I can answer, deep and full of warning.

“Watch your tone,” he says, stepping forward, golden eyes lit with a heat I rarely see from him. “She didn’t owe you anything then and she doesn’t owe any of us a thing now, as much as we all seem to forget that. She is sharing with us out of her own choice.”

Hope soars in my heart, hearing his words.

I watch ice stretch along the floor at Sylvin’s feet, frost blooming toward Azyric.

“And what would you have done if she had shared that information, Azyric?” he asks mildly, but the chill in his voice is anything but casual.

“Locked her in a tower until she understood it? The future she saw is yet to happen, which means there is still time to change it.”

My eyes prick with heat, despite my best efforts to keep the welling emotion at bay .

They’re defending me. Maybe those walls I saw were only temporary.

A pulse of heat flashes beside me as Riven’s hand finds my lower back, his body half shielding mine.

“She came here in good faith, despite deciding that she won’t choose a side. We know she’s spent no time with the humans and they have none of this information. So, do us all a favor and stop treating her like she’s firmly on their side.”

My lower lip wobbles with that.

Azyric’s mouth curls into something that might have been a smirk if it wasn’t so full of contempt.

“You’re all fools,” he huffs.

His gaze cuts between them and then back to me.

“She’s made it clear she won’t help us, yet you’re ready to draw blood for her.” His voice drops, bitter and laced with venom. “You’re loyal to someone who hasn’t promised you anything. Can’t you see it? She’s not your ally. She’s our distraction. A spell you’ve all fallen under.”

He laughs, cold and joyless.

“And I’m the only one still trying to see her clearly.”

“Watch yourself,” Sylvin warns, shocking me at the way his tone drips with an icy threat. “She did help my people, at the expense of her own heart in the fallout of that choice.”

Azyric turns and heads toward the tent flaps, pausing long enough to look back and say, “She could be the reason we lose this war, and none of you would notice until it was too late. You’re too wrapped up in her body, her power, and her lies.”

I open my mouth to speak up for myself finally, but he’s gone before I can.

The remaining three kings move as one, seemingly furious and ready to drag him back until his disrespect is resolved, but I raise my hand.

“Don’t, please.” My gentle plea cuts through their anger and I offer a smile at each of them. “Thank you for seeing my heart and understanding why I can’t choose your side right now, but I think I need to talk to him alone. This has been brewing for a while.”

I head through the flaps without waiting, not wanting to give them a chance to try to convince me otherwise.

Azyric’s shadow moves ahead of me, disappearing around the curve of a tent’s edge, and I quickly follow. I hesitate at the entrance to his tent only for a breath before ducking inside.

This has been a long time coming.

I stop just inside, seeing his back turned to me. His shadows have slipped free from him entirely, their thick, writhing tendrils coiling through the space with aimless fury, lashing at the walls, the ceiling, and the floor like they can’t find where to settle.

They’re wild in a way I’ve never seen, yet they don’t attack me. Instead, a few seem to sense me here, like they’ve been waiting for my return to them.

One brushes my ankle and another climbs up my shin. They don’t tighten or hurt me, they simply exist. I breathe out slowly and let more of them come, lifting my hand like I would for an old friend, watching as one of the longer strands twines around my wrist with slow curiosity.

A growl tears through the shadows like thunder splitting through the sky as he turns.

His body is tense, his shoulders rigid and his back straight, but as he takes in the shadows curling around me, I watch both the veins in his forearms and one in his forehead bulge.

“Why did you come here?” His voice is low and guttural. “To rub it in my face that you seem to have control over three magical factions? That you’ve managed to twist every crown but mine?”

The words sting, but I don’t flinch. I listen and truly hear the pain in them. I hear the vulnerability in his words. It opens up my own hurt that I’ve locked away from the night in the shifter lands.

“I thought I saw you that night,” I say quietly. “At the edge of the forest after I had Torryn invite you all to dinner. I was so hurt when you didn’t show at first, and even more confused when I thought you decided to linger at the edge.”

The shadows swirl around us, curling tighter as his jaw clenches.

“I thought you wanted nothing to do with me,” I admit softly, letting my own vulnerability shine through in a moment where I fully expect him to laugh at me.

He’s made his thoughts of me clear, yet I still hope that what I hear in them is different than what he admits out loud.

He stalks toward me. Each step is deliberate, shoulders squared, silver eyes pinned to mine like he’s trying to burn through the layers I suddenly offer him.

Shadows slither with him across the ground, curling over his boots and winding back up the length of his legs, yet some still linger around me, like they haven’t decided whether they belong to him or me now.

When he stops in front of me, the tension in the room draws taut. When he finally speaks, chills spread through my body.

“You think all of this,” he hisses, the words low and full of heat, “has been because I wanted nothing to do with you?”

The shadows climb higher on me then, brushing up my thighs, along my waist, curling in tendrils across my chest as if summoned by the same fury lacing his tone.

I don’t back away and I don’t flinch. I stand rooted where I am, watching the fury flash through his silver eyes, feeling like, just maybe, he’s finally showing me the real Azyric.

“You think it’s been disinterest? Distance?” he growls, the words unraveling now, each one louder than the last. “It’s because I want everything , Wren. I tell myself I don’t. That you’re a risk, a threat, a variable we can’t afford to miscalculate.”

My heart stutters and I force my breath to stay even.

His jaw clenches, nostrils flaring as a muscle twitches in his cheek.

“But every waking minute,” he bites, stepping even closer, “I’ve spent planning for this damn war has also been accompanied by thoughts of wondering where you are. Who you’re with. What piece of yourself you're giving them.”

The words aren’t soft or romantic. They’re twisted up in resentment and longing that feels sour with restraint. Yet I just stand here, staring into his eyes as he gets it all out, because I don’t know if he will ever show me this side of himself again.

“I can’t stand the way they look at you like you belong to them. As if they’ve already claimed the very thing I’ve had to claw myself away from since we first found you.”

His voice drops, rough and almost broken, like it hurts to admit the truth now that it’s spilling out of him. “I’ve been encased in my shadows,” he whispers, the admission falling between us heavily, “because it’s the only thing that’s kept me from unraveling.”

My lips part, but the words don’t come. There’s too much fire in my chest and an ache growing where it shouldn’t. Not when what’s between us is still so broken and jagged.

He mutters a curse so soft I almost don’t hear it.

“Fuck it.”

He lunges, closing the space between us in a breath.

His mouth crashes into mine without preamble or apology, a snarl caught at the back of his throat as his hands tangle in my hair and drag me closer, as if he doesn’t trust the air between us not to steal me away.

Shadows surge in tandem, slipping around my thighs, up my spine, curling across my ribs like they can’t bear to let me go.

Every inch of me feels marked by the press of his power, not in violence, but in desperation to claim me.

The kiss alone is enough to strip the breath from my lungs, but even more so, in the way his entire body folds toward mine like this is the release he’s been searching for. The answer he’s been desperate to have.

I clutch at the front of his shirt, grounding myself, because I swear the floor isn’t beneath me anymore.

Only him.

Only this.

When he finally tears his mouth from mine, his breath is ragged and uneven, chest heaving like he’s just surfaced from drowning.

He stares at me, eyes blown wide, shadows recoiling from me all at once just before he stumbles back.

He turns without a word, throwing the tent flap open so violently it slaps against the outer side, and then he’s gone before I can find my voice…before I can understand what, exactly, just shattered between us.