Chapter 187
Chapter 187
Jiselle
The whisper still echoed in my mind.
Sovereign… open the door.
The words hadn’t been spoken aloud, yet they filled the cavern like smoke that couldn’t be seen but clung to everything. They pulsed behind my eyes, wrapping around my heartbeat, shaping the air in my lungs. I sat in silence, legs drawn to my chest, the rune still glowing beneath my skin, dimmer now but no less present. Nate sat across from me, hands folded tight, trying not to look afraid.
But he was. They all were.
Bastain paced slowly around us, the edges of his robes brushing the stone with each step. His expression was unreadable, but his magic was on edge. I could feel it like static. Ethan leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, face like granite but jaw twitching with tension. And Eva… she hadn’t moved at all. She sat curted near the base of the spring, staring at the floor, her fingers twitching now and then like she was still inside a vision she couldn’t escape.
No one spoke. Not yet. Not after what I’d heard.
Because we all knew–something had responded to me. Not to my words, but to the fire inside me. And I… I almost responded back.
I closed my eyes. But the darkness was worse.
Images stirred behind my lids–flashes of ash and smoke, of wolves kneeling in fire, of a voice in a child’s shape, sitting in a throne built of
bones and stars.
Then the mirror flared.
No one had touched it.
It had remained where I dropped it two nights ago, near the spring’s edge. But now its obsidian surface pulsed with violent light, like molten metal beneath ice. The air around it shimmered. And the reflection–gods, the reflection.
I gasped and scrambled backward.
Everyone turned.
In the mirror, we didn’t see ourselves. We saw something watching. Dozens of eyes. Blindfolded wolvès, knelt in a spiral, their bodies bleeding shadow, heads bowed to something just out of view.
One lifted its head slowly. No face. Just a mouth–split and grinning.
“Enough,” Bastain said, stepping forward. He raised a hand and cast a sharp sigil of severance. Light flared. The mirror cracked, just once,
down the middle. The vision vanished.
“It’s connected now,” he said, breathless. “To you. To the child. To the leyline.”
I pulled my knees tighter to my chest. “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t open anything.”
Bastain shook his head. “It doesn’t need you to. The bond was already forming. That whisper wasn’t just calling you. It was testing if you’d
answer.”
Eva finally moved. She stood slowly, crossing the cavern to kneel beside me. Her eyes were rimmed red, but focused.
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Chapter 187
“We have to seal it,” she said. “Whatever is trying to come through. We have to keep it from reaching full strength.”
Bastain nodded. “We try. But she’s Sovereign now. And pregnant. The child is anchoring something ancient. This isn’t about stopping it it about surviving it.”
He knelt at the center of the room, began drawing protective sigils on the stone with silver chalk, each mark flickering faintly as he worked,
Then he looked at me. “Lie down here.”
Nate stepped between us. “What are you doing to her?”
“Not harming her,” Bastain said. “Shielding her. The rune needs to be bound, at least temporarily. If we don’t try, it might burn her from the
inside out.”
I stood, slowly. “I trust him.”
Nate hesitated, jaw flexing, then stepped aside.
I lay at the center of the sigils. The stone was cool against my back, but I could feel the leyline thrum beneath it–a rhythm that wasn’t mine anymore. Bastain placed his palm just above my abdomen and began chanting.
The silver chalk glowed. The air turned thick.
Then everything exploded.
The sigils burned too bright. The rune on my skin flared in answer, violent and hungry. Bastain fell backward with a shout. The protective spell shattered I cried out, back arching as power seared through me.
And everything went black.
In the dark, I was standing.
Stone beneath my feet, burning.
A throne before me, massive and alive, crowned in fire and shrouded in smoke.
And sitting in it–the child.
Not a baby. Not even the being I saw in the mirror.
lin
A figure, humanoid, glowing with a pulse like a star. Its face was shifting. Its eyes were endless. And it watched me.
“You are not the door,” it said, voice echoing from every direction. “You are the lock.”
I swallowed hard. “Then what are you?”
The figure tilted its head. “The key.”
A second later, the throne behind it cracked–a hairline fracture glowing red. Then another. The figure smiled.
“And the flame to break it.”
I gasped awake, drenched in sweat, my hands clenching the stone beneath me. The cavern spun, Nate’s face appearing above me, frantic, relieved.
“You’re okay. You’re back.”
Chapter 187
I tried to speak, but my lips moved without my consent.
Foreign words fell from my mouth–syllables like knives, language older than anything I knew.
Eva darted forward, scribbling the sounds in chalk. Bastain, eyes wide, translated aloud as she wrote:
“The lock breaks when love names it.”
Silence followed.
I looked at Nate. He looked at me.
And we both knew what that meant.
It wasn’t just birth that would open something.
It was naming it.
It was loving it..
“So what,” Ethan said hoarsely, “we can’t even speak its name?”
Bastain turned to the wall.
A soft humming sound grew.
And then, on the cavern wall, another rune burned itself into the stone. Jagged. Deep.
Bastain stepped closer. His mouth moved around the ancient shape.
“He is coming,” he said.
My chest went cold.
Because I knew without question:
It didn’t mean the child.
It meant what wanted the child.
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
