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Chapter 195
Chapter 195
Jiselle
I didn’t remember standing. Didn’t remember walking. Just the sudden shift in air and the way the heat curled its fingers around me like it knew my name.
Fire didn’t scare me anymore.
What scared me was the silence that came with it.
Not the kind that settled over a room, or even the quiet between two people trying not to say what they meant. This silence was bigger. Hungrier. It swallowed sound. Thought. Logic. And I walked straight into it.
The ridge behind the stronghold was broken now–jagged with heat scars and ley fractures that hissed through the rock like veins of steam. Bastain had warned us to stay away from the ridgelines until the leyline settled again. Said the energy was too unstable. Said it could warp the senses. Take something from you and not give it back.
But something inside me… called. Like I wasn’t here to take anything. I was just coming home.
I stepped into the clearing, where once there was nothing but stone, and now flame danced without smoke or ash. It spun like threads pulled by invisible hands, weaving through the rocks, the cracks, the air. And when I exhaled, it moved with me.
The heat didn’t hurt. Not even when I reached out and touched it.
It clung to my fingers like velvet. It didn’t burn–it recognized.
I kept walking, letting the fire coil around my boots, letting it test me, taste me, until I stood in the center. Until it had nowhere else to go but in.
I didn’t brace.
I didn’t scream.
I let the flame take me.
Elsewhere, I would later learn, Eva and Ethan found the corrupted site.
She told me later that the land wept. That was her word–wept. She said the trees were scorched in a spiral, but not burned through. Like something had licked across the bark and carved with sorrow instead of heat. The grass was blackened in places, but alive in others. Still twitching. Still reaching.
And in the center, the leyline cracked open like an eye, bleeding what looked like flame but moved like water. Black and gold. Familjar.
Ethan bent over it, tried to touch it, and pulled back with a hiss.
Eva swore it whispered.
His name.
But they didn’t tell me that until later. Not until everything else had already broken.
Nate didn’t sleep that night. I felt it through the bond before I even returned. The ache of him. The way he paced. The way he
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dreamed.
He told me after the way the child stood at the edge of his dreamscape. Not running. Not crying. Just… fading. Her form hazy, like smoke held together by memory, and every time he tried to reach her, she pulled back.
“She didn’t speak,” he said to me, voice quiet, eyes heavy with something worse than fear. “She just… looked at me like she didn’t know me anymore.”
didn’t have the words to fix that.
Because when I came back from the fire, something inside me had shifted too..
The return was the hardest part.
The fire let me go–but not all at once. It peeled back slowly, like skin separating from heat, and when the air kissed my lungs again, it was like waking up through someone else’s breath.
My clothes were untouched. My body unburned.
But the mark on my back pulsed brighter than ever, the veins along my arms shimmered faintly under the skin, and my eyes- when I saw them later in the mirror–were laced with gold.
I didn’t tell anyone at first.
I walked back alone.
Past the lower trail. Past the old sentry posts. I moved through twilight like something reborn, but not entirely whole. I was still me. But I was also… something else.
When I reached the edge of the main corridor, Bastain was waiting.
He didn’t speak. Just stared. Eyes narrowed. And then, like he’d been watching a storm form from a distance and had finally seen the first lightning crack across the sky, he said, “You walked into the fire again, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
He came closer, cautious like I might lash out. “Did it take anything?”
I shook my head. “No. But I think it gave something.”
He exhaled, then gestured for me to follow. “We need to talk.”
The war room was empty. Just the two of us. He spread a map over the table and placed a glowing shard of obsidian on the edge to hold it open. The leyline fractures had grown. The red marks looked like veins now–spindling from the central gate and reaching toward the mountains.
He pointed to one close to where I had been. “The fire you walked into–it didn’t exist yesterday. That’s not coincidence. That’s pull.”
“What are you saying?”
He looked up at me slowly. “The child is no longer just a receiver. She’s pulling now. Drawing from the leyline. From you. Maybe
even from others.”
Chapter 195
I flinched. “Is that… bad?
His silence said yes.
“Will it hurt her?” I asked.
His jaw worked. “Not her. You.”
I turned away, arms crossing over my chest like I could keep my insides from unraveling. “So she’s draining me now.”
“Not draining,” he said. “Bonding. But she’s reaching beyond the womb now. Beyond your body. That’s the part that worries me.”
I swallowed hard. “Who else?”
Before he could answer, the door burst open.
It was Ethan.
He looked… wrong.
Not injured, but off. Like he’d sprinted for miles and still hadn’t caught his breath. Sweat clung to his forehead. His shirt was wrinkled and damp, and his hands shook at his sides.
“I blacked out,” he said, voice ragged.
“What?” Bastain stepped forward, eyes scanning. “What do you mean?”
“I was in the lower corridor. I don’t remember falling asleep. One minute I was walking, and the next-” He stopped. “I woke up. On the floor. And this was on my hand.”
He held it up.
Even in the low light, I saw it. A burn mark–not deep, but raw. Etched into the skin like someone had branded him in his sleep.
It wasn’t a rune.
It was a phrase.
Just three words.
“One must fall.”
Bastain’s breath caught.
I felt sick.
“Who?” I asked, but the answer didn’t come.
Ethan dropped into the nearest chair, clutching his head. “I don’t remember anything. Just black. And then… that.”
Bastain moved to a shelf, digging through scrolls. “This isn’t part of the Sovereign Codex,” he muttered. “It’s older. Hollow–born script, maybe. But why Ethan?”
I didn’t say what I was thinking.
Chapter 195
That this might’ve been me.
Or worse–her.
The child.
Later that night, I sat in the small alcove by the edge of the stronghold wall, overlooking the valley. The stars were too bright. The sky too still.
I pressed a hand to my stomach.
And felt her move.
Not a flutter. Not a shift.
A kick.
Sharp. Real. Undeniable.
My breath caught. My eyes burned.
I wasn’t ready.
Not for what came with her. Not for what she was becoming.
I thought about Nate. About the way he looked at me lately. Like he still loved me, but didn’t know how to hold what I was turning
into.
And I wondered…
Was it possible to love something into ruin?
Was that what I was doing–loving this child so fiercely that I let her unravel me?
Or was it the opposite?
Was she the one loving me into something else?
My flame flickered under my skin again. I looked down and saw a faint pulse glow across my
wrist.
The same color as the mark that burned Ethan.
The same as the fire that called me.
The same as the name etched into the tree.
Aedric.
He hadn’t spoken since the rogue.
But I felt him.
Waiting.
Watching.
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Chapter 195
And now… whispering again.
Not in words.
But in flame.
And I knew…
The descent hadn’t just started.
It was already halfway done.
And the cliffhanger?
It wasn’t that Ethan was marked.
It was that we all would be.
Soon.
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.
