*Jiselle
I woke with heat crawling across my skin. Not fire. Not pain. Just–pressure. Like something had touched every inch of me and left the memory behind. I gasped as my lungs filled, my body arching against the stone beneath me. The leyline ridge pulsed once. Then again. And then my name.
Not aloud. Not from someone else..
From inside.
The voice hadn’t echoed in my ears, it had moved through my bones, like a ripple under skin. I could still feel it pressing against my ribcage, curling around the edges of my heart like it belonged there. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking against the dim light of the cavern. The stars were gone. The sky was gone. I was back under stone–back in the broken shell of what used to be a sanctuary.
I didn’t remember getting back.
My body was soaked with sweat. My limbs trembled as if I’d walked through fire, not dreamed it. My hair stuck to my skin, damp and matted. Every part of me felt heavier than it had when I left. Like I’d carried something back with me.
The heat hadn’t left. It pulsed faintly beneath my skin, not like a fever, but like something waiting.
Something that had sunk in.
The door. The runes. My voice.
He’s almost here.
“Jiselle.”
Nate.
He was beside me before I could sit up, eyes wild and full of panic. His hands hovered just above my skin, close enough to feel but not quite touching, like he didn’t trust his fingers not to break me.
“You were burning,” he said. “I felt it through the bond. You went silent for too long. I couldn’t–I didn’t know if you-”
I pressed my hand flat against his chest. Not hard, just enough to slow the frantic beat of his heart.
“I’m okay,” I whispered. Then, after a breath, “I think.”
He didn’t believe me. I didn’t either.
The tremor in his shoulders gave him away. His jaw clenched, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he held still, waiting for me to fall apart. I didn’t.
Not yet.
I sat up slowly, muscles tight, spine stiff. My bones ached with something deeper than exhaustion–the kind of ache you get when something in you has shifted. My fingers twitched as if they remembered more than my mind did. I stared down at them, expecting to see burn marks.
There were none.
Only the quiet.
No, not quiet.
1/4
Chapter 189.
Stillness.
That strange, thick stillness that always followed something sacred. Or cursed.
This hadn’t been a vision.
It was a message.
A warning.
I told him everything. My words were slow at first, like pulling cloth through water. The corridor of flame. The walls that shimmered like melting glass. The door. The runes. My voice speaking from someone else’s mouth. The feeling that it was more than a dream–more than
memory. That it was real.
He didn’t interrupt. Not once. He listened with his whole body–tense, alert, absorbing every word like they were pieces of a puzzle only he
could see. By the time I finished, he looked older somehow. Drawn tighter.
When I fell silent, so did he.
Then-
The air shifted.
Eva entered first, moving fast. Her boots scraped lightly over stone, eyes already locked onto me. She paused for only a moment before
rushing to kneel at my side.
“Something stirred the leyline,” she said. “A surge. Did you feel it?”
“It wasn’t the leyline,” I answered, throat dry. “It was me. Or… something inside me.”
Bastain stepped into the room behind her, scrolls tucked under one arm, his expression unreadable. His gaze flicked from me to the stone floor to the small ripples still echoing through the leyline ridge beneath us.
He set the scrolls down with care. “The bond between you and the child is deepening. These pulses aren’t echoes anymore. They’re
reaching.”
“Reaching for what?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
Before Bastain could speak, another presence slammed into the cavern like a storm.
Ethan.
He was panting, chest heaving, sweat clinging to his skin. His eyes were wide, unfocused.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” he said, voice rough. “But something’s wrong. I can’t-”
He stopped.
We all saw it at the same time.
His shirt was soaked, clinging to one shoulder, the fabric torn down the seam. Beneath it, a light throbbed faintly–violet and gold. Alive.
He looked down. Then grabbed the shirt and yanked it open.
The rune.
2/4
15:54 FH, 15 Aug ↑ VI •
Chapter 189
The third one from the door.
$57%0
Not mine. Not Nate’s.
Burned into Ethan’s shoulder. Précise. Raw. Glowing with the same low heat I still felt under my skin.
I stared. “That’s impossible.”
Ethan stumbled backward, pressing a hand to the mark like it might stop the glow from leaking out of him.
“What the hell is this?!” he yelled. His voice cracked. His eyes were wild.
Nate moved toward him, but Ethan snapped his hand up, keeping distance. “Don’t. Don’t come near me. I saw something. When it burned me -I saw something.”
He turned to me.
Our bond, once warm and quiet, sparked between us–hot, unstable. It wasn’t just connection now. It was transmission.
“I saw a throne,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Flame. Wolves kneeling. Screaming. And you, Jiselle. You were standing before it. Like it was yours.”
I forgot how to breathe.
Eva’s hand slid into mine. I didn’t look at her. I just needed to feel something solid.
Bastain cleared his throat, his tone measured. “Three runes. Three bloodlines. Flame. Veil. Blood. The Triad. It’s not symbolic. It’s literal.”
Ethan blinked. “What does that mean?”
Bastain looked at each of us in turn. “It means the child isn’t just made of Sovereign and Veilborn threads. The third piece never belonged to
her. It’s been beside her the whole time.”
I turned to my brother.
Dread moved slow and cold through my chest. “You’re part of this.”
Ethan gave a hollow laugh. “I didn’t ask to be.”
“Neither did I,” I said, my voice barely audible.
The rune on his shoulder pulsed.
And I felt it.
Not just through our bond.
Through the leyline.
Through the child.
Ethan doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees. He looked up at me like I was someone he didn’t recognize. “What does it mean? What happens if the third part breaks?”
No one answered.
3/4
Chapter 189
Because none of us knew.
And that silence said more than any answer ever could..
4/4
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.
