Chapter 202
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Chapter 202
*Jiselle*
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The world blurred the second the veilstone sliced open the plane. My fingers, wrapped tight around its hilt, burned like I’d dipped them in molten silver. Not hot. Not cold. Just… wrong. Like holding grief. Like pressing your palm to the place where a life had once been.
The realm didn’t crack open–it wilted. Petal by petal, color by color, until the world I stood in bled into something older. Something vast. I was no longer in the Academy, no longer surrounded by stone walls and whispered arguments. I was in flame.
Not fire. Flame.
It roared in silence, curled in waves of gold and red and violet too rich for any earthly inferno. It breathed like a beast, each rise of its heat pulling my hair back from my face and my soul forward from my spine. The sky above wasn’t black–but empty. A void threaded with veins of fire, pulsing like the heart of something half- dead and half–awake.
I wasn’t afraid. I should have been, but I wasn’t.
Because I wasn’t alone.
He emerged from the flicker.
Aedric.
As if the fire had worn a mask and decided to show me what lived beneath it. He was taller here, less bone and ash and more form–his form. Regal and ruined, like a monument built in reverence then shattered in rage.
“Jiselle,” he said.
And gods… my name sounded beautiful in his mouth. Wrong. But beautiful.
I didn’t speak. Not yet.
He stepped forward, the flames parting around him like he was them. “You’re braver than I expected.”
“I’m not here to impress you,” I said, voice steady despite the way my knees threatened to buckle under the pull of this place.
“No,” he agreed, gaze sweeping down my body and settling over my stomach. “You’re here to destroy yourself.”
The child inside me moved. Not a kick. A shiver.
I flinched, one hand pressing instinctively to my abdomen. “I’m here to end you.”
Aedric smiled. Not cruelly. Not kindly. Just… knowingly. “You still think this is about me?”
9:19 Mon, Sep 8 B…
Chapter 202
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“You tried to tear the realms apart,” I snapped. “You manipulated wolves like Serina. You’re twisting my child
“My child too,” he cut in.
The silence that followed was colder than any fire could warm.
“I didn’t ask to be born of you,” I said. “And neither will she.”
Something flickered in his expression then. Hurt? No. Possession.
“She is the product of flame and blood and power you’ve only just begun to taste. You think she’ll be yours, but she won’t be anyone’s. Not truly. Unless…”
“Unless I give her to you?”
“Unless you give her freedom.” He took another step closer. “Severing the tether will kill the child’s gift. You know that. Bastain told you.”
My grip on the veilstone dagger tightened.
“I’d rather have a daughter without power than one shackled to a monster.”
He laughed and it cracked the sky.
“You sound like Serina.”
Good.
He was close now. Too close. I could smell fire on his breath, and behind his eyes, a thousand screaming embers begging to be loosed.
“You could reign beside me,” he whispered. “Not as Queen. Not as Sovereign. As Flame. The world could bow to us–Veilborn and Ethereal, reborn in truth.”
“And Ethan?” I asked, voice lower now, threading around a pain I didn’t want to name.
He hesitated. “Your brother has always burned for something he doesn’t understand. He would be honored to fall for you.”
“And Nate?”
That one landed.
His jaw tensed. “He weakens you.”
“He loves me.”
“Then he will die.”
That was when I lunged.
9:19 Mon, Sep 8 G…
Chapter 202
I didn’t think. The flame rose, and I met it.
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My feet pounded across the ashen floor of the spiritual plane. Fire curled around my heels, but the veilstone stayed steady in my hand, pulling me like a compass toward the heart of him.
Aedric didn’t move to stop me. He opened his arms.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said softly, just as I reached him. “I want to wake you.”
But my blade was already rising-
And suddenly the world split.
Not from my strike–but from them.
Their voices cut through the smoke.
Jiselle.
Nate’s.
Then Ethan’s.
Come back.
I stumbled, the dagger grazing Aedric’s chest but not deep enough to cut. The fire hissed, recoiling as if scorched by my hesitation. I felt Nate’s voice in my bones. Ethan’s in my blood.
I spun.
They were behind me.
No–not them. Visions of them.
Nate on the balcony, whispering “I choose you, even when it’s hard.”
Ethan holding my hand at the solstice, saying, “I’ve got you. Always.”
Memory. Blood. Flame.
I fell to my knees, hand fisting the veilstone so tightly it drew blood.
And that’s when it came–the memory I never let myself feel fully.
The moment my mother died.
I was six. Hiding in the folds of my father’s cloak. Watching as her body convulsed from a blow meant for me. Watching as the light left her eyes and she whispered, “Protect the flame.”
I hadn’t known what it meant.
Chapter 202
Not then.
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But now…
I looked down at my stomach, at the child stirring softly within me.
And I whispered, “You are not him.”
The flame around me roared.
Aedric lunged this time, fury carving into his perfect face, hands raised like claws–but I was faster.
I rose with fire in my veins and grief in my heart, and I stabbed the veilstone into the flame.
Not the ground. Not him.
The flame.
The core of this cursed plane.
It screamed.
The scream wasn’t sound. It was light. Heat. Force. Like every memory, every bond, every pain woven into the tether was pulled taut and snapped at once.
The realm collapsed.
Sky to ash. Ground to void.
My body lifted, flung backward, bones vibrating with something ancient and primal and endless. I felt the child’s heart flutter. Not fade. Flutter.
And in the distance, through the breaking veil, I saw them again.
Ethan.
Nate.
Their hands were outstretched,
Their voices–together this time–pulled me back.
“Jiselle, Come home.”
And I did.
Through fire.
Through blood.
Through every version of myself that once feared I was not enough.
9:20 Mon, Sep 8 B…
Chapter 202
I came home.
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.
