She's curled like a cat in the center of the bed I had made for her. Embroidered sheets, layered blankets, pillows stacked like a nest. I could've laid her in fire and she wouldn't have flinched. Not with the way her body gave out, some silent part of her had decided it was safe to collapse now. That I was safe. Poor, deluded thing.
She doesn't know half of what I am.
The carved armchair I'm sitting in across from the hearth is comfortable for keeping watch. One ankle rests on my knee, fingers are steepled under my mouth as I monitor her chest rise and fall. Her breath has finally steadied, but there's a tightness to it, she's braced for the world to fall again. It will. That's the truth of it. I'll burn kingdoms to keep her warm, but even that won't keep the flames from licking her heels.
When I got the wardrobes fitted with clothes for her, I knew they would fit perfectly, better than those rags she was in. I left her in the hoodie and jeans, only taking off the boots before slipping her in the sheets. Nothing is riddled with holes and the scent of the slums, but I could take those new things off her now, replace it with silk or shadow. No, let her wear her past a little longer. Let her remember what I dragged her from.
My cock twitches, but I shove the thought aside. She's not ready.
Instead, I think of the creatures that dared touch her. That dared bleed her. That dared step through a tear I didn't open.
Consuming me are thoughts of the carnage I will unleash when I find out who it was. The rip was small and sloppy, a gamble if there ever was one. No signature I recognised, no realm I could name. But their skin suits didn't lie. Hollow skin stretched over broken bones and borrowed breath. Feral. Desperate. And brave.
Too brave.
Somehow the balance is tipping, and I don't like the feel of it. Realms have always warred. Whispered behind each other's backs. But open conflict? Breaches? My name uttered without reverence?
No. Something's pulling strings. Or cutting them.
I need answers. And the only one I trust to dig deep enough is already on his way. If he's smart, he'll knock before speaking.
A faint rap at the door. Once. Twice.
I bare my teeth and rise.
I swing the door open hard enough to rattle the hinges, ready to break whoever's on the other side in half. I'm met with him grinning like the bastard he is, leaning a shoulder against the frame, casual, coming to borrow sugar and not report on a potential realm collapse.
"Disturbing you, am I?" Zarek drawls, voice syrup-thick and laced with amusement. He's always been too casual with death at his back.
He's massive, taller than me, broader too, and sculpted by war itself. Black tactical gear clings to him as a second skin, plates of matte armor laced with runes pulsing dull red. His horns curl back from his temples in jagged arcs, more bone than elegance, and his wings, ink-dark, torn at the edges, flare slightly as he crosses the threshold uninvited.
I don't move from my position, he's not getting near her.
"Shut the fuck up and speak," I say, already regretting opening the door.
But his eyes, obsidian with twin flickers of ember, have found her. Still passed out in the nest I made.
"Holy shit," he murmurs, tilting his head, fangs flashing in a lazy grin. "She's real."
I slam a hand into his chest and shove. He stumbles, but his wings snap out with a low thunderclap to brace him before he tips over the goddamn banister. He laughs, wild and deep.
"Touchy subject, boss?" he says through a wheeze, straightening.
"Say another word and I'll rip your tongue out and feed it to you."
"Alright, alright." He holds his hands up, placating. "Relax. Just saying, she's…something."
"She's mine."
"Obviously," he mutters, then clears his throat and drops the grin. "Look, I didn't come here to flirt with your pet. We've got shit to talk about. Big shit. You're gonna want eyes on this."
I nod once and turn, striding down the hall toward the western wing. He falls into step beside me, footsteps silent despite his bulk. We don't speak as we move through the estate, he knows better. My mind's still half in that room, watching her sleep. Half in the garden. Half in the memory of blood and bone and those fucking stitched-skin things who dared lay hands on her.
By the time we reach the command room, I'm ready to burn something down.
"Talk," I snap as the doors slide open with a hiss.
It seals behind us with a quiet hiss, but the tension in the room is anything but quiet.
The command room is buried deep beneath the estate. Impenetrable. Ward-locked and folded into subspace to keep its contents unreadable even to the sharpest seers. It's circular, sleek, carved out of obsidian and draped in shifting shadow. The floor hums with residual power, siphoned directly from the Veil, and the walls flicker with slow-moving glyphs that pulse like a heartbeat.
In the center, a table floats. No legs, no base, just a massive slab of black crystal suspended in air, held aloft by ancient runes and pure fucking will. A map hovers above it, ten feet wide and alive. Not flat. Three-dimensional and breathing, glowing with soft golden outlines of the realms. They spin slowly on their axes, some ringed in red, some flickering, unstable.
Korrin steps up beside me, fingers dancing across a small console embedded in his bracer.
"Watch this," he says grimly.
The map shifts, enlarges in front of us. The focus zooms in on a realm I don't immediately recognize, it's torn. Scarred down the middle like someone's dug a claw through reality itself. There are breaches. Dozens of them, scattered like infection sites, raw rips in the veil. He toggles again, and we watch footage from each rift.
Creatures swarming. Riots in places where magic was outlawed centuries ago. Lower fae pouring into realms they should never have access to. Enforcers disappearing mid-transit, their signal feeds going black one after the other.
"How?" I ask, voice low. Controlled. "How the fuck are they getting through?"
Korrin shrugs one massive shoulder, but there's no humor left in him. "That's the problem. We don't know. The Veil's supposed to be locked down. But this?" He gestures at the map. "This is precision. Coordinated. Almost like someone's testing for weak spots. And they're winning."
I grind my jaw, watching one of the red-flaring realms twitch like it's in pain. This isn't some faction dispute, it's systemic. Someone's pulling threads.
I turn to him. "What about the girl?"
He hesitates. And that's all it takes for my stomach to clench.
"Zarek."
He meets my gaze head-on, the bastard finally serious. "We dug into it. The blood she spilled in the fight, the imprint from her when you pulled her through the tear, even the fucking echo she left in the grass."
"And?"
He exhales, shaking his head slowly. "She's not on any registry. Not human. Not daemon. Not fae. Not even old blood, we can't find her fucking anywhere, no record."
"Then what is she?"
There's a pause. Long enough for the air to shift.
"That's the thing, C," he says, barely above a whisper. "You told me she was this 'Null', but we're struggling to find anything concrete. And, I think she's the reason this is happening."
The map behind him flares, one of the realm breaches pulsing in sync with the signal from the estate.
He turns back to it, jaw clenched. "You need to see what we found. But I'm warning you now…"
He lifts his hand, fingers glowing with a flick of runes, and pulls up one last file. My blood freezes as a familiar energy signature plays across the screen, traced from the tear we opened on the way here.
"It's her," he says. "And she matches something we never thought was real."
I stare at the flickering echo, rage and desire and something cold and ancient slithering down my spine.
Korrin looks at me, voice like the crack of a match before the inferno.
"She's not just powerful, Caelum. She's prophecy."