The Great Hall of Oakhaven was a cathedral of light, designed specifically to be the antithesis of the Sunless Tower. Thousands of candles flickered in chandeliers made of sun-dropped crystal, and the walls were plated in hammered gold that reflected the firelight until the room felt as though it were burning.
It was a display of power. My father, King Malachai, feared the dark more than he feared death.
I stood at the threshold, my pulse thrumming in my fingertips. The stolen shadow-magic—Alaric's magic—felt like a cold coin pressed against my heart. Every time I breathed, I expected a plume of black smoke to exhale from my lungs.
"The Silence approaches," a herald announced, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
The courtiers, dressed in their autumn finery of deep oranges and burnt sienna, parted like a sea of dying leaves. They didn't bow to me. They recoiled. I walked the length of the hall, my chin held high, the makeshift velvet bandages around my hands hidden deep within my wide, bell-shaped sleeves.
My father sat upon the Solar Throne. He was a man of sharp angles and sharper intentions. His crown was a circlet of jagged copper, and his eyes—the same pale blue as mine—were devoid of the warmth he forced the rest of the room to project.
"Daughter," he said. The word wasn't an endearment; it was a classification. "Report."
I knelt, the stone floor biting into my knees. I kept my hands tucked away. "The prisoner is contained, Your Majesty. The first siphoning is complete."
Malachai leaned forward, his rings clicking against the gold armrest. "The guards reported a disturbance. A fluctuation in the light levels. They said the tower shook."
"Prince Alaric is... stubborn," I said, choosing my words with the precision of a jeweler. "His magic is rooted in the Midnight Isles' tectonic core. It didn't want to leave him. There was a brief surge of kinetic discharge, but I quelled it."
"And the result?" my father pressed. "Is he broken?"
"He is weakened," I lied. The word tasted like copper. "But a man of his lineage requires a slow bleed. If I take too much too fast, the magical vacuum could collapse the tower. We must proceed with caution if you want him alive for the public trial."
My father narrowed his eyes. He rose from his throne and descended the dais, his heavy robes trailing behind him like a bloodied shroud. He stopped directly in front of me. The air around him smelled of expensive incense and underlying decay.
"Show me your hands, Elara."
My heart skipped. "Father, the ritual was taxing. The skin is sensitive to—"
"Show me," he repeated, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
I had no choice. Slowly, I pulled my arms from my sleeves. I held out my hands, wrapped in the torn scraps of wine-colored velvet.
Malachai reached out, and for a terrifying second, I thought he might touch me. He knew better, of course. He knew that even through cloth, my skin could begin to draw on his vitality. He stopped an inch away, his eyes tracing the jagged edges of the fabric.
"Where are your lead-thread gloves?"
"Destroyed in the surge," I said. I looked him dead in the eye, injecting a note of practiced arrogance into my tone. "The Prince's shadows are more caustic than your scholars predicted. They ate through the silk in seconds. I had to improvise to keep the energy from leaking into the hallway."
My father stared at my bandaged hands for what felt like an eternity. I could feel Alaric's spark inside me react to my father's presence. It hated him. The shadow-magic coiled, wanting to lash out, to snuff out every candle in this gods-forsaken room and leave my father screaming in the black.
I clamped down on it, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw ached. Stay down, I commanded the dark.
Finally, Malachai pulled back. A thin, cruel smile touched his lips. "Good. If he is strong enough to destroy lead-silk, then he is a prize worth harvesting. Imagine, Elara, what Oakhaven could do with that much power redirected into our own wards. We would never fear the winter again."
"Yes, Father."
"Go to your chambers. Have the weavers fashion you three new pairs of gloves by dawn. Double the lead-thread. And Elara?"
I paused, halfway through a bow. "Yes?"
"Do not grow fond of the conversation. I know he talks. The Islanders use their tongues as skillfully as their blades. Remember that you are the vessel, not the confidante."
"I am the Silence," I repeated the mantra that had been drilled into me since I was five years old. "I hear nothing but the void."
He dismissed me with a flick of his hand.
I walked out of the hall, my spine stiff, until I reached the safety of the West Wing. Only when I was behind the heavy oak door of my own bedchamber did I allow myself to collapse. I leaned my back against the wood, sliding down until I hit the plush carpet.
I unwrapped the velvet bandages.
My palms were no longer glowing, but there was something new. Faint, gossamer-thin lines of silver were etched into my skin, tracing my veins like a map of a city I had never visited.
"What have you done to me, Alaric?" I whispered to the empty room.
As if in answer, the shadows in the corner of my ceiling—usually stagnant and dull—began to dance. They stretched toward me, elongated and graceful, mimicking the way Alaric had leaned into my space in the cell.
I wasn't just a vessel anymore. I was a bridge. And I knew, with a sinking dread, that if my father ever found out, he wouldn't just execute the Prince. He would dismantle me to see how the connection worked.
***Alaric***
The cell felt smaller the moment she left.
It wasn't just the physical space; it was the pressure. For the first time in three weeks, the air didn't feel like it was trying to crush my lungs. Elara Vance—the "Silence" of Oakhaven—had taken more than just my magic when she fled. She'd taken the stagnant, suffocating weight of my isolation.
I leaned my head back against the cold stone wall and let out a jagged breath. My chest burned. Where she had pressed her palm, my skin felt branded, as if she'd left a physical mark beneath my ribs.
"You're feeding," I had told her.
It was a gamble. I'd expected her to recoil, to scream, or perhaps to drain me until my heart stopped just to prove she was in control. Instead, she had looked at me with those wide, storm-blue eyes—eyes that were far too human for a girl they called a void.
I raised my hand, watching the shadows drift lazily between my fingers. They were thin. Frayed. She had taken a significant portion of my reservoir, but for the first time since my capture, I didn't feel weak. I felt... synchronized.
"You're a fool, Alaric," I whispered to the dark.
My people, the people of the Midnight Isles, don't believe in silence. We believe that every soul has a frequency, a song that hums in the blood. When Elara touched me, her song wasn't a void. It was a symphony being played behind a locked door. She wasn't empty; she was just silenced.
I closed my eyes and reached out through the tether.
Most people think shadow-magic is about darkness. It's not. It's about connection. Every shadow in this world is linked to the object that casts it. And right now, a piece of my shadow was cast inside her.
I felt her.
It was a faint, buzzing sensation at the base of my skull. She was moving fast. Climbing stairs. Her heart was a frantic drumbeat against my own. I felt her fear—not of me, but of the man she called Father. I felt the cold, oppressive gold of the throne room through her senses, the smell of cloying incense that made my own stomach turn.
Then, a spike of sharp, crystalline terror.
Show me your hands, Elara.
I gripped the edge of the wooden bench, my knuckles turning white. My shadows surged, snapping at the salt-veil until the iron filings hissed. If that King touched her—if he felt the silver hum of my essence under her skin—he would tear her apart.
I held my breath, waiting. The connection was one-way; I could feel her, but I couldn't protect her. Not yet.
Minutes crawled by like hours. Then, the tension in the link eased. She was walking again. She was safe. She was alone.
I let out a breath and slumped forward, my hair falling over my face.
The Midnight Isles were dying. My father, the High King of the Isles, had sent me here on a suicide mission to find the "Heart of the Sun"—the source of Oakhaven's eternal autumn. He thought I could steal it. He didn't know Oakhaven didn't have a magical artifact.
They had a girl.
Elara Vance wasn't a siphoner. She was an anchor. She was the reason the sun never set fully on this kingdom and why the leaves never fell. She was holding the energy of an entire realm in her marrow, and her father was using her as a battery.
I looked at the salt-veil, the shimmering barrier that kept me a dog in a cage.
I had come here to destroy Oakhaven. But as I felt Elara's distant grief through our shared spark, I realized the mission had changed.
I didn't just want the "Heart" of this kingdom anymore. I wanted to see what happened when the Silence finally found her voice. And I wanted to be the one who taught her how to scream.