Lyra's POV
I can't breathe.
The severed head is gone—Kael removed it and sealed the broken window with magic—but I can still see it when I close my eyes. Still smell the blood.
My father did that. My father is killing people because they hurt me.
I should feel protected. Instead, I feel like a monster.
"You need to sleep," Kael says from the doorway. He's been standing guard for the past hour, watching for more shadow creatures. "Tomorrow we start training, and you'll need your strength."
"I can't sleep." My voice sounds hollow. "Every time I close my eyes, I see that guard's face. And I hear my father's voice saying he's coming for me."
"He won't get past me."
"You don't know that. He broke through your wards like they were nothing. He's the Shadow King, Kael. The monster that took you three hundred years and an entire army to barely defeat last time. How are you supposed to stop him alone?"
Kael's jaw tightens. "I'll find a way. I always do."
But through the bond, I feel his doubt. He's not sure he can win. He's just determined to die trying.
"Get some rest," he says again. "I'll be right outside if you need me."
He closes the door, leaving me alone in the darkness.
I lie down on the bed and pull the blankets around me, but sleep won't come. My mind races with terrible thoughts. What if my father kills Kael? What if I'm the reason everyone dies? What if the darkness inside me is stronger than the light?
Hours pass. Maybe minutes. I've lost track of time.
Then I feel it through the bond.
Pain. Terror. Agony so intense it makes me gasp.
Kael.
The fortress walls start to shake. I hear a sound like distant thunder—no, not thunder. Screaming.
Kael is screaming.
I throw off the blankets and run into the hallway. The bond pulls me like a rope, leading me through the dark corridors. The screaming gets louder, more agonized, and through the bond I feel everything he's feeling.
He's reliving deaths. Thousands of them. Every person he's ever killed is dying again inside his mind, and he feels each one like it's happening for the first time.
This is his curse. This is what he lives with every night.
I find his door and push it open.
The room is destroyed. Furniture is overturned. The walls have cracks like something exploded. And in the center of the chaos, Kael sits on the floor with his back against the bed, his head in his hands.
He's shaking violently, his body soaked with sweat. His screams have turned into harsh gasps, like he's drowning.
"Kael!" I rush toward him.
His head snaps up. His silver eyes are wild, unfocused. For a second, he doesn't recognize me.
"Get out," he growls. His voice is raw from screaming. "I told you to stay in your room."
"You were screaming. The whole fortress was shaking."
"I'm always screaming." He presses his palms against his eyes. "You'll get used to it. Now leave before I hurt you."
"You won't hurt me."
"You don't know what I'm capable of." His hands drop, and I see his eyes clearly. They're filled with so much pain it takes my breath away. "When the nightmares come, I can't tell what's real. I've killed people in my sleep before, Lyra. People who tried to wake me. So GET OUT."
But through the bond, I feel the truth beneath his words. He's not trying to protect me from him. He's trying to protect me from seeing him like this—broken, vulnerable, human.
"I'm not leaving." I take a step closer.
"Lyra—"
"You can't scare me away. I already know you're not the monster you pretend to be."
I kneel in front of him and slowly reach for his hand. He flinches back, but I don't stop. My fingers touch his, and the moment we connect, the bond flares bright.
His emotions slam into me—centuries of death, endless suffering, crushing loneliness. But I push back through the bond, sending him everything I feel: compassion, determination, the stubborn refusal to let him suffer alone.
The nightmares attacking his mind pause. Just for a second.
Kael's eyes widen. "What are you doing?"
"Sharing the weight." My hands start glowing silver without me meaning them to. "You said the curse makes you feel every death. But I'm a healer. Maybe I can help."
"Nothing can help. The Oracle herself laid this curse. It can't be broken."
"Then we'll bend it." I grip his hand tighter, and my power flows through the bond into him.
Kael gasps. His whole body goes rigid. Then slowly—so slowly—the tension starts to drain from his shoulders. The wild look in his eyes fades. The screaming in his mind quiets to a whisper.
"How..." His voice cracks. "How are you doing this?"
"I don't know. But it's working, isn't it?"
For the first time since I met him, Kael looks at peace. The lines of pain on his face smooth out. His breathing evens. He stares at our joined hands like they're performing a miracle.
"I haven't felt this calm in three hundred years," he whispers. "I forgot what silence sounds like inside my head."
Tears prick my eyes. "Then let me help you. Every night if I have to."
"You'd do that? Carry my curse with me?"
"We're bound together anyway. Might as well make it useful."
Something shifts in his expression. The cold mask he always wears cracks completely, and for a moment I see the boy he was before the curse—young, scared, desperate for someone to tell him it'll be okay.
"Don't look at me like that," he says roughly, but his voice shakes. "Don't make me hope that someone like me could be worth saving."
"You are worth saving. And I'm not going anywhere."
His free hand comes up to cup my face. His touch is gentle despite his strength. "You're going to destroy me, little wolf. Not with darkness—with kindness."
"Maybe you need to be destroyed. So something better can grow in its place."
For a long moment, we just stare at each other. Then Kael does something that shocks us both—he pulls me into his arms and holds on like I'm the only thing keeping him from drowning.
Through the bond, I feel everything he can't say: thank you, I'm sorry, please don't leave, I'm so tired of being alone.
I wrap my arms around him and hold him just as tight.
We stay like that until his breathing calms completely and the fortress stops shaking. When he finally pulls back, his eyes are clearer than I've ever seen them.
"You should go back to your room," he says. But this time, his voice is gentle. "Before I do something stupid like ask you to stay."
"Would that be so bad?"
"Yes." He stands and helps me up. "Because in three days, our bond completes and you'll be stuck with me forever. You deserve to have these last few days of freedom."
"What if I don't want freedom? What if I want—"
A massive explosion rocks the fortress.
We both stumble. Kael's arms wrap around me protectively as the walls shake and dust rains from the ceiling.
"What was that?" I gasp.
Kael's expression turns grim. Through the bond, I feel his sudden spike of fear. "The outer wards just fell. Something's attacking the fortress."
Another explosion. Closer this time.
"He's here," I whisper. "My father. He said three days, but—"
"He lied." Kael draws his sword, the black metal drinking in the dim light. "He's attacking now while we're unprepared. While the bond isn't complete yet."
"What do we do?"
Before he can answer, the window shatters. But this time, it's not a shadow messenger that comes through.
It's an army.
Shadow creatures pour through the broken window like smoke, forming into wolves with glowing red eyes. Behind them, I see something worse—soldiers made of darkness, wielding weapons that drip black blood.
And standing in the middle of them, laughing, is a man I've never seen before.
He's tall and beautiful in a terrifying way. His eyes are the same silver as mine. His smile shows too many teeth.
"Hello, daughter," the Shadow King says. His voice echoes just like it did in my head. "Did you really think a few walls and a broken Reaper could keep you from me?"
He steps into the room, and everywhere his feet touch, the floor turns black with decay.
"I've come to take you home. And if the Reaper tries to stop me—" His smile grows wider. "I'll finally finish what I started three hundred years ago and kill him properly this time."
Kael pushes me behind him, his sword raised. "You'll have to go through me first."
"Gladly." The Shadow King's eyes lock on mine over Kael's shoulder. "Watch carefully, daughter. Watch what happens to anyone who tries to keep us apart."
He raises his hand, and the shadow army charges.