Chapter 125
*Nathaniel*
We found her at the edge of the valley, where the tree line began to fray and the land dipped into a hollow thick with smoke. Her body was curled into the earth like something dropped from the sky–knees tucked, arms folded tight, face turned to the ground.
Flame bled from her back in thin golden threads, rising slowly like steam from a
cracked hearthstone. It didn’t burn the moss. It didn’t catch the trees. But none of us could get near her.
The air around her pulsed.
Alive.
Territorial.
Ethan reached for her first. Of course he did. Burned and furious, half–splintered with guilt, he ignored the way the heat cracked his knuckles as soon as he touched her. I caught his wrist before he reached again. His arm was already blistered. The look he gave me was part rage, part terror, part helpless love.
“She’s in there,” he said. “She’s in there, and she needs us.”
“I know,” I said. “But we can’t reach her like this.”
He didn’t speak after that. Just dropped to his knees beside her, a protective shadow, eyes locked on her face as though willing her to wake up by sheer force of twinhood.
Eva stood a few steps behind, her arms crossed tight over her chest, jaw set, pale. Maximus lingered further back, expression unreadable. He’d said nothing since we found the trail–since the flare of her magic lit up the trees like a beacon. But I felt his tension too. All of us were holding our breath.
And Jiselle?
She didn’t move.
Her breathing was shallow. Her body trembling in faint, intermittent pulses. The magic around her was too wild to touch. Not malevolent. But frantic. Like it was trying to hold her together while she unraveled from the inside out.
I stepped closer. Just until the heat kissed my boots.
She didn’t react.
Neither did the magic.
Successfully unlocked!
But the scar on my chest–the place where our bond had once been clean and
unbroken–flared like someone had struck it with a hammer. It pulsed once, twice, a
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jagged, aching tug.
And I understood what I had to do.
“I can reach her,” I said.
Ethan looked at me sharply. “How?”
“Our bond,” I murmured, already kneeling. “It never fully healed. It’s still raw, still open. I think… I can use it. Get inside.”
Max stepped forward, finally. “You don’t know what’s in there.”
“No,” I agreed. “But I know who’s in there.”
Eva’s voice was quiet, but certain. “We don’t have time to argue.”
I took one more breath.
Then I pressed my palm against the ground beside her and let the tether open.
The bond lit up instantly.
Not gently.
It roared.
Not with pain, not exactly–but with intensity. As if her magic recognized me and reached, desperate, not for power, but for familiarity. I let it pull me under, through the link scarred between us, down through fire and memory and light.
Everything went white.
Then-
Darkness.
And then…
The throne.
It sat in the center of what looked like her mind–a space forged from ash and memory, built from ruined thoughts and flickering memories trying to hold shape. I stood on stone. Cracked. Floating above a sea of black nothing. Pieces of images moved like glass through the void. Jiselle as a child, laughing. Her in the training yard. Her with Ethan, shoulder to shoulder. Her first kiss. Her first shift. Her first kill.
All of it drifted like shards.
And in the center, a throne rose from scorched marble.
On it sat Eira.
She was Jiselle’s mirror in every way–but aged by ruin, shaped by power, draped in shadows that moved when she didn’t. Her eyes glowed white, her hair a crown of pale fire. She didn’t speak as I approached. Just watched me like a priestess watching
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someone step onto sacred ground uninvited.
“This is hers,” I said.
Eira tilted her head. “Not anymore.”
I stopped two feet from her, fists clenched. “Let her go.”
“She’s still here,” Eira said. “Sleeping. Safe. I’ve protected her.”
“You’ve buried her.”
“I’ve given her silence.”
“She doesn’t want silence. She wants her life back.”
Eira’s lips curled faintly. “And look what she’s done with it. Murdered scouts. Burned her brother. Run from everyone who ever tried to love her.”
“She didn’t mean to-”
“But she did.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “Don’t you see? The more she resists, the more dangerous she becomes. She wasn’t built to carry this power.”
I swallowed, throat dry. “Then neither were you.”
She laughed. It was soft. Not cruel. Almost… pitying.
“I was built for it,” she said. “Forged in prophecy. Crowned by necessity. I gave up everything so she wouldn’t have to.”
I shook my head. “You don’t care about her. You care about legacy.”
“I care about what survives.”
Eira stood then, descending the steps slowly. She was beautiful and terrifying–light coiled around shadow, mercy sharpened to a point.
“I’m offering you a gift,” she said.
“What gift?”
“Freedom. For both of you.”
I didn’t move.
She stopped in front of me. Close. Too close.
“If you let go,” she said, “if you break the bond–right here, right now–I will leave her intact, I’ll disappear into the gate. Her mind will heal. Her soul will stitch closed. You’ll lose the bond, yes. But she’ll survive it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I stay. Until she begs for silence. Until she forgets she was ever more than the flame.”
My chest ached. My heart pounded.
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It sounded like a good deal.
Too good.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m offering,” she said. “But the longer you wait, the more I settle in. And once that happens, even I won’t be able to leave.”
She lifted her hand.
“Choose,” she said. “Let her go, and I’ll let her be.”
I looked into her eyes.
And for a moment, I did see Jiselle.
But not the one I knew.
A hollowed version. A voice that no longer sang. Eyes that no longer danced.
It was enough.
“No,” I said.
Eira’s face didn’t change.
But her hand moved.
And in the space between one heartbeat and the next-
She grabbed me.
And everything shattered.
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