<b>Chapter </b><b>122 </b>
*Jiselle*
The trees were too quiet.
Even the wind had stopped whispering through the leaves, as if the forest itself had gone breathless. I crouched beneath a twisted pine, fingers pressed into damp moss, pulse pounding too loudly in my ears. I was supposed to be focused–eyes sharp, energy measured. This was just a scouting run. A foraging mission. No magic. No re Nothing to light me up.
But the silence told me otherwise.
Eva stepped quietly beside me, her braid tucked into her cloak, her hands wrapped around a small gathering pouch. She didn’t speak. Neither did Ethan, who nked my other side, his body a wall between me and the unseen. He was always positioned that way now. Like I needed protecting from the world–or like the world needed protecting from me.
I hated that I didn’t know which one was true.
Ethan raised a hand. Paused.
The moment hung heavy.
Then he moved forward again.
We hadn’t taken more than ten steps when the first arrow came.
It hissed through the air and sank into a tree inches from Eva’s head. She hit the ground on instinct. I reacted before thought caught up–my hand rising, me sparking along my fingers.
“No!” Ethan snapped, grabbing my wrist. “Not here!”
But it was toote.
The fire blinked <i>to </i>life at my fingertips–not the white–hot me from the gate, but the steady gold that had lived in my veins since I was a child. It didn’t surge. It waited.
Shouts echoed from the tree line.
Figures moved–three, maybe four. Rogues. Not Kael’s, but wild, splintered, desperate. Ethan drew his de. Eva nked right, cutting toward cover.
And me?
I <i>stood </i>there.
Sessfully unlocked!
The fire humming beneath my skin my eyes. Too calm.
Too ready.
I raised my hands to defend us-
And everything went dark.
I woke to silence.
And ash.
Smoke clung to my hair. My tongue tasted like metal. My ears rang, and for a moment, I couldn’t feel my legs. Then it all came back in a rush–heat, light, screaming.
I was on my knees.
The clearing we’d entered had been torn open like a wound. Two of the trees were on fire–smoldering quietly. The air sizzled, and in the center of it all…
A body.
Melted into the stone.
Not burned. Not charred.
Liquified.
My breath caught.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no-”
Ethan appeared beside me, his chest heaving. Blood slicked down his arm–shallow cuts, <i>not </i>fatal, but enough to break me in half.
He was looking at me differently.
Not in anger.
In fear.
“Is Eva-?” I rasped.
“She’s fine,” he said quietly. “A little shaken. Nothing touched her.”
I followed his gaze to the body again.
One of the rogues<i>. </i><i>Or </i>what was left of him.
“He tried to nk,” Ethan said. “You turned. Your hands lit up and then-”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t have to<i>. </i>
I gripped the edge of a fallen tree, forcing myself upright.
And then I heard it.
Not outside.
Chapter 122 Inside.
A voice like velvet dragged across me.
You asked for protection. I answered.
I stumbled back, hand pressed to my chest.
Ethan caught my arm, steadying me, but I barely felt him.
I could still hear her.
The voice.
The other.
She hadn’t left.
I had never been alone.
“Jiselle,” Ethan said sharply. “Talk to me. What happened?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You cked out.”
“I-” My breath hitched. “I felt something.”
His grip tightened. “Not you?”
“No,” I whispered. “And yes. It’s hard to exin.”
Eva appeared, walking slowly from the edge of the woods. Her face was pale. Eyes wide.
She didn’t speak until she was right beside us.
Then she said, “I felt her too.”
The words hit me like a second blow.
“You–what?”
“Just a flicker,” Eva said. “But it wasn’t you. It was old. Heavy. Like someone else cracked your ribs and reached through.”
Ethan looked between us, rage and worry tangling across his face. “You said the me was gone. That you let it go<i>.” </i>
“I thought I did.”
He exhaled hard. Then turned and punched a tree.
It cracked.
But didn’t fall.
Neither did he.
And somehow, that hurt more than if he’d screamed.
<b>3/5 </b>
–
We buried what was left of the rogue with hands wrapped in cloth.
Even Maximus helped, though he didn’t speak. He kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye–not usation, but wariness. And something else.
Regret, maybe.
Or recognition.
That night, back at camp, I couldn’t sleep.
Nathaniel sat watch just beyond the firelight. His silhouette was sharp, still. If he knew anything had happened, he hadn’t said it.
I hadn’t told him.
Not yet.
Instead, I drifted along the edge of the trees, circling the camp until I found the only person who wouldn’t demand an answer.
Maximus sat by the old wellspring, legs stretched, a bottle of something near his boot. He looked up when I arrived but didn’t move.
“You okay?” he asked.
Iughed once. “No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
I sat beside him, knees drawn to my chest, the air between us full of memories we never said out loud.
He handed me the bottle.
took a sip.
It burned like truth.
He looked over. “You going to tell me what happened?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Fair.”
Silence.
Then-
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I said.
“I know.”
“I wasn’t awake.”
“I figured.”
“And yet I still did it.”
He turned to me then, eyes sharper in the dark.
“Are you scared of yourself?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
He looked away. “Good.”
I blinked. “Good?”
“It means you haven’t given in.”
My throat tightened. “What if I already have, and I just don’t remember?”
He didn’t answer that.
Just took the bottle back, tipped it to his lips, then set it down.
“Are you sure you’re whole?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t respond right away.
“I don’t think I ever was,” I said atst. “Not fully. Not even before the Trials. Before the gate. Before the prophecy.”
“Then what are you now?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But I’m still trying to be her.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
But he stayed.
And in that silence, I realized something that scared me more than any me.
The voice inside me?
She hadn’t burned to destroy.
She’d burned to protect.
And that made her harder to hate.
And even harder to stop.
15/5