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<b>Chapter </b><b>203 </b>
*Jiselle*
<b>55 </b>
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I woke to the sound of nothing. Not the kind of silence that came with sleep, but the kind that follows a scream. A quiet so deep it rang in my ears.
My chest rose and fell slowly, each breath tasting like ash and salt. My eyes blinked open, and the ceiling above me blurred before settling into shape. Stone. Familiar. The stronghold.
I was back.
For a moment, I didn’t move. Iy still, curled slightly on my side, the nket heavy across my legs, the air oddly warm. There was a flicker of heat under my skin, not the scalding burn of the spiritual ne, but something gentler–contained. A memory of fire.
Then I felt it.
A hum. A pulse.
Not from the bond.
From within.
My hand flew to my belly, and I gasped.
It glowed. Faintly. Violet light shimmered beneath the skin like something celestial stirred just beneath the surface<i>. </i>Not bright. Not rming. But constant.
Alive.
The child.
She was still with me.
Tears welled in my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. Not yet. My hand remained over the light, fingers syed wide, trying to feel every inch of her presence. The dagger was gone. I knew it without looking. Whatever I had done–whatever I had sacrificed in that realm of me–had taken it.
Or she had.
A soft knock interrupted the moment. The door creaked open. I didn’t look up.
I didn’t have to.
His scent hit me first. Ash. Pine. Home.
Nate.
He didn’t speak right away. I could feel the hesitation in the way he hovered at the threshold, like he wasn’t
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sure if he was allowed back in. But then he crossed the room in slow, deliberate steps, each one bringing him closer to me until he knelt by the bed.
“You’re back,” he whispered.
“I’m here,” I breathed.
Our eyes met. And for the first time in what felt like days, maybe weeks, he didn’t look at me like I was breaking. He looked at me like I had already broken–and survived.
I reached for him.
He didn’t hesitate this time.
He climbed onto the bed beside me, pulling me into his arms without a word. The bond between us pulsed back to life—not like fire, but like heartbeat. Quiet. Steady. Present.
We didn’t speak.
There was nothing to apologize for.
No grand derations.
Just him. And me. And the space between us no longer aching.
His hand drifted to my belly. He stilled when he felt the glow.
“She’s still here,” I said softly.
“You both are,” he murmured.
I turned my face into his shoulder and let the first tear fall.
Later, when the sun had crept into the cracks of the stronghold walls, we gathered in the observatory. Bastain stood at the head of the table, hands braced on either side of a faded map etched with new lines and marks 1 didn’t recognize.
Ethan stood to my right, his eyes sharper than before. There was something quieter in him now–not distant, just grounded. Like the spiritual ne had steadied him instead of shaking him.
Nate stayed at my left, one hand brushing mine beneath the table. His presence didn’t weigh down anymore. It lifted. We weren’t whole, not entirely. But we weren’t fractured either. The Triad had settled into something that wasn’t perfect. But it was stable,
Alive.
Bastain’s eyes met mine. “The dagger is gone.”
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“And the tether?”
12:49 Tue, Sep 9 <b>G </b>
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:
I hesitated. “We broke it. Or changed it. I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel the same.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be possible.”
“Neither was 1.”
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He nodded slowly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Then we’ve bought time. But not victory. Aedric won’t stop.”
Ethan leaned forward. “Do you think he felt it?”
Bastain didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Because deep down, we all knew.
This wasn’t over. It had only begun.
The rest of the day passed in quiet preparation. No one said the word war, but it hung in the air anyway. Supplies were shifted. Weapons cleaned. Messages sent.
I walked through the halls of the stronghold with Nate at my side, our shoulders brushing every now and then like the universe needed to remind me that he was still real. That we were still here.
That night, I stood at the window of my room, the light in my belly dimming slightly as if resting.
A soft breeze slipped through the cracks in the window frame, curling against my skin. I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed it in, trying to ground myself in something calm.
Then it hit.
A crash–sudden, brutal, ss splintering as the window shattered inward.
I stumbled back instinctively, arms half–raised as the weight of something mmed against the sill. A raven, Its wings were spread wide, but the edges were on fire, curling into ckened ash with each flicker. Smoke poured off its feathers. Its body trembled, barely holding itself together, and when it fell to the floor, blood mixed with ash in a dark smear against the stone.
<b>But </b>it didn’t die.
It lifted its head–just slightly–and it spoke.
It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t a caw.
The damn thing actually spoke. It spoke with words.
“He knows the name,” it said, and every part of me went deathly still
Because I didn’t have to ask who he was
And I didn’t have to ask which name.
I looked down at my stomach, still glowing faintly, a slow pulse of violet under the skin like a heartbeat not
12:49 Tue, Sep 9 B..
fully mine.
The child.
He knew her name.
And just like that, whatever peace we’d bought cracked.
Because now the real war wasn’t approaching.
It had already begun.