Ch. 10: The Flamebound

Dawn came late to Vyrden Hollow.

The smoke still hung over the valley like a second sky, dimming the sun to a dull orange smear. Kaelira stood among the ruins, soot streaking her hands, the mark on her wrist faintly gold again. She felt hollow, scraped clean.

The wolves they’d buried hours ago slept under fresh earth. Nothing else did.

Behind her, Zevran’s voice carried quietly. “We need to leave before the Dominion sends a recovery team.”

Kaelira didn’t turn. “You mean before they come to collect what’s left of me.”

His silence answered for him.

She faced him then, eyes rimmed red but steady. “If Draven was telling the truth—if the bond is a cage—then you’re bleeding every time I breathe.”

Zevran’s expression didn’t change, but she felt the flicker of discomfort through the tether. “Then breathe slower.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She exhaled hard, trying to steady herself. “So how do we break it?”

His gaze moved to the blackened ritual stone at the valley’s center. “We find the one who forged it.”

“The Dominion.”

“No.” He pointed toward the faint shimmer of runes still glowing beneath the ash. “Older. The witches who built the first lunar seals. Your mother was one of them. There will be others.”

Kaelira folded her arms, the cold seeping into her burned palms. “If they even still exist.”

“They do,” Zevran said. “The Flamebound wouldn’t have survived otherwise.”

The word hit her like a slap. “Flamebound. Draven called me that too.”

Zevran nodded. “It’s what you are. The witches’ last defense. Fire given form.”

Her laugh cracked. “Great. A weapon with trust issues.”

“A weapon that can rewrite magic itself,” he said. “The Dominion wants to use that power to awaken the heart of the Black Moon. If they succeed, every bond in our world—wolf, Lycan, witch—will break.”

Kaelira frowned. “Break how?”

“Completely. The moon’s tether will dissolve. No more shifts. No more control. Just instinct and hunger.”

She swallowed. “You’re saying they’d destroy their own kind?”

“To rule what’s left,” he said softly. “Dominion logic.”

Kaelira turned back to the ruins. “Then we find them before they find me.”

Zevran inclined his head. “There’s one who might know where the witches hid their sanctum. A name I hoped never to speak again.”

“Who?”

His jaw flexed. “Serane.”

The name stirred something in Kaelira’s memory—the woman from the Dominion vault, her mother’s sister. “She’s alive?”

“Alive enough to regret it,” he said. “The Dominion keeps her in the eastern citadel as their seer. She betrayed your mother once. She may not do it twice.”

Kaelira’s stomach twisted. “So we walk straight into the lion’s den.”

Zevran’s smile was thin. “We’ve done worse.”

⸻

They left the Hollow by nightfall. The forest was quiet again, too quiet, as if mourning what it had watched burn. Zevran rode ahead, cloak drawn close, his scent sharp with steel and rain. Kaelira followed on foot beside the warhorse that carried Taren, still unconscious but breathing steadier now.

Hours passed without words. The tension between them had changed—no longer just anger or distrust. It was weight. Shared gravity.

When they finally stopped to rest, Zevran set up a small warding circle. The faint silver lines glowed around the clearing. “It will mask the tether from Dominion scouts,” he said.

Kaelira crouched opposite him, tracing the runes with her eyes. “You always have a plan.”

“Survival demands it.”

“You mean control,” she countered.

He met her gaze. “They’re the same thing.”

“Not for me,” she said. “Control means pretending I’m not what I am.”

His tone softened just slightly. “And what are you?”

She thought about the bodies in the Hollow, about the fire that had answered her grief. “Something I’m still deciding.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Zevran didn’t have an answer. The silence between them was quieter than comfort but heavier than peace.

⸻

When the moon rose again, it was pale silver, normal, but the bond pulsed faintly at its edge—like the ghost of the Black Moon still watching. Kaelira lay awake, staring at it through the trees.

“You’re not sleeping,” Zevran murmured. He wasn’t asleep either; his voice came from the darkness, closer than she expected.

She turned her head. “You can feel that through the bond now?”

“I could feel it without it.”

Her heart skipped once. “That’s dangerous talk, Your Majesty.”

“I’ve been dangerous longer than you’ve been alive.”

“Arrogant too.”

A pause. Then, quietly, “That, I learned later.”

Something in the way he said it almost made her smile.

“You really think your aunt will tell us where the witches hid the sanctum?” he asked.

Kaelira rolled onto her side, propping her head on her arm. “You sound like you don’t.”

“I think everyone tells the truth they want to believe. The Dominion taught me that.”

“And what truth do you believe?”

He met her gaze through the dim light. “That you’re the only one who can end this. And that when you do, you might not survive it.”

She swallowed hard. “Then I guess we’d better find another ending.”

The air between them shifted. The bond hummed, soft as a heartbeat. His eyes caught the moonlight, silver turning almost warm.

For a second, she thought he might reach for her.

Instead, he looked away first. “Get some sleep, Kaelira.”

⸻

They broke camp at dawn.

By midday, they reached the edge of the eastern cliffs. Far below, the Dominion citadel rose out of the fog—black towers knifing upward, bridges coiled like veins of obsidian. The runes carved into its walls pulsed with faint, rhythmic light.

Zevran’s voice was a whisper. “Once we cross that bridge, there’s no hiding.”

Kaelira’s fingers brushed the mark on her wrist, still glowing faintly gold. “Then let’s make sure they see us coming.”

He looked at her, eyes narrowing slightly. “You mean that.”

“Every word.”

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Then try not to die before I get you inside.”

“Same to you, Your Majesty.”

They descended the ridge together, cloaked in fog and tension. The closer they came, the stronger the pull of the bond grew—gold and silver threads twisting beneath their skin, pulsing in rhythm with the citadel’s heartbeat.

When the gates loomed ahead, massive and rune-locked, Kaelira’s mark flared once, answering the citadel’s glow. The doors groaned open on their own, ancient mechanisms grinding to life.

Zevran’s hand brushed the hilt of his blade. “They were expecting us.”

Kaelira’s smile was razor-thin. “Good.”

They stepped into the Dominion’s heart as the Black Moon’s shadow crawled across the horizon once more.