Chapter 6

The chapel lay half-ruined, a cathedral of broken vows. Lightning still laced the sky like the scars of something ancient, and the air tasted metallic and holy. The stained-glass had become confetti of colored light across the floor; the candles guttered, casting trembling shadows that looked like hands reaching for what had been lost.

Kira knelt where Sajah had fallen, her palms trembling as they pressed into the cold stone. The world had narrowed to the size of that absence — to the empty space where his fingers had anchored hers, to the memory of his breath against her skin, to a promise spoken that now hung in smoke and ash. Each heartbeat echoed like a drumbeat for a life she was not yet ready to bury.

She remembered, with a clarity that hurt, the softness of his hand as he had tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear on a rainy afternoon; the way he had kissed the hollow beneath her ear and murmured, “We’ll sign this with our scars.” Memory and present braided into one: kisses in candlelight, whispered strategies beneath the roof, the simple sacredness of him sleeping with one hand curled protectively around her. Those images were as real as the blood staining her sleeves. They did not belong to myth. They were the proof of their contract.

A breeze — no, not a breeze but the storm’s breath — coiled at her feet like a living thing, and the chapel trembled in response. Kira’s fingers closed around the hilt of her blade because motion steadied her; steel was honest where words had failed. Around her, guests lay dazed or clinging to one another, their faces pale, eyes empty as if someone had lifted their will and tucked it away.

The risen one — the brother who had called himself more than a man — stood a few steps away. He moved with the kind of quiet confidence that belonged to predators and kings. Blood had sealed his earlier wound; the flesh had mended as though time itself complied with him. There was an ache in Kira’s chest when she looked up at him, an ache that tasted of betrayal and something far older, like a debt owed to the elements.

“You chose to fight,” he said softly, and his voice did not echo empty cruelty so much as a verdict. “You would break the law written long before us. So the Storm took its price.”

Kira’s throat closed. The chapel felt enormous and impossibly small at once. “You killed him,” she said — the words came out raw, brittle. “You killed him to prove something.”

He inclined his head, neither admitting nor denying. “I did what I had to. What the tempest demanded.” His gaze flicked toward the ruined altar, and for a moment—too brief, too sharp—Kira read something in his face that was not triumph but regret.

A memory flared unbidden: Sajah laughing in the dim of their kitchen, flour dusting his knuckles; Sajah pressing his forehead to hers and whispering, “If the heavens think they can take you from me, let them try.” Kira’s breath hitched. She had thought him defiant then — she had loved him for that defiance.

She rose to her knees slowly, blade still in hand, and asked the question that had blurred in her mind, the one that now burned like a brand: “If it took him, what am I now? A widow? A prize? A covenant?”

The risen one’s stare softened like a tide pulling back. “You are the center,” he said. “Not prize. Not widow. Center. The Storm does not take without purpose. It will not return him if what it gains is less than what it gives. You are bound. But bonds can be turned.”

“Turned?” The laugh that slipped from her was more a sob. “Did you look at him as you did? Did you feel that breath in your arms and decide to break it? Did you watch him die?”

His eyes flickered. For a moment he seemed less like the carved statue all the legends feared and more like a man who carried a terrible load. “Yes. I watched. And yes. I carried the cost. You must understand — there are rules older than our blood. The Storm is not satisfied by simple offerings. It wanted to test both of you.”

Kira’s fingers tightened on the sword until the metal sang. “Then test me,” she said. “Test me until the sky splits and all that is left is ash. But know this: I will not love you for what you took. I will not bow to your logic. If you wanted proof of my devotion, you have it — now prove to me that he did not die in vain.”

Something in her voice cut through the chapel like lightning. A dozen heads turned; even the fallen guests stirred. The risen one’s face crumpled as if struck. With a gesture that was part apology and part warning, he stepped back into the shadows, and the storm’s pressure eased a fraction.

When he had gone, a different quiet remained — the kind that follows an execution or an impossible prayer. Kira let herself slump against the altar, blade clattering from her numb fingers. Her lips moved soundlessly, shaping the names of every small ordinary thing she wanted back: his laugh, the scar at his temple from the first fight he’d hidden, the way he said her name as if it were a spell.

Then, through the haze, a softer sound reached her — a voice less like thunder and more like the memory of him. “Kira,” it breathed, mossy and thin. For a moment she thought it might be a trick of the collapsed rafters. She couldn’t tell if it was real.

She pushed up on shaking hands and crawled toward the sound, but the chapel yielded only empty space and echoes. Her fingers found a scrap of fabric snagged on a splintered pew — black silk, threaded with a familiar scent: cold rain and cedar and him. She pressed it to her face until her tears mingled with the fibers.

She would not let grief become a grave. Not for him. Not for them.

Outside, the storm subsided a degree, as if the sky, too, waited to see what she would do. Where the risen one had disappeared into the night, a shadow of movement suggested watchers — fewer now, but not gone. The underworld would be stirred; whispers would become plans. The family would not remain idle. Sophia’s face, earlier a mask of calculation, swam into her mind and made bile rise in her throat. How deep did betrayal run? How high did the conspiracy climb?

Kira pushed the questions down like knives and let a harder one rise up: What will I do next? Action steadied her when despair could not.

She thought of the half-heart pendant tucked under her gown, the one Sajah had pressed into her palm on that evening of promises and broken storms. It was small and silver and jagged, but it had weight. Not just metal, but meaning. She slid a hand beneath the silk to touch it, felt the familiar cold, and let the memory steady her.

He had called her his empire. He had said she was not the cost but the center. If that was true, then she had leverage somewhere in the wreckage — allies among those who still believed, information buried in the enemy’s arrogance, a map of the storm’s demands if she looked hard enough.

Kira stood. The chapel spun for a breath, but she did not falter. She wrapped the blade in one hand, the pendant in the other, and drew a long, shuddering breath. The heat of promise and the chill of loss braided in her chest into a single, fierce resolve.

“If the Storm has taken him,” she whispered to the empty air, voice hoarse and steady, “I will tear it down pillar by pillar. I will burn the laws that justify this. I will find where they hide him — in bone, in breath, in shadow — and I will bring him back. Even if I must bargain with devils older than your fury.”

Behind her, in the ruined nave, a single small sound answered — a low, distant howl, the echo of thunder or the promise of pursuit. Not a denial, not an agreement, merely a warning that the road ahead would not bow.

Kira tucked the pendant into the inner fold of her dress and lifted her blade. She would not be a bride wrapped in mourning. She would not be a pawn. She would be an army.

She would hunt the storm itself.

And as she stepped from the chapel into the wet night, the first thought that rose and steadied her was not a plan of revenge but a simple, stubborn prayer: Come back to me, Sajah. Come back, my love. I will not let you go.