FAZER LOGINCiara’s POVBy the time we returned to the Blackthorne estate, my body had reached that strange level of exhaustion where everything felt heavy and slightly unreal. Healers moved around us, guards reported what had happened on the island, and people kept trying to convince me to lie down, but most of their voices passed over my head. The baby had already been checked twice and was still moving strongly, Jasper had survived the trip back and was being treated somewhere below, and Dax had finally stopped arguing every time I refused to rest, which probably meant even he was too tired to keep fighting me.Before anyone dragged me into another medical room, there was only one person I wanted to see.Dax walked with me to my mother's room, but when we reached the door, he stopped instead of following me inside. He looked almost as terrible as I felt, with bruises darkening one side of his face and dried blood still staining his clothes, yet he only nodded toward the room and told me, “I'l
Ciara’s POVThe island did not become peaceful just because Oracle was gone. People were still shouting for healers, Blackthorne soldiers were dragging the injured away from broken walls, and surviving Veilborn stood around looking strangely lost now that the commands inside their bodies had finally gone quiet. Some stared at their hands as if they expected them to move without permission again, while others touched the faded Eye marks beneath their skin with the same confused expression people wore after waking from a nightmare they could not completely remember.Jasper was somewhere behind me surrounded by healers, and every few seconds I found myself looking in that direction even though Ayla had already said he was alive though barely but my entire body felt heavy enough to drop where I stood, yet the baby was still moving beneath my palm, and that small familiar pressure was the only thing keeping me together.Dax stayed close without touching me. I noticed because before all of
Author’s POVFor the first time since appearing in the ruined corridor, Oracle looked uncertain, but the hesitation disappeared almost immediately as his face hardened. “So be it.”The Veilborn commander was still kneeling where Ciara had forced him down when the Eye mark at his throat suddenly split with purple-black light. Every marked Veilborn in the corridor jerked at the same time as the command network came alive, and Jasper doubled over when the seal beneath his ribs answered with enough force to reopen the wound he had already torn apart many timesDax stepped in front of Ciara on instinct, golden-red current spreading around his hands, but Oracle barely looked at him. “You still think this is about taking her away.”The floor cracked beneath his feet.A thin black tear appeared in the air above the damaged corridor, no wider than a knife cut at first, but then it stretched slowly until darkness moved behind it like smoke trapped behind glass. Nyssara’s memories recognized it
Ciara’s POVThe commander’s words should not have mattered more than everything already happening around me, but the second his gaze dropped to my stomach and claim my baby, something inside me opened.Purple deepened across my vision until the ruined corridor became painfully clear. I heard the Blackthorne soldiers shifting behind Dax, Jasper struggling for breath on the floor and the Veilborn gathering around their commander, yet beneath all of it was something distant and familiar reaching for me across the island.Vaerath.... I know that name, how... I have no idea I did not hear her voice and instead felt her, and that ancient recognition seemed to loosen something inside my head because the memories returned differently this time. They were no longer random flashes that disappeared before I could understand them. They began fitting around one another.I saw Jasper beside a black throne with blood across one hand, his hair longer and his face slightly different, yet his soul was
Jasper’s POV“Your court has come for you.”The voice reached us through the smoke just as purple began spreading through Ciara’s eyes, and for one terrible second, everything else faded behind the sight of her. I knew that look. I had seen Nyssara wear it centuries ago when she only had to raise her head for an entire hall to remember who ruled it.Then a man stepped through the ruined wall with four Veilborn behind him, and the old current surrounding them told me immediately who had sent them. The commander wore the narrow Eye mark openly at his throat, which meant he carried Oracle’s authority high enough to access the command network buried inside marked Veilborn like me.My control seal reacted before he even looked at me.Pain tore beneath my ribs so violently that I caught the wall before my knees failed. The mark was not something the commander had placed inside me, and he did not control me by his own power. Oracle’s people had created the seal long ago and tied it to their
Ciara’s POVThe second explosion shook the windows hard enough to knock a lamp from the table, and before I could properly understand what was happening, Jasper had already pulled a packed bag from beneath the cabinet.“We need to leave.”I looked at the bag, then at him. The emergency lights had turned the room red while people shouted somewhere downstairs, and another burst of purple light flashed beyond the trees before disappearing into smoke. Everything about the island suddenly felt temporary, as if the peaceful house I had woken inside had only ever been waiting for someone to find it.“Where are you taking me this time?”Jasper’s expression tightened at the wording. “There’s a route under the house that opens near the southwest shore. I have a boat waiting there, and once we’re off the island I can decide which route is still safe.”“So you don’t actually know where we’re going.” my chest hurts thinking about everything again “I know where we’re not staying.”I almost laughed







