Chapter 42

Elouera

The first thing I noticed was not the bright candlelight or the cold stone beneath my back. It was the fact that the fire inside me was gone.

For the past twenty-four hours, my body had felt like it was burning alive. The pain had been unbearable, as if fire were eating through my bones and tearing apart my nerves. But now, all of it had disappeared.

In its place was a strange, deep warmth flowing through my body. It felt as though liquid gold were moving through my veins. For the first time in hours, breathing didn’t hurt. Every breath came easily, without that terrible pain in my chest.

My eyes flew open, and I gasped.

Panic hit me so hard that my chest tightened.

The garden. The fire. Holden. The Empress.

I suddenly sat up, my hands rushing to my neck and collarbones. I expected to feel the bindings around my chest, the blood on my clothes, or the hands of someone trying to hurt me. I needed to get away. I needed to run.

But my fingers touched dry, soft cotton instead of blood-soaked fabric or cold stone.

Someone had removed my ruined tunic and dressed me in a clean, oversized black military shirt. The shirt smelled strongly of crushed cedar, fresh earth, and the scent of a storm approaching the mountains.

“Don’t move,” a voice said quietly.

The voice wasn’t loud, but there was something powerful about it. I stopped moving almost immediately, as if my body had obeyed before my mind could react.

I quickly turned my head.

Commander Jace Corowa was sitting on a small wooden stool beside the iron bed. He hadn’t moved an inch.

There was still dried blood on his face. It streaked along his sharp jaw and down his neck, standing out against his pale skin. His tactical vest lay discarded on the floor, and the collar of his black shirt was torn open, exposing the bruised skin across his broad chest.

He wasn’t holding a weapon.

Instead, his large hands rested openly on his thighs, his palms facing upward.

The same hands that had broken men’s bones in the courtyard without hesitation were now completely still.

He looked almost as if he were surrendering.

The sight frightened me more than it should have.

My breathing became uneven, and a cold shiver ran through me. I scrambled backward across the bed until my back hit the stone wall. Then I pulled the oversized shirt tightly around my knees, trying to cover myself.

“Where…” My voice came out rough and weak, barely louder than a whisper.

I looked around the room, searching desperately for the heavy door and its iron locks. My eyes then moved to the single barred window as I tried to figure out whether I could escape through it.

“Where am I?” I asked, my voice shaking. “Did the Empress send you here? Are you going to kill me?”

Jace didn’t look up immediately.

He kept his eyes on the floor between his boots. His jaw was so tightly clenched that a muscle jumped in his cheek.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he slowly raised his head and looked at me.

The wild, frightening look that had taken over his eyes during his Alpha frenzy was gone. His familiar hazel eyes had returned.

But something about him was different.

He looked broken.

There was pain and helplessness in his eyes, a kind of vulnerability I had never imagined seeing in him. Not in all the three years he had spent making my life miserable at the academy. Not when he had pushed me to my limits, humiliated me, or made me suffer through the hardest training sessions.

I had never thought a man like Jace Corowa could look at anyone that way.

“Look at me, Elouera,” he said, his voice rough and strained.

I had never heard him speak like that before.

“Don’t call me that,” I choked out.

A sob rose in my throat as I curled into myself, squeezing my eyes shut as if that could make him disappear.

“I’m Elian. The sickly prince. If the Empress finds out who I really am, if you hand me over to her…” My voice broke. “Just make it quick. Don’t let her take me to the dungeons. Please.”

I heard the sound of heavy fabric moving in the quiet room.

I flinched, preparing for him to grab me. I expected him to seize my wrists and drag me away for punishment. After all, I had lied to the crown about who I was.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Instead, two large, warm hands gently held my ankles.

My eyes flew open.

Jace hadn’t attacked me. He hadn’t even tried to restrain me. He had slid off the stool and lowered himself onto his knees beside the bed. Now he was kneeling on the cold stone floor, his forehead resting lightly against the edge of my mattress.

“Jace…” I whispered, my heart pounding so hard it felt as though a trapped bird were beating its wings inside my chest. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not handing you over,” he said.

His voice was low and firm, filled with a promise so powerful that I felt it deep inside me.

“The Empress believes you’re dead. Everyone at court believes the creature in the maze burned to ashes. You’re safe here, Elouera. As long as I’m alive, nobody will ever hurt you again.”

“Safe?” I let out a bitter, almost uncontrollable laugh. The sound tasted like blood and ashes in my mouth. “In the Vanguard command tower? Locked inside the room of New Avalon’s most ruthless executioner?”

My voice grew louder as the pain and anger I had buried for years came rushing out.

“You spent three years trying to destroy me in the training yard! You made my life miserable! You hate me!”

“I never hated you,” he whispered.

He slowly raised his head, looking straight into my eyes. There was something so intense in his gaze that it made my chest ache.

“For three years, I watched you push yourself to the limit just to survive a family that wanted you dead,” Jace said.

His voice shook slightly. For a man who always seemed cold and unbreakable, even that small crack in his voice was surprising.

“I pushed you so hard during training because I couldn’t control what I felt whenever another cadet looked at you. Whenever you walked past an Alpha in the corridors, something inside me wanted to tear them apart.”

He paused, his jaw tightening.

“I didn’t understand it. I thought I was going mad.”

He slowly reached toward me with his bare, scarred hand. His movements were careful, giving me enough time to pull away if I wanted to.

But I didn’t move.

I sat frozen, struggling to understand everything he had just told me.

His warm thumb gently touched the side of my neck, right above the bite mark.

A soft golden warmth spread beneath his touch. The strange golden lines under my skin began to glow, responding to his presence. Their light pulsed gently, filling the dark room with a faint golden shine.

“I was nothing but a street dog from the outer colonies,” Jace murmured. His thumb slowly moved along the glowing mark on my collarbone, almost as if he were afraid of hurting me. “I was a bastard with no family name, no royal blood, and no right to stand beside someone like you.”

He looked at me, his eyes filled with something I had never seen in them before.

“And somehow, the universe tied my soul to the true heir of the Sunfall Dynasty.”

My breath caught in my throat.

I remembered Holden sitting in the shadows of this very room, telling Jace that he had bonded himself to a weapon he didn’t know how to control. He had seen the ancient magic waking inside my blood.

“You know,” I whispered, my fear slowly mixing with confusion. “Holden… the Chancellor was here. He saw the mark. He knows what I am.”

Jace’s expression hardened. A dangerous look crossed his face.

“Holden is no longer welcome in this tower. I made sure of that the moment I brought you here.”

He paused before continuing.

“But he’s right about one thing.”

“What?”

“The Empress didn’t just kill your family thirty years ago because she wanted the throne,” Jace said, his voice becoming deeper and colder. “She also stole the ancient magic that belonged to your dynasty. And the moment I bit you, the moment our souls became connected, that magic awakened inside your blood.”

He leaned forward and gently rested his forehead against my knee.

His broad shoulders rose and fell as he struggled to control his breathing.

The most dangerous man in the Vanguard was kneeling before me, lowering his head as if he had nothing left to hide. The same man who had terrified me for three years was now surrendering himself to me in a way I could never have imagined.

“You are a weapon, Elouera,” he whispered against my leg. “A living weapon with the power to destroy the empire that murdered your mother. And Holden wants to use you to bring New Avalon to its knees.”

Silence filled the room.

His words were too much to take in.

I was no longer just a prince running from the people who wanted me dead. I was the last true heir of an ancient royal family, carrying a power that the Empress had stolen decades ago.

And now, I was bound to Jace by a bond neither of us could break.

I could no longer pretend this was only about my survival.

I was the beginning of a war.

I looked down at the man kneeling beside my bed. His dark hair was still tangled and damp, and I could barely believe he was the same person who had made my life a living hell for years.

He had tormented me in the academy.

Yet, when five men came after me in the freezing rain, he had fought them all to keep me alive.

Slowly, I lifted my trembling hand and reached for him. My fingers slipped into the damp hair at the back of his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath it.

Jace released a low, shaky breath. He leaned into my touch as if he had been waiting for it his entire life.

For the first time, I saw something in him that had nothing to do with power or violence.

He looked like a man who had finally found somewhere he belonged.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

My voice was barely audible, but the question carried everything I was afraid to ask.

Before Jace could answer, the heavy, iron-locked door to the command tower didn’t simply open.

It exploded.

The entire door was ripped from its hinges. Pieces of broken wood and sharp fragments of iron flew across the stone floor.

A thick cloud of smoke filled the doorway.

Then a tall figure stepped through it, leaning casually on a brass cane as if he had just arrived for a pleasant visit.

His clothes were spotless, and a cold, sickeningly sweet smile spread across his face.

Uncle Holden.

“Oh, don’t worry about the crown, little bird,” he said softly, amusement shining in his eyes.

He lifted a small glass vial filled with a strange, glowing liquid.

“Because the real war is about to begin right here.”