Chapter 9

Elara's POV

The days that followed the confrontation at the border settled into something I hadn't expected, a strange, quiet routine that felt almost like safety, even though every conversation with Nyra or Kael carried an undercurrent of the same warning Soren had given that morning, that word was spreading, that time was something we might not have much of.

I spent my mornings in the small library at the back of the cottage, where Nyra had started pulling old texts from dusty shelves and setting them in front of me like she expected me to recognize something in them, though most of the pages were written in a language I couldn't read, symbols that curled and looped in patterns that made my head ache if I stared too long.

"You won't find the answer by staring harder," Kael said one morning, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed, watching me squint at a page that might as well have been scribbles for all the sense it made to me.

"I thought that's what I was supposed to be doing. Finding answers.

" I rubbed my eyes and pushed the book away, frustrated in a way that had less to do with the text and more to do with everything underneath it, the mark, the bloodline, the curse, all of it sitting on my shoulders like a weight I hadn't asked for and didn't know how to carry yet.

"Nyra keeps looking at me like I'm supposed to already know things. Like the answers are just sitting inside me somewhere, waiting for me to notice them."

"Maybe they are." He crossed the room and sat across from me, close enough that I caught the faint scent of woodsmoke that always seemed to cling to him, grounding in a way I hadn't expected to find comforting from a man everyone else in three territories seemed to fear.

"Bloodline magic doesn't always come from books, Elara. Sometimes it comes from instinct. From feeling before understanding."

"That's not very helpful advice from a King."

"No," he admitted, and there was something warm at the edge of his voice, almost teasing, a tone I hadn't heard from him before.

"But it's honest. I've never claimed to have all the answers. Just a very large library and a healer who enjoys making both of us feel inadequate."

I laughed before I could stop myself, surprised by the sound of it, because it had been days since anything had felt light enough to laugh about, and Kael's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile but was close enough that my chest did something strange and unfamiliar in response.

"Can I ask you something," I said, before the moment could pass. "Why does it matter so much to you? Finding the answer, I mean.

You said yourself you stopped believing there was a cure a long time ago. Why does it matter now?"

His expression shifted, something more guarded slipping back over his features, though he didn't look away from me the way I half expected him to.

"Because for the first time in a hundred years, there's a reason to hope again, and I don't know what to do with that. Hope isn't something I planned for. It's inconvenient. It makes a man reckless."

"Reckless how?"

"Reckless enough to want things he has no right wanting," he said quietly, and something in the way he said it made the air between us feel thinner, charged, like the moment before a storm breaks. "You walked into my life two days ago, Elara Ashwood, with a rejection mark still fresh on your heart and a bloodline you never asked for burning into your wrist, and somehow I find myself thinking about you more than I've thought about anything in decades."

My breath caught, and for a long moment neither of us said anything, the space between us feeling smaller than it had a right to, close enough that I could see the flecks of silver in his dark eyes catching the afternoon light coming through the window.

"That's not fair," I said softly, though I didn't move away.

"I know." He didn't move away either. "You deserve time. You deserve to heal from what Ryker did to you before anyone asks anything else of you, especially something as complicated as this.

" He reached up, slow enough that I could have pulled back if I wanted to, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers barely grazing my skin, and even that small touch sent warmth curling through my chest like sunlight breaking through clouds. "So I won't ask you for anything.

Not yet. Just know that whatever this is between us, mark or no mark, curse or no curse, it isn't nothing to me."

I wanted to tell him it wasn't nothing to me either, that somewhere between the forest and this quiet library, the ache Ryker's rejection had carved into my chest had started to feel smaller, crowded out by something new and terrifying and warm, but the words caught in my throat, too big and too soon, so instead I just let myself lean, just slightly, into the hand still resting against my cheek.

Nyra's sharp voice broke the moment before either of us could decide what came next.

"Kael." She stood in the doorway, a scroll clutched tight in one hand, her face pale in a way that made both of us straighten immediately.

"You need to see this. I found something in the old records. About the last time a mark like Elara's appeared."