All Chapters of FATASS FATED VENGEANCE: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The first thing I noticed was the smell.Burned grass, Scorched earth, Something underneath it, sharper, like copper left too long in the sun.I didn’t open my eyes right away. My body felt wrong in a way I didn’t have words for yet , heavy and hollow at the same time, like something had been poured out of me and I hadn’t finished feeling the loss of it.“Ivy.”Kian’s voice. Close. Closer than close.I forced my eyes open.His face was the first thing I saw, and for a second I couldn’t process anything else , not the sky, not the ground, not whatever had happened to put me flat on my back with my head in his lap. Just him. Jaw tight. Eyes red-rimmed in a way that told me he hadn’t slept, or hadn’t let himself.“Heyyy,” he said, softer now that he had my attention. “There you are.”“Where, ” My voice came out wrecked, sandpaper dragged over something raw. I tried again. “Where am I?”He didn’t answer right away. His hand moved to my cheek instead, thumb brushing along my cheekbo

Dorian found us in the yard, not the training ring , the quiet corner behind it, where the woodpile sat stacked against the fence and nobody usually bothered to look.He didn’t say anything at first. Just sat down on an overturned log across from where Kian and I had claimed a strip of morning sun, and set a small, battered book on his knee like it weighed more than its size suggested.“Malachi’s gone,” he said finally. “Left an hour ago. Said he’d send word once he’d narrowed his council down.”“You didn’t come out here to tell me that,” I said.“No.” Dorian’s gray-muzzled face was harder to read than usual, the careful blankness of a man deciding how much truth a person could carry in one sitting. “I came because you deserve to know what that word means. The one I said in the yard, during the fight. Before you ask Maren, or worse, go digging through records that’ll scare you more than help you.”Kian’s hand found mine without looking, the way it always did when he sensed the g

The search lasted three days.Three days of empty rooms and cold trails, of Ironwood’s guards and Thorneheart’s trackers working side by side in a silence that felt less like cooperation and more like shared dread.I didn’t sleep much. Kian didn’t either.We took turns pacing the same stretch of hallway outside the room Selene had vanished from, staring at warded walls that should have made her disappearance impossible, until the staring stopped making sense and just became something to do with our hands.“There’s no scent trail,” Cassian said, joining us on the second night, exhaustion carved deep into his face. “Not one. My trackers have covered every exit from this wing twice.”“That’s not possible,” Kian said. “Nobody moves a person without leaving something behind.”“Someone did.”I sat with that for a long moment, turning it over the way I’d turned over every impossible thing since the night of the ceremony.“What if nobody moved her,” I said slowly. “What if she left th

My father’s revelation sat between us for the rest of that day, unresolved, a name withheld until he could be certain of it , but by evening, exhaustion had settled so deep into my bones that even the dread of it felt distant, muffled, like something happening to someone else.Kian found me by the fence line after my parents had been given a guest room and a wide berth by everyone in Thorneheart who understood, without needing to be told, exactly how much I needed space.“You’re not sleeping,” he said, sitting down beside me on the low wall, close enough that his shoulder pressed warm against mine.“Neither are you.”“No,” he admitted.We sat there a while in silence, the kind that had stopped being uncomfortable somewhere around the barn, back when silence had first started meaning safety instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop.“I keep thinking about what he said,” I admitted finally. “Nineteen years. He knew for nineteen years, and he let me believe I was the disappoin

“I’m going.”The words were out before I’d finished deciding them, but the moment they landed, I knew I meant every syllable.Kian turned from where he’d been strapping a blade to his side, already dressed for the ride, and looked at me like I’d said something impossible.“No,” he said. “You’re not.”“Kian...”“You almost died the last time you activated in the field,” he said, voice tight, controlled in a way that told me he was fighting hard to keep it that way. “Dorian said your body needs time between activations. You had one three days ago that cost you enough silver in your hair to age you a decade. You are not riding into a burning border with an army you can’t fully account for yet.”“I’m not asking your permission.”“I know you’re not.” Something raw cracked through his control. “That’s what scares me.”The hall around us had gone quiet, Cassian’s runners moving past in urgent bursts, Maren already shouting orders toward the stables, and here we stood, the two of us,