Then the first soldier reached them, and there was no more time for words.
Only violence and fire. Only the desperate, bloody work of survival.
The last soldier went down choking on his own blood.
Seraphiel stood over him, dagger dripping, chest heaving. Fifty bodies scattered across the village square. Smoke still rising from burned homes. The crosses still standing, their victims silent now.
She turned to say something to Nyx—
Unfortunately, he collapsed.
Just folded, like someone had cut his strings. Hit the blood-soaked ground hard.
"Nyx!" She was beside him in seconds, rolling him over. His bandages were soaked through, red spreading across his chest and back. The wounds from the chapel... the arrow punctures that had barely started healing... had torn open during the fight.
"Should've... run..." His voice barely a whisper.
"Shut up." She grabbed his arms, started dragging him. Gods, he was heavy. Pure muscle and stubborn refusal to die. "Just shut up and stay conscious."
The nearest intact structure was a cottage—most of the roof gone, walls scorched, but four corners still standing. She hauled him inside, propped him against the wall.
Blood everywhere. Too much blood.
Seraphiel tore strips from her cloak, pressed them against the worst wounds. He hissed through his teeth but didn't scream. Of course he didn't.
"What did they do to you?" The words slipped out as she worked. His torso was a roadmap of violence—brands forming symbols she didn't recognize, whip marks layered so thick they created ridges, burn scars from what might've been hot iron or blessed fire.
"Everything they could." Nyx's eyes barely focused. "Tried to break me. Make me confess. Repent. Beg." A wet laugh. "I wouldn't."
"Clearly."
She worked through the night. Stitching what she could with needle and thread scavenged from the ruins. Using her death-magic carefully—just enough to cauterize, seal, stop the bleeding. Not enough to corrupt the wounds.
By dawn, he was stable. Unconscious, but breathing steady. Seraphiel collapsed beside him, exhausted beyond measure.
.....
Three days they were stuck there.
Nyx couldn't travel. Could barely sit up without tearing something. So they waited in the burned cottage while he healed and Seraphiel kept watch.
She buried the villagers. All thirty-seven of them. Took down the crosses, gave them what dignity she could. It wasn't much. But it was something.
On the third night, Nyx was finally lucid. Sitting up against the wall, eating the rabbit she'd caught and roasted.
"We should do the ritual," Seraphiel said.
He looked at her. "The Blood-Binding."
"Yeah. We need the blade, and we're running out of time. Caelum's escalating. Killing civilians to draw you out. We can't afford to wait."
Nyx set down the rabbit. "You understand what it means? No privacy. Ever. I'll feel everything you feel. See every memory when it surfaces. Every fear, every weakness, every moment of shame."
"I know."
"And you'll see mine." His jaw clenched. "Everything I've done. The villages I've burned. The people I've killed. Not all of them deserved it."
Seraphiel met his eyes. "And you'll see what Caelum did to me. Every moment of it. The burning. The dying. The crawling back from whatever hell I was in." She paused. "But I'm not ashamed anymore. Let him see through your eyes that I survived. That I'm coming for him."
Something shifted in Nyx's expression. Respect, maybe. Or recognition.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's do it."
.....
...
Seraphiel held the journal Malachrae had given them, memorizing the words by candlelight. Then set it aside.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No. But when has that ever stopped us?"
They each drew blades. Cut their palms—quick, deep, decisive. Blood welled, black in the dim light.
They clasped hands. Blood mingling, warm and slick.
Seraphiel spoke the incantation. Words in that dead language, syllables that made reality shiver.
The blood between their hands began to glow. Then the memories hit.
.....
Seraphiel's memories flooding into Nyx:
"Young Seraphiel at sixteen, having her first vision. The headache afterward, nose bleeding, but she's smiling. "I saw it! I saw tomorrow!"
Training with older oracles. Learning to navigate futures without getting lost. The pride in her mentor's eyes.
Caelum. Always Caelum. Teaching her to dance. Bringing her books. His hand on her waist, his voice in her ear. "You're extraordinary."
Falling in love. Gods, she'd been so stupid. So young.
The night he kissed her in the gardens. "I want to build a better kingdom. With you."
Discovering the king's embezzlement. Running to Caelum with the evidence. His sad smile. "Oh, Seraphiel..."
His visit the night before execution. "Forgive me." But his eyes were empty. He wasn't sorry. Just performing.
The Pyre. Stakes. Kindling. Caelum lighting the torch himself.
BURNING!!!. Skin melting. Lungs filling with smoke. Screaming until her throat tore. The agony endless, infinite, the smell of her own flesh cooking—
Death. Finally. Sweet oblivion—
—ripped away. Clawing out of ashes in the Pyre Wastes. Alone. Changed. Screaming into the void."
Nyx gasped, trying to pull back. But the connection held.
...
Nyx's memories flooding into Seraphiel:
"The Crimson Truce feast. Nyx younger, maybe twenty-five. His wife Elena across the table, laughing at something their daughter said. His son—gods, so small—stealing bread from the basket.
Happiness. Actual happiness.
Caelum's signal. Subtle. Just a nod.
Soldiers emerging from the shadows. Swords flashing in candlelight.
Elena's scream. Cut short. Blood spreading across her dress.
His daughter trying to run. Not fast enough. Never fast enough.
His son's eyes. Wide. Confused. "Papa?" As the blade punched through his small chest.
Nyx's rampage. Killing. Killing. KILLING. Until they overwhelmed him with sheer numbers.
Beatings. Torture. Brands. They wanted him broken, confessing, begging.
He wouldn't. He wouldn't.
Escape. Years of hunting. Hiding. Building an army from other broken people.
Ten years of surviving. Not living. Just surviving. Refusing to die because revenge wasn't complete.
Every night dreaming of his children's faces.
Every morning waking up alone.
Seraphiel sobbed.The grief was too much, too raw.
...
....
They broke apart, both gasping. Tears streaming down both faces.
"I'm sorry," Seraphiel choked out. "I'm so sorry—"
"Don't." Nyx's voice rough. He reached up, wiped her tears with callused fingers. "You're not broken. You're a blade that's been tempered in fire. Stronger for it."
She touched his scarred face. Traced the line of an old burn. "And you're not a monster. You're just a man who lost everything and refused to let it destroy him."
"Is there a difference?"
"Yeah." She smiled through tears. "There is."
Their joined hands began to glow brighter. Heat building between their palms.
From Nyx's chest, a silver shard emerged. Pushed through skin without breaking it, ethereal and solid at once. Hovering in the air between them.
From Seraphiel's chest, a black shard. Its twin, its opposite.
They circled each other, incomplete. Yearning for the third piece.
"We still need it," Nyx said. "The Forgotten King's shard."
"Then we wake him." Seraphiel's voice steady now. Certain.
The shards pulsed—
—and suddenly both of them gasped.
Seraphiel felt Nyx's pain. The throbbing ache in his back where the arrows had been. The burn of recently-stitched wounds. His exhaustion, bone-deep.
Nyx felt her lingering scars. The phantom sensation of burning, always there, always waiting. Her fear—not of dying, but of failing Elowen again.
And underneath it all—
Emotions. Tangled, raw, honest.
Seraphiel felt Nyx's respect for her. His attraction, carefully controlled but undeniable. His fear that caring about anyone again would end the same way it always had.
Nyx felt her determination. Her fear of trust, of opening up again after Caelum. And underneath it, fragile but growing—the beginning of trust. In him. In this partnership.
They stared at each other, realizing intimacy wasn't a choice anymore.
"This is—" Seraphiel started.
A raven hit the windowsill with a thump. Black feathers, red eyes. A message tube tied to its leg.
Nyx grabbed it, unrolled the parchment.
Korvath's handwriting, rushed and sharp:
"Emergency. Royal army marching on Blackreach. 10,000 soldiers. Caelum leads them personally. We have 3 days to prepare or evacuate. Orders?"
Nyx and Seraphiel looked at each other. Through the bond, she felt his cold calculation. His fury. His terrible, patient rage.
The blade shards pulsed between them, hungry for completion. Three days until war.
Three days to wake a king and forge a weapon that could kill a saint.
Three days to save a kingdom or burn it to ash trying.
"We don't evacuate," she said quietly.
"No." Nyx's smile was all teeth. "We fight. And we make him bleed for every inch."