Page 135 of Stolen
I step forward, my boots echoing off wet stone.
“Do you have it?” Kael asks, his voice low, grim.
“I have the crown,” I reply, reaching into the folds of my cloak and pulling the relic free.
Ancient, obsidian-black and etched with silver veins that pulse faintly with old magic.
“I figured this place was safest. They’ve already tracked it to the Eyrie once.”
Thorne’s mouth twists. “So you’re finished hiding it? Are you saying you don’t want it, don’t want the throne anymore?”
I look down at the crown and my heart squeezes—for the fallen Prime who bore it last, and for everything we lost since the SoulTakers returned.
“I’ll wear it, if I must,” I say. “But Nightfall is not the only thing that matters to me now.”
“Ah,” Thorne drawls, that wicked grin curling across his smoke-smeared face. “You mean yourhuman mate. I suppose the great illusionist himself couldn’t keep up the ruse forever, eh?”
His voice is teasing, but there’s a flicker of something else in it. Something brittle, vulnerable even.
I don’t rise to the bait.
“No illusion is strong enough to outwit the Fates,” I say, my voice sharper than steel, my stance unshakable.
“And I don’t just mean my viyella. I mean myfamily.”
That word lands like a spell.
The room goes silent.
Dagan bows his head. “Lord Alaric,” he murmurs with quiet reverence, his earth-dark gaze filled with something rare—hope.
Kael’s gaze sharpens, his ocean-colored eyes narrowing, the air around him stilling like the hush before a storm.
“No,” he breathes, slow and stunned. “It can’t be. Is it truly possible?”
I nod, the pride in me fierce and grounding, like the pulse of the zareth itself. “It is. Jules is expecting.”
A pause.
“Twins.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty—it’s thick with shock, wonder, and something that tastes almost like awe.
Even Thorne, usually quick with a crude joke or jaded laugh, goes still.
I press my palm over my chest. Over where I feel them—my mate, my children.
My whole precious world.
“I will protect them,” I say, not a promise but a vow. “With every breath I draw. Nightfall may call for a Prime. But I—I have something more important now. I have her. I have them. I will not lose either to ambition or war.”
“You’ve changed,” Dagan rumbles, a flicker of emotion warming his granite voice. “You speak with the weight of a man who finally understands what it is to live for something.”
Kael nods, quiet and thoughtful. “We all must change, I think. If we’re to survive what’s coming.”
“And it’s coming,” I say. “Don’t think for a moment that Idris or the SoulTakers are finished with us. They’ve tasted our blood. They’ll come back for more. Stronger. Smarter.”
“Then let us meet them with everything we’ve got,” Thorne says. “And if that means finding mates, maybe not like yours—not a real mate—then so be it. I say we stay the course.”
