Page 50 of The Shattered Rite
Lavender had been a luxury you made by hand: tiny sachets sewn from scrap, bundles drying above the hearth to sweeten the smoke. Not perfumed oil. Not baths. Notthis.
You do,Vaeronth said, gentler.You just stopped letting yourself ask for it.
She swallowed. “Asking made my mother look tired.”
Surviving taught you to be quiet with your wanting,he countered.
Her eyes burned. She stood abruptly, the robe trailing behind her.
The canopied bed waited at the far side of the room.
She glared at it.
“Don’t you dare be comfortable.”
The bed said nothing, smug in its silence.
Grumbling under her breath, Eliryn climbed into it anyway.
And, against her better judgment, let herself rest.
Sleep didn’t come easily.
The bed was too soft.
Everything smelled like lavender and warmth. It should’ve felt safe.
Instead, it felt… wrong.
She drifted, half-caught between memory and whatever the bond was becoming.
Fire filled her dreams.
Not destruction—language.
Symbols, coiling through the air like smoke, written in a tongue her mind knew but her waking self couldn’t grasp. Vaeronth stood in the center of it all: wings vast, casting no shadow. The sky above him burned red, as if the world had been lit from the inside out.
In his chest, a second sun flickered.
You must carry it now, he said, voice not a voice.
The realm's magic is fading.
But it cannot be extinguished.
You are its champion.
Then the world cracked.
Glass underfoot.
Sky splintering.
She fell through.
And woke gasping, tangled in silk.
Her chest heaved. Her skin burned cold.
