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I turn to Zander. “This isn’t just decay. This is a spell.”
His jaw tightens, his eyes scanning the symbols with a calculating look. “Which means someone was here. Someone powerful enough to rip the magic from the wards and leave this behind.”
A sharp gust of wind sweeps through the trees, rattling the dead branches.
“We need to get back,” Zander says, his voice low. “Now.”
I don’t argue.
Whatever happened here, whatever did this, is still out there. And if we don’t figure out what it wants soon, we might not be able to stop it.
The morning light creeps over the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of gold and gray, but it does nothing to warm the unease curling in my stomach. The air is thick with tension, the kind that settles deep into your bones and makes your heart beat a little too fast.
Zander has positioned the soldiers in careful formations, some tucked behind the stronghold’s stone walls, others stationed just outside in calculated lines. Their weapons are drawn, eyes fixed ahead. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, mist curling low over the clearing, giving the world an eerie, hushed stillness.
Ash stands beside me, silent for once, his fingers flexing over the hilt of his blade. Zander is on my other side, his stance unshaken, but I can see the sharp focus in his gaze, the way his eyes flick over every shadow in the distance, every inch of movement from the trees beyond.
I stand at the very front, my body rigid, hands clenched at my sides as I scan the tree line up the hill. Nothing moves. No birds stir from the branches, no wind rustles the leaves. It is too quiet.
Something or someone is waiting.
Every second that passes makes my skin crawl, the weight of unseen eyes pressing in from the darkness between the trees. Something is out there. Watching. Measuring.
I swallow hard, forcing my voice to steady. “Do you feel that?”
Zander nods once. “They’re close.”
Ash exhales sharply. “Then why aren’t they attacking?”
I have no answer.
The silence stretches, unnatural. My pulse pounds in my ears, my breath shallow as I tighten my grip on my dagger.
A familiar presence washes over me, one that sends a shiver down my spine as I feel him before I even see him.
Oberon.
For a fleeting moment, the world around me ceases to exist. The fear, the uncertainty, the crushing weight of the unknown presses down on my chest, all of it vanishes in an instant.
My body responds before my mind has a chance to catch up. Every muscle in me tenses instinctively, preparing to run to him, to reach for him, to find the comfort I have been aching for. I need to go to him. I need to feel him, to hold him, to make him real again in my arms. I have waited so long for this moment.
A silhouette emerges from the tree line, standing tall atop a hill that rises across a small clearing. The mist of the morning light clings to him, but even through the haze, I know. I can feel it. My breath hitches in my throat.
It is him. There is no doubt.
As he steps into clearer view, the sharp lines of his figure become more defined. The relief is short-lived, replaced by a realization that something isn’t right.
He isn’t wearing the familiar dark leathers I have grown accustomed to, the ones that have always seemed to mold perfectly around him, as if they are a part of him. Nor is he clad in the loose shirts he favors, the fabric barely containing the wild storm of a male beneath. This male, this stranger, is different.
Gone is the Oberon who leaned against walls with that easy smirk, his posture relaxed yet always exuding a quiet, effortless command. The confidence that always seems to be an extension of him is now absent. In its place stands someone . . . colder, harder. The male before me is not the Oberon I know.
Instead, steel-black armor encases him from shoulders to boots, forged in the unmistakable design of the king’s army. It gleams in the dim light, the surface dark as obsidian, edged with silver, built not for speed or stealth but for war.
A deep black cape billows behind him.
But it is the crown that shatters me.
A golden crown, stark against his dark armor, sits atop his head, unmistakable even through the strands of dark hair that have fallen loose around his face. It is simple yet imposing, its metal pokes catching the light in jagged, cruel edges.
