Chapter 9. The Burning Pact

“You’re going to have to kill him.”

The words didn’t echo. They didn’t need to. They landed in the war chamber like thunder in a dry forest—instant ignition, no warning. I turned toward the voice. Priestess Mavienne, usually cloaked in riddles and quiet cruelty, stood tall and unblinking in the shadows behind me. This time, she didn’t speak in metaphor or warning.

She spoke in prophecy.

“You’ve seen it?” I asked.

She nodded once, slowly. “Not in visions. In scars. The future leaves marks on time before it arrives. And Kael stands in the path of what must come.”

There had been tension brewing for days. Subtle at first: missed glances, shortened conversations, Kael stepping aside when he would once have stood firm. Since the rebonding ritual and his near death, something had shifted in him.

Or in me.

Maybe both.

We’d started as two halves of a torn bond. Now, I was whole without him. And perhaps that truth was more dangerous than any Ves