Chapter 20: Valen - Bound to Ruin

MONUMENT PARK, PROTECTED LAND, DELORNIA

The mist is thick around Memorial Park when we arrive in the circle. The cloud blanketing the man-made foothill at the edge of the Astrum Forest consists of more than tiny, suspended water droplets. Whispers hiss from shadows, shapes shifting within our peripheral vision, yet when we turn to look for them, they’re gone.

Lucas’ back presses against mine, and the heat is a welcome pressure against this deep unease anchoring my heart. He keeps his voice low in hopes that no one overhears us. “It wasn’t like this before.”

“It wouldn’t be.” My lips part so that the air washes over my tongue in a deep inhale. The tang of magic is sharp, like I touched a freshly cut lemon. “The dead were disturbed.”

He stiffens. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“The bones of weavers are mixed into this earth. Our bodies are not meant to linger in this world after death. We need to be burned to ash so that our souls can return to the Tapestry with our Soul Threads. The weavers who were not claimed by their family lines, or had no family lines left to claim them, were burned in the humans’ bonfire, but the humans did not care to use a hot enough flame. The bones fossilized from the calcite-rich soil. Now these weavers are suspended in an endless hell, half within the Tapestry, half lingering in this land. My guess is that your fight here with Alasdair disturbed them.”

Lucas whips his head towards me, his hair brushing me from the force of it, and hisses, “Are you telling me that there’s actual ghosts here?”

My hands slide into my pockets, and I lean back against his frame. My head lolls to rest on his shoulder. “I am most definitely telling you that. You humans must know this land is haunted.”

“Yeah, but the ghost stories were supposed to be shit that your parents made up so you didn’t sneak off to fuck your girlfriend in the park, not real.”

I smirk, turning my face towards him. “Don’t tell me the mighty magician is scared of ghosts?”

“I am not scared of ghosts,” he snaps, then jumps when the shadows shift again. It jostles me, and I stagger back to standing upright with a frown. A chill shivers up my spine without his heat.

Lucas doesn’t notice. “Out of curiosity, how many of them do you think there are?”

I shrug. “In the hundreds.”

Lucas makes a strange choking sound, and I chuckle softly, turning to face him. He’s so pale, his eyes too wide. It’s oddly endearing.

He shoots me a glare. “I’m glad you find this funny. Meanwhile, I’m calculating the odds of surviving an encounter with Alasdair and an army of wraiths to save Tori.”

I wave off his concern. My father’s ring is heavy on my hand, and I don’t have the strength to keep it up, so I let it fall back to my side. I keep my left in my pocket, the lightness without my old ring odd and disquieting. “Ghosts cannot harm you, though they are as real as the mist around us. They might try to scare you, but they cannot alter the physical world. Surely, you know this.”

“Yes, I know that. I’m not a fucking idiot. Doesn’t mean I like them.” He shudders and rubs his leather-clad arms. “Let’s hurry up and save Tor before one touches me.”

“Yes,” I say with a hint of my usual drawl. “Let’s make haste to face something far less terrifying, like Alasdair.”

His face heats, and I’m filled with such malicious glee when he snarls, “Fuck off and concentrate.”

Lucas brushes past me to stomp down the platform. My fingers flex, the instincts to grab his hand suddenly overwhelming, but I curl them into a fist. My heart aches with the building pressure behind my eyes. I want to hold him.

I’m going to miss him so damn much. This is what I wanted to avoid. This attachment to him will shred me when he leaves with Astoria. Our time is coming to a close, and I don’t know how I’ll face the next day without him. And without Astoria, though Alasdair’s poison stirs to kindle a building rage at the mere thought of her.

With a slow exhale, I release these thoughts. I’ve already been wounded from my distractions. I cannot afford another. I turn on my heel and follow Lucas.

He walks carefully, his knees bent in a slight crouch. He unsheathes the sword silently, the black blade glinting. His other hand splays and his rings shift from matte black to glowing gold. I don’t have it in me to tell him a ghost is walking in line with him, but my lips tilt in the smallest of smiles.

I quicken my pace just enough to wave off the specter. It fades away, and Lucas holds up a hand to halt me. He crouches down, and when I don’t follow, he grabs my arm and yanks me down. I stumble to my knees and glare at him, straightening my ripped and blood-stained shirt with brisk swipes.

Lucas scowls. “Take this seriously. We might die.”

“Then we can see what all the fuss is about.” I motion to the ghosts shifting in and out of view.

He stares at me. “You’re clearly not okay.”

I pour all the snark I can muster into my tone. “I’m fine, magician. Your misplaced concern is touching but unnecessary.”

He sighs and rubs his brow. “Just try not to get hurt. Again.”

“Says the man who showed up half alive in my garden.”

He ignores me and presses his palm flat against the ground. Tiny little threads that are so thin I almost miss them snake out of his rings to slither along the stalks of grass. I tap my oddly empty left middle finger against my knee and scan the mist. It’s too thick to see the statues. Another specter takes form beside me in a crouch mirroring my own. I raise a brow at the hazy outline of a man—or perhaps it’s a woman? It doesn’t really matter. There is nothing that can be done for it or any of the other souls. They’ve been here for too long, more shadows imitating others or reliving the same horrific moments of battles than souls.

Lucas flinches, and I turn away from the specter. “Did you find Alasdair?”

“No,” he grinds out.

I follow his gaze. A small, ghostly battle is warring before us, ghosts shifting in and out of focus.

Lucas grumbles, “This is going to be a nightmare. If he’s hiding out there, we can’t trust our eyes. I don’t sense anything with my rings, but I can’t map out the park all the way to Antonia’s monument from here. It’s too big and complex.”

“Let’s run for it and get this over with.”

“That is a terrible plan, or do you have a death wish that you haven’t told me about?”

Death would be far more merciful than anything the Archweaver will have planned for me.

I never wanted to be stuck in this mess. I didn’t want to be Heir; I wanted to be a healer. I wanted to marry my childhood sweetheart. I wanted to live in peace with her by my side. I wanted to be there while she solved magical mysteries, to hold her while she rambled late into the night. And raise our child when the time came. Astoria is not maternal, but I could be. If not, we’d have Lucas.

The thought is like a punch in the gut, and my shoulders cave with the force of it. I can’t breathe, my eyes squeezing shut. My dream can’t ever come true. Not anymore. Everything is ruined.

I don’t have it in me to keep fighting. So I smile widely, mind made up, my voice lilting playfully. “Keep up.”

I take off running. Lucas growls and runs after me. I go faster and faster, weaving around statues. My legs ache. My lungs burn, but oh, does it feel good.

A small voice in the back of my mind tries to surface, tries to warn me, but I can’t be bothered to hear it. My arms are off balance, both middle fingers aching from either too much or too little weight. It has me tipping to one side, stumbling on uneven ground.

The fog is so thick that I don’t notice the slate floor of the memorial until it’s practically at my toes. I jump to avoid tripping and land on the black stone. My chest pumps, my throat raw. Sweat slicks me, and my filthy shirt sticks awkwardly to my back and chest.

The low clouds are so thick that they fully obscure Antonia’s statue, giving me a few more moments of reprieve before looking through the enchantment to behold the twisted torment of my beloved. There’s so much pain within me that I’ve reached a threshold of some sort. Surely, the mind can only comprehend so much suffering before it shuts down completely. Astoria. My beloved. My life. My entire existence has been yearning for her, watching her, waiting for her. Wanting her.

My head aches, and I swallow to keep the rising bile at bay when my thoughts swirl treacherously, whispering to me all my dark thoughts that are sounding more and more real.

I don’t think I can bear this existence, carrying on my life in the Order like nothing has changed. It’s a thought that terrifies me nearly as much as the reality that I am about to see the love of my life trapped in a torturous existence within a statue, doomed to never decompose, like these ghosts that surround me.

Maybe when I’m damned to the same existence by the Archweaver, then we can finally be together, even if it’s my spirit endlessly longing for hers that will always be just out of reach.

A hand grabs my bicep, and I’m yanked back. Once again, I am stumbling and meet Lucas’ enraged gaze. He hisses, his finger in my face, “Don’t do that again. You could’ve run into a trap.”

I welcome the distraction and smirk before answering breathlessly, “My apologies.”

He shakes his head and shoves past me. My head is too light, and I stroll casually behind him as he leads the way forward. It’s easier to slip into this blasé version of myself. Its familiarity allows my mind to go quiet.

Finally, the mist clears as we near the middle of the monument’s compass, revealing a carved divot in the black stone where Antonia’s statue once stood.

I freeze, all airy casualness evaporating. Lucas isn’t moving. He just stares at the space. Then utters a soft, “No.”

I should’ve seen this coming. Of course, Alasdair would take the statue. He wouldn’t risk his primary food source being left unguarded. No, he’d take Astoria somewhere else where he could keep an eye on her or use her to lure Lucas and me to him.

Perhaps this was his plan all along. I underestimated the clever bastard, the very thing I warned Lucas about again and again.

“Take me to the Archweaver estate now,” Lucas growls.

My head snaps towards him, my eyes wide. “Are you out of your mind?”

He scoffs, throwing his arms wide. “You were sprinting through this place mere seconds ago, and now you have the audacity to ask me that?”

I have no answer, so I switch tactics. “We need to⁠—”

“No,” he interrupts with a slash of his hand. “I am done listening to your schemes. I knew I should’ve taken Astoria’s statue immediately, but I listened to you instead. All you’ve had me do is wait and waste time. I am done with it, Valen. I am done.”

Prickling frustration crawls up my insides, filling the empty vastness of my soul. My lips curl as I growl, “There was no way in the darkest recesses of the Tapestry that you were going to succeed in stealing Astoria from Alasdair in the state you were in. I saved your life, magician. You should stop accusing me of setting us up for failure and thank me instead.”

He laughs, low and cruel. I would be proud, but he says, “And you fucked me nice and good for your payment.”

My tongue clicks. “Actually, you begged⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter, Valen!” he roars. “Tor is gone because we wasted time!”

I sigh. This is going nowhere fast. “I understand you’re upset and frustrated, but we don’t know if the statue is at the Archweaver estate.”

“Of course it’s there.”

I glare. “Forgive me, I must’ve missed when you found a map with a big red X marking where in the estate it is.”

“Her father wants her dead. Her brother trapped her. He would’ve taken her as a prize.”

I chew on this thought, but it still doesn’t quite click in place. I rub my temple as my head throbs. Why can’t this ever be easy? I turn and begin leading the way back to the platform. I need a stiff drink from the Bauer cellars to continue this argument.

“If you’re right—and I doubt you are—then Atticus would display the statue for all to see, like he did with Viola. It shouldn’t be hard to confirm. Perhaps I can reach out to some contacts to check if they’ve heard or seen anything.”

The silence that follows has me stopping. I turn to face him. Lucas hasn’t moved, the fog nearly obscuring him. He could be one of the specters for all I know.

I feel the accusation in Lucas’ gaze.

A pressure builds in my chest and skull. I rub my temples, trying to ease the discomfort while saying, “I understand that you love her, but we will die if we face the Archweaver.”

Lucas steps back, and a chill ripples over me. My fingers against my temples rub harder and harder. I shut my eyes, but I cannot shut my ears to Lucas’ words. “What happened to ‘our’ beloved? What happened to trying to get her to run away with you and abandon me? I know you’re upset with her, but⁠—”

I can’t keep doing this. I can’t hold it in. The words explode from me, cutting him off as I bellow, “My mother left. My sister left. I stayed to save my father from Astoria’s curse, and now he’s dead. I’ve failed them all, and now I’ll fail again. Don’t you see? I can’t save her, Lucas!”

An ice-cold wave flashes down me, and I step back with wide-eyed panic. Those words were never supposed to escape. I haven’t even comprehended them, and now they’re out there, hanging between the two of us for Lucas to witness. The few feet between Lucas and I might as well be miles.

If he says Astoria sending him to me was a mistake, I will break apart. There will be nowhere lower for me to go. I pant, raking my hands through my hair, and quickly say, “When I chose her, my father started the civil war he was trying to prevent just to save me. He died for it. I know you don’t want to hear it, but Astoria has been running from a fate that cannot be stopped and the more we try to help her, the worse it will become.”

Lucas’ lips thin, but there’s a kindness in his gaze that has me flinching away. “I know, and I won’t stop trying to help her. I don’t care what she’s done, Valen. I won’t ever stop trying.” He shifts his weight with a sigh and combs back his hair before continuing, “Look, I know you want me to return to the Bauer estate with you because you need the comfort, but it’s a bad idea. The estate is the first place the Archweaver is going to look for you. We cannot go back. We need to run, but I am not leaving without her.”

He’s right, and it nearly kills me to admit it even to myself. But despite that, I cannot stop the slack-jawed stare I give him. His devotion to his cause to save Astoria is so familiar and yet so foreign to me. How have I changed so much in such a short amount of time?

I gaze at him like he holds all the answers to my darkest fears. My voice is small, barely a whisper when I ask, “How do you remain so steadfast in your love for her?”

He steps closer, and he’s so calm that I shiver as his words sink into me. “I know it’s hard to see because you’re in so much pain, but Astoria fought all her life for the right to exist. You of all people should know. You saw the way they treated her. Abused her. Underestimated her.”

I try to look away, but he holds me, forces me to keep looking at him when he continues, “She is not perfect. She is a survivor. And I love her so fucking much that I can see past the horrible things she’s done to see the pain that she struggles with. She doesn’t know how to react without the raw terror of fight or flight because everything in her life has been a life-or-death situation.”

Lucas’ breath trembles, and his expression turns strained. “Tor and I… we’re similar in some ways. We both had to do horrible things as children so that we could live to adulthood. I did not love my father, Valen. I will never regret killing him. The only difference between Astoria and me is that it was easier for me to face my abuser because I knew he was going to kill my mother. And I succeeded. Astoria tried to kill her father and failed. She was wrong to attack Alasdair, but I can understand why she did. She truly thought she had no other way to stop the monster in her life.”

Astoria, starved, dehydrated, and weak, on the Archweaver’s office floor appears in my mind’s eye. Blood dripping from under the iron muzzle, the skin around peeling away from days of wear. She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t fight back. And I had been so powerless to free her.

I’d rather die under that thing than be under you again.

Regret and shame hit me hard, and I have no walls of self-preservation left to stop it.

Lucas continues in a soft tone. “I know it’s hard to see, but your father made the choices that led to his demise. He damned a young girl to either a horrid death, ripped apart by her threads, or being stripped of all her powers and locked away as a pet to be bred from. Then he chose to let the Archweaver kill Viola.”

His words sink deeply into me. The pain and the suffering in my soul surge, but this time from the horrors of what I’ve lost sight of. It leaves my eyes burning and my skin too tight.

“I didn’t defeat Alasdair,” I gasp, my fingers trembling as I grip his wrist.

“What do you mean?”

“When he was in your dream. I couldn’t defeat him. He infected my mind with something so small and subtle that I can’t seem to exorcise it. Now I can no longer distinguish the difference between his voice and my own in my head.”

Lucas’ breath catches, his eyes searching me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We had more important things to deal with.”

Lucas’ irises are nearly gold as he flexes his hands on either side of my head. I gasp, the sweetness of his magic filling the air as the threads weave a web around me. “Don’t waste⁠—”

“Shut up,” he snaps. Lucas’ intensity pins me in place, my heart hammering until his hands finally lower and his rings return to a dull black. “There’s no curse within you.”

“I told you. It’s subtle, a whisper in my mind that feeds off of my thoughts and fears and twists them into reality.”

Lucas growls, “That fucking asshole. I’m going to tear Alasdair apart when I finally get my hands on him.”

A smile twitches my lips. “I assure you, I’ll let you take the first cut if we don’t release Astoria first.”

Then I freeze, heart in my throat. “Even if the statue is at the Archweaver’s estate, I can’t go with you. Not right now. I’m compromised, and I don’t know how deep Alasdair’s influence runs. What if he uses me to hurt you? We cannot risk that. We cannot risk Astoria.”

“You’re right.”

The mist swirls around us, and suddenly I understand why Astoria begged for me to keep Lucas safe. She knew he’d risk everything to go save her. Die in the process and not give a single thought of what that would mean for the rest of us remaining.

I shake my head. “No, Lucas. No. You’ll die if you go alone.”

He withdraws his notebook and scratches something on a page before ripping it out. “I’m not afraid to die, Valen.”

He steps up to me again, our chests nearly touching. He slips the note into my pocket before sliding his hands along my neck to hold me once again. I lean into it like a cat starved for touch, my pain throbbing in my chest in time with my racing heart. Every soft word is like a finality that shakes me to my core. “Those are the coordinates to one of my safehouses. When things settle, I’ll come for you.”

My hands tremble. “Don’t do this.”

“I couldn’t live with myself if I don’t try. Hey—” he wipes my tears with his thumb “—I am not abandoning you. I will come back for you, Valen. I swear. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but I am not choosing her over you. I’m just rescuing the one who needs me the most right now.”

Viola’s rotting body pinned above the Archweaver’s throne flashes in my vision, and I have no choice but to face the horrors I’ve been avoiding.

Tears slide down my face, and I whisper my final truth into the space between us. “I’m falling in love with you.”

He sucks in a breath. My raw, ripped-open heart beats painfully as I count the seconds before his lips find mine. It’s so soft, so sweet, and then he’s devouring me. I gasp into the kiss, falling into the whirlwind of his embrace.

He whispers brokenly against my lips, “I am, too.”

I smile, and it makes my face ache after all the pain and misery that my life has become. I slide my hand into his and lace our fingers together.

His forehead presses to mine, and my breath rushes from me in a swoosh. I tighten my hold on his hand and lead the way back to the circle platform, my arm stretching back as I navigate around the specters.

My boots click on the smooth stone when I step up onto the platform. I reach for the chalk stick within my pocket to send us back to the Bauer estate.

Glowing catches my eye, and I freeze. The carved sigils on the platform are already activated.

“Travel.”

I whip around. The hand in mine is a woven outline of golden threads that disappear when the magic surges. I meet Lucas’ gaze from where he stands on the grass, his eyes sad, and roar his name as I’m ripped away from the park and the second lover I’ve failed to keep safe.