Chapter 78

Chapter 78
Evelyn's POV

That was the first thing I noticed when Kael rode north with his war band. The great stone walls still held their weight, the torches still burned along the corridors, and the guards still patrolled, but the air itself felt different emptier, thinner, colder.
Kael’s presence was not something subtle. It was a fire that lived in the stones, a storm that bent everyone in its path. Even when he wasn’t speaking, he was there—
 in the clatter of armor, in the hush of servants, in the way everyone moved just a little faster, a little sharper, afraid of drawing his eye. When he was gone, the keep felt like a hearth gone cold, nothing but smoke curling where the flames had been.
I thought I would breathe easier in his absence. I thought the weight of his gaze, his intensity, his possessive words, would feel lighter when he wasn’t near. But instead, I found myself restless, unsettled, like a bird that had been released from its cage only to discover the sky was too wide and empty to bear.
The whispers began almost immediately. 
I heard them in the kitchens, when I passed by for bread. I heard them in the training yard, where the soldiers pretended to swing blades but kept their eyes sharp on me. Even the maids in the hallways, the ones who once bowed without hesitation, now lingered a little too long when they thought I wasn’t looking.
She made the spies confess without Kael touching them.
She has power in her blood something not natural.
Maybe the Chain was right. Maybe she does belong to them.
I wanted to shout at them that I didn’t ask for this. That I didn’t even know what had happened in that dungeon. But my throat locked every time. So instead, I kept my head high, walked past them with as much composure as I could fake, and shut the door to my chambers as if that alone could block the noise out.
But the silence inside was worse.
At night, I lay awake in Kael’s bed the one that smelled of smoke and steel and the faint trace of his skin. The fire in the hearth would burn low, casting shadows across the stone walls. My body would ache for sleep, but my mind refused to rest. I kept seeing the spies’ faces when my voice tore the truth out of them, the way their eyes bulged, the way their throats worked against words they hadn’t wanted to speak. And Kael’s voice afterward, rough with awe and fear: What are you, Evelyn?
I didn’t know. And that terrified me.
But what terrified me more was how much I missed him.
It was shameful to admit, even to myself. I should have relished this reprieve, this stretch of days without Kael’s fire wrapping around me like chains. And yet, each time I sat by the window and looked out across the snowy courtyard, I found my eyes straying north, imagining where he might be, what he might be doing, if he thought of me in return.
I hated the gnawing ache in my chest. It made me feel weak, foolish. I wanted to believe I was still the girl who had walked into this world with nothing but stubbornness to her name. But that girl had never known Kael’s fire. She had never heard him vow to burn the world before letting it take me.
Now, I could not imagine the keep without him. And that was its own kind of prison.
Seven nights into his absence, I had my first nightmare.
I was back in the dungeon, standing before the two chained spies. Their eyes were black voids, their mouths twisted in cruel smiles. I opened my mouth to speak to demand answers and the sound that came out was not my voice at all, but the crack of chains breaking.
The men laughed. The torches went out. And when I looked down, the chains that had fallen were not theirs, but mine coiled around my wrists, my throat, my heart.
I woke with a scream lodged in my throat, sweat clinging to my skin, the sheets twisted around me like bindings. For a wild, panicked second, I thought Kael was there, fire ready to burn away the dark. But the room was empty. Only the dying fire in the hearth answered me, its last embers glowing faintly before going cold.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
The next day, I tried to keep busy. I sat in the solar with embroidery, though my stitches were crooked and clumsy. I walked the corridors, nodded to guards, pretended I didn’t notice the way they stiffened when I passed. I even forced myself into the kitchens, offering to help with bread, though the cooks nearly dropped their ladles at the sight of me.
Everywhere I went, I felt the distance. I wasn’t Kael. I couldn’t command obedience with a glance or bend loyalty with fire. Without him, I was just me. And yet, the whispers had made me something more something dangerous.
That night, when the silence pressed too heavy on me, I drifted into Kael’s study. The room was a chaos only he could make sense of maps strewn across tables, books stacked high, daggers tucked carelessly among parchment. His scent clung to everything, smoke and leather, a promise of heat.
I sat in his chair, tracing the edge of the map he had left half-marked. Ashmoor. The word burned into me. The Chain waited there. For me.
My fingers trembled. I curled them into fists.
I whispered to the empty room, “What am I?”
The silence had no answer.
But deep inside, my blood hummed.
On the fifth day, a rider returned to the keep with news of Kael’s campaign. I hurried to the gate before I could stop myself, heart hammering as though he himself would be there. But it wasn’t him.
The soldier bowed low, his armor spattered with mud and ash. “The Alpha strikes the Chain’s outposts,” he said breathlessly. “Their bones and bells burn. He sends word he will not return until Ashmoor is broken.”
Relief and dread tangled in me. Relief that he was alive. Dread that he was far from me, still riding deeper into danger.
When the soldier rode off again, the courtyard felt emptier than before.
That night, I curled on Kael’s side of the bed, clutching his pillow like a foolish child, breathing in the fading scent of him until sleep finally claimed me.
And in my dreams, I heard his voice, burning through the dark: You are mine, Evelyn. Whatever power runs in your blood, whatever chains reach for you I will burn them all.
The words should have frightened me. But instead, I clung to them.
Because without him, the silence was unbearable.