The following days were a lesson in exquisite isolation.
Elara's world shrank to the dimensions of her opulent cage. Lysandra came and went with silent efficiency, bringing meals, removing trays of barely-touched food, and laying out new gowns—each one a masterpiece of subtle imprisonment. No one else visited. The only sounds were the distant music from the halls below and the frantic beat of her own heart.
The hunger grew.
It was no longer just a stirring in her gut. It was a constant, gnawing presence, a second pulse thrumming in time with the magic-saturated air. It whispered to her as she watched wisps of shadow magic curl from a sconce. It ached when she saw a courtier from her window trailing sparks of glamour. The empty, beautiful room was a desert, and the power around her was a shimmering mirage she was forbidden to drink from.
On the fourth day, the isolation broke.
The lock on her door shimmered and released not with Lysandra's soft knock, but with a definitive click. Kaelen stood in the doorway, not in court robes, but in the dark, practical gear she'd first seen him in. He looked like a storm given form, his expression unreadable.
"Come," he said, no greeting, no explanation.
He didn't wait to see if she followed. Swallowing her surprise, Elara hurried after him, her soft slippers silent on the stone. They did not take the main corridors. He led her down a narrow, spiraling staircase that smelled of damp rock and cold earth, deep into the bowels of the mountain-keep.
The air grew colder, the ambient magic changing from the elegant thrum of the court to something older, wilder, and tinged with decay. They passed vaulted cellars storing casks that glowed with faint light, and armories holding weapons that seemed to drink the dim torchlight.
Finally, he stopped before a heavy iron door, marked with runes that hurt her eyes to look at. He placed his palm against it, and the runes flared silver before fading. The door swung inward with a groan.
The room beyond was a stark contrast to the refinement above. It was a circular, stone-walled chamber, devoid of ornament. In the center, contained within a circle of etched silver on the floor, was the source of the decayed smell.
A piece of the Withered Wood.
It was a gnarled root, as thick as her thigh, but it was not dead. It pulsed with a sickly, familiar silver-blue light—the blight. Veins of corruption throbbed within it, and a low, painful hum emanated from it, setting her teeth on edge. Around the silver circle, three braziers burned with cold, green fire, containing the malignant energy.
"The source of your people's suffering," Kaelen said, his voice flat. He stood with his arms crossed, watching her reaction. "Harvested from the edge of my realm, where the sickness bleeds through the Veil."
Elara took a step closer, repulsion and a twisted fascination pulling her in. The hunger inside her didn't recoil from this corrupted magic. It… perked up. It recognized this. This was what she had been draining in tiny amounts for months. A feast of poison.
"Why are you showing me this?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper in the humming room.
"Because I have a theory," he said, moving to stand beside her, too close. She could feel the heat of him, the immense, clean power of his body a stark contrast to the corrupted sample. "The blight is not a natural plague. It is a weapon. Engineered. And it consumes magic, twisting it into this… inert, toxic residue."
He turned his storm-silver eyes on her. "You have spent months around it. You claimed to be a simple healer. Yet when I first saw you, you reeked of spent magic. You were doing something to it."
Her blood ran cold. This was the interrogation. Not in a throne room, but here, in this raw, honest space.
"I was trying to save my people with the only tools I had," she said, the truth wrapped in a lie.
"Herbs?" he scoffed. "No herb from your world touches this. Try again." His gaze was relentless, a physical pressure. "What did you do, Elara?"
The sound of her name on his lips, stripped of titles and mockery, was more dangerous than any accusation. It felt like a touch.
The hunger chose that moment to surge, provoked by the proximity of the blight and his overwhelming presence. A sharp, pulling sensation originated deep in her chest, aimed at the corrupted root. A faint, almost invisible wisp of the sickly silver light twitched toward her.
She clenched every muscle, forcing it down, slamming internal doors shut. A cold sweat broke out on her brow.
Kaelen's eyes dropped to her chest, then back to her face. He had seen it. The subtle pull. His expression didn't change, but the intensity in his eyes sharpened to a razor's point.
"Fascinating," he breathed, not with horror, but with the cold curiosity of a scholar dissecting a rare specimen.
He closed the distance between them in one fluid step. He didn't touch her, but he leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur that vibrated in her bones. "You don't just sense it. You interact with it. You are drawn to it. Just as you were drawn to the magic of my server in the hall."
She couldn't breathe. He had seen everything. He had been watching, piecing it together all along.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she forced out, the weakest of denials.
"Stop lying," he commanded, the words soft but absolute. "I can feel the echo of it around you. A void. A quiet hunger amidst the noise of this world." He finally lifted a hand, not to strike, but to gesture at the blighted root. "This sickness is the key to the threat against my kingdom. I need to understand it. And you… you are the only one I have seen who doesn't just look at it. You see it."
He paused, letting the hum of the blight fill the silence. "I am offering you a new bargain, Elara. One that does not involve you sitting uselessly in a tower, waiting to be devoured by my court."
She stared at him, her heart a wild thing in her chest. "What bargain?"
"Help me," he said. "Use whatever… affinity… you have. Study this. Tell me what it is, how it works, where it comes from. Be my weapon against this unseen enemy."
"And in return?" she whispered.
"In return," he said, his eyes holding hers captive, "I will protect you. Not as a political pawn, but as an asset. I will shield you from Theron's hunts and Sylvyre's prayers. I will give you a purpose here beyond being a symbol. And…" he added, the slightest hint of something like challenge entering his voice, "I will teach you to control whatever it is that flickers behind your eyes when the magic calls."
It was everything she needed. Protection. Purpose. A chance to master the monster inside her. And it was a trap more seductive than any lock.
To agree was to step deeper into his world, to bind herself to him in a way far more dangerous than a political marriage. It was to acknowledge her secret, to place it partly in his hands—the hands of the king who still suspected her people of creating this very weapon.
But to refuse… was to return to the gilded cage, to slowly starve while the hunger and the court picked her apart.
The blight-root pulsed, its poisonous light washing over his sharp, expectant features. The hunger within her answered with a sympathetic throb.
She was caught between two kinds of consumption: the slow death of a prisoner, or the perilous alliance with a king who saw her as a useful mystery.
Elara took a shaky breath, the air cold and metallic in her lungs. She looked from the corrupt root to the Shadow King's unwavering gaze.
"What," she asked, her voice gaining a sliver of the steel she used to hide, "would the first lesson be?"
A slow, genuine smile—the first she'd ever seen on him—touched Kaelen's lips. It wasn't warm. It was the thrilling, terrifying smile of a hunter who has finally sighted his true quarry.
"The first lesson," he said, turning back to the pulsating root, "is to stop fighting the pull. Under my supervision, in this controlled space… touch it."
He was asking her to unleash the very thing she'd spent a lifetime hiding. To feed the hunger in front of him.
The door to her cage had not just opened. It had vanished, revealing a precipice. And he was asking her to jump.
With her heart hammering a war-drum rhythm, Elara turned to face the blight, and slowly, deliberately, unclenched her fists.