ELARA POV
"Get in."
The guard didn't even look at me when he said it. Just grabbed my arm and shoved me toward the carriage door like I was luggage he was tired of carrying.
I stumbled. My shoulder hit the frame hard and I hissed through my teeth but nobody cared about that. Nobody was going to care about anything I felt tonight. I already knew that.
I climbed in.
The door shut behind me. Then I heard it … that small click of the bolt sliding into place on the outside.
And that was it. That was the moment my brain finally accepted what my body had known since the Chamber. This was real. This was happening. I wasn't going home tonight. I wasn't going home for a long, long time.
I sat down and pressed my hands flat on my knees and just … breathed.
The inside of the carriage was dark. One lantern hanging from the ceiling, swinging slow. It threw just enough light to make out shapes … the bench across from me, red cushion worn thin at the edges, thick black curtains pulled shut over both windows.
And then I noticed the shadows.
I don't know why I noticed them so fast. Maybe because there was nothing else to look at. But they were … wrong. Moving wrong. Not with the lantern, not following the swing of the light the way shadows should. They drifted on their own. Slow and quiet, sliding along the walls, curling up into the corners, then pulling back. Like they were breathing.
I watched one stretch all the way across the ceiling.
I told myself it was the lantern. Old flame, weak light, that's all it was.
But I kept watching. And they kept moving.
I pulled my eyes away and stared at the floor instead.
The carriage jerked and we started moving. Outside sounds faded quick … voices, iron, boots on stone … and then there was just the road underneath us. Wheels creaking. Horses breathing. Dark trees going past outside I couldn't even see through the curtains.
And then I looked up and he was there.
I don't know when he got in. I genuinely don't know. One second the bench across from me was empty and then it just … wasn't. He was sitting in the far corner of it, one arm on the window ledge, the other resting on his knee. Still. Completely still. Like he'd been sitting there the whole time and I'd just been too slow to notice.
Silas Vane.
He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the curtain beside him and his jaw was tight and there was something around him that I felt more than saw. The same heavy feeling from the Chamber. Like the air near him had a different weight. Like standing too close to something that was trying very hard to hold itself together.
Okay. Don't stare. Look away.
I looked away.
Say nothing. Just get through the ride. Don't talk, don't look, don't do anything stupid.
"How long is the journey?"
I said it before I even decided to. My mouth just … went ahead without me.
Nothing.
He didn't move. Didn't even blink from what I could see.
"To the Spire," I added, like that helped. "How long does it take."
He turned his head. Slow. Like I'd interrupted something he hadn't finished yet. His eyes found mine and it was that same look from the Chamber … measuring, quiet, like I was a math problem he didn't have an answer for yet.
"Long enough," he said.
And looked back at the curtain.
Right. Great. Super helpful.
I turned to my own window and pulled the curtain back just a little. Trees on both sides. Thick and dark and close together, branches reaching over the road so the sky was barely there … just small broken pieces of moon between the leaves.
I let the curtain fall back.
The shadows were worse now.
I didn't want to look at them but I couldn't stop. They weren't drifting anymore … they were pulling. Moving fast and sharp toward the corner where Silas was sitting, then snapping back, then going again. Toward him. Back. Toward him.
Like something was dragging them.
"The shadows…" I started.
"Don't." Hard. Not loud, just … hard. The kind of voice that means stop talking right now.
I stopped.
But then I saw his hands.
He was gripping the window ledge. Both of them, white-knuckled, and I could see the muscles in his arms standing out under his skin. His head was dropping forward. Slow. Like something heavy was pressing down on the back of his neck.
And the shadows were going into him.
Not toward him anymore. Into him. Sinking through his skin, through his hands, through his shoulders … like they were being absorbed. Like he was swallowing them whether he wanted to or not.
"Hey…" I sat up straight. "Hey, what is…"
The sound he made cut me off. Low. Rough. Horrible. Like something being forced back down a throat. The lantern above us flickered so hard it almost died.
"Stop the carriage…" I started.
"Don't." He ground the word out. His whole body was rigid now, every muscle locked. "Don't call them. Don't stop it. Just…"
He didn't finish. His breathing went ragged. Uneven pulls of air that sounded like it hurt to take.
I should've stayed on my side.
Any smart person would've stayed on their side of the carriage. Any person who'd heard "you're a cage for my monster" forty minutes ago and had any sense of self-preservation at all would have pressed themselves against the wall and waited for it to pass.
I crossed the carriage and sat down right next to him.
He turned and looked at me and his eyes … the grey was almost completely gone. Something dark had moved in behind it. Something that shifted and rolled like smoke that couldn't find a way out.
"Don't." Barely a sound. "Touch. Me."
I put my hand on top of his.
Silence.
Not quiet. Silence. The total kind. Like the world outside stopped existing for a second. The shadows froze on the walls. The lantern stopped flickering. His breathing … all that horrible ragged pulling … went completely still.
He went still.
I sat there with my hand on his and didn't move. His skin was cold. Way colder than a person's skin should ever be. And every muscle in his hand was locked up tight, like he was bracing for something to hit him.
But nothing hit him.
The shadows were gone. The walls were just walls. The ceiling was just ceiling. The lantern burned steady and quiet like nothing had ever been wrong.
I didn't move my hand.
He didn't move his.
I counted seconds without meaning to. One. Two. Five. Eight.
Then he turned his head and looked at me.
And I wished he hadn't.
Because it wasn't anger on his face. It wasn't cold or hard or any of the things I'd seen from him so far tonight. It was something way worse than all of that.
He looked scared.
Genuinely, deeply scared. The kind of scared that doesn't have words. Like I had done something that broke every rule he understood about how the world worked and he didn't have a single place to put it.
"How." Flat. One word.
"I don't know," I said.
"No one…" He stopped. Looked down at where my hand was still on his. "No one touches me."
"I figured."
"They don't…" Another stop. His jaw moved. "They don't survive it."
I didn't pull my hand back. I genuinely don't know why. Every part of me was screaming to move, to get back to my side, to put distance between me and him right now.
But I didn't.
"Well," I said, and my voice only shook a little bit, "I'm still here."
He stared at me for a long moment. Something moved across his face that I couldn't name and didn't want to try. Then he pulled his hand away from under mine. Slow and deliberate. Turned back to the curtain.
Didn't say another word.
I went back to my side of the carriage.
My heart was going so fast I could feel it all the way up in my throat. I pressed my back against the wall and looked at the ceiling and tried very hard not to think about what just happened or what it meant or why his eyes looked like that when he stared at me.
Nothing. It meant nothing. I touched his hand and the shadows stopped. Fine. Moving on.
We rode in silence after that. Long enough that my back started aching. Long enough that the silence went from suffocating to just … heavy. Something you stopped fighting and just carried.
He didn't look at me again.
I didn't look at him.
Then the carriage slowed.
Horses pulling back. A change in the sounds outside … voices, low and quick, an exchange between the driver and someone on the ground. Then a grinding. Deep and slow, like stone moving against stone. Something massive opening up.
I leaned forward and pulled the curtain back.
And I forgot how to breathe.
The Spire.
It didn't look built. That was the first thing. It looked grown … like something had pushed itself up through the earth a long, long time ago and just kept going. Towers curved at angles that didn't make sense. Walls that caught the moonlight and shattered it into pieces. Black glass and bone-white stone twisted around each other all the way up, higher than I could follow with my eyes, and the gate in front of us was iron and tall and covered in shapes I didn't have names for.
It looked like a place that had never once let anything go.
I let the curtain fall.
Swallowed hard.
This was home now.