Chapter Ten :The Rescue

I didn't know how much time had gone by.

Minutes. Hours.

The bowels of stone hadn't changed—frozen halls, flickering torches, Kael staring at me like he was waiting for something.

I stood with my back up against the wall, arms crossed. My power still felt far away like it was being crushed.

Kael tilted his head. "You're quiet."

I exhaled sharply. "What do you want me to say? That you're right?"

His smirk was lazy. "That would be nice."

I rolled my eyes. "Not happening."

He sighed, stepping closer. "Arden, you have no idea what's coming. You believe you're making a choice, but there's no choice. That was a guarantee, the council made sure of it."

I frowned. "What does that mean?"

Kael's red eyes gleamed. "It means you're playing a game for which the rules were set before you were even born."

Something turned over in my stomach.

Before I could respond—

A howl tore through the air.

My heart leapt.

Ronan.

Kael's smirk faltered. He glanced up at the ceiling. The flickering torches lit as a heavy boom rattled the walls.

I swallowed hard. "Told you he'd come."

Kael snorted through his nose. "He's predictable."

Another crash. Louder this time.

I propelled away from the wall, my heart pounding. I still felt my power suppressed, yet something had changed.

The air around me pulsed.

The earth beneath me shook and vibrated.

Kael looked back at me, and his face was unreadable. "If you go with him, you'll never know the truth."

I lifted my chin. "Then I'll find it myself."

The door exploded.

Ronan walked through the smoke, eyes golden and burning.

His shirt was ripped, blood smeared across his arm, but he didn't seem to care. His eyes hooked into mine, intense, appraising — making sure I was still me.

For a half second, relief flickered across his face.

Then it was gone.

His body curled like a hunter. His voice was a growl.

"Get away from her."

Kael sighed. "You ruin all my fun."

Ronan didn't respond. He did not waste words.

He lunged.

Kael met him in the air, claws slamming against claws. The impact reverberated through the chamber.

I staggered back, my breathing too quick.

Then, suddenly—

My energy returned to me in a snap.

The suppression vanished.

I gasped, silver light flaring around me, that made my body instantly lighter, stronger.

Kael and Ronan collided against the wall, the two of them tumbling together and tangled up in a savage battle.

My fists tightened, blood heated and flowed through my veins.

I was no longer the same girl Kael had captured.

And I was not going to allow Ronan to fight this battle alone.

I took a step, power thrumming under my skin.

"Let's finish this."

Ronan smashing down the fucking door

Kael exposing additional extremely cryptic truths

Arden's power coming back just in the nick of time

The Breaking Point

I felt the power flow through me, electric and unstoppable.

Kael and Ronan slammed against the stone walls, locked in a vicious, clawed battle. Blood stained the ground. Snarls filled the air. But I wasn't watching them.

I was watching Kael's eyes.

He isn't fighting to kill Ronan.

He was waiting for me.

My hands tightened into fists, the silver radiance spilling out around my fingers. "I'm done being your pawn."

Kael grinned between bloody teeth. "Then be my queen."

Ronan bellowed and lunged, but Kael was moving, fast, too fast. He slipped by him, his hand reaching—

And grabbed me.

A burning heat surged through my veins. My vision blurred.

I could feel him in my head, pushing in against the power inside me, attempting to twist it, to grab it.

My knees buckled.

"Let go," I gasped, fighting.

Kael's grip tightened. His voice was low, steady. "I told you, little moon. You don't have a choice."

Silver and red lights fought between us.

The air rippled.

There was something deep inside me that broke.

Ronan's voice pierced the haze. "Arden—!"

Then—

Everything went white.

How's this?

High-stakes, jaw-clenching action

Kael making his final move

Arden's power at its breaking point

suspenseful cliffhanger ending — what happens now?!

After the Storm

Silence.

Shorthand shorthand training applied up until October 2023.

No snarls. No crashing bodies. No Kael's voice chirping in my ear.

Just… nothing.

And slowly then, sound came back — rough breathing, the rasp of stone turning, the distant dripping of water from somewhere out of sight.

I blinked.

Everything was a blur of silver light and shadows. My body was heavy, my head throbbing. I was kneeling there, my hands against the cold ground. The air reeked of charred earth.

I forced myself to look up.

The chamber was destroyed.

Fissures snaked along the stone walls. The torches had gone out. I was standing where a deep crater had formed.

And in the middle of it all—

Ronan.

He was on his feet, panting, his golden eyes open wide in a way I had never seen.

Not fear.

Something worse.

I gulped and rasped: "What… happened?"

He didn't answer.

He just stared at me.

I attempted to look up but my body shook." My power remained, but changed — more feral. I felt changed.

Then, movement in the rubble.

Kael.

He lay half-buried in fallen stone, blood smeared across his face, his breath ragged. But then he turned his head toward me, and he smiled.

"Now do you understand?" he rasped.

My pulse pounded.

I had lost control.

I had done this.

Ronan took a step between us, his posture tense, protective. His voice was low, nearly dangerous.

"Arden," he said slowly, "what did you do?"

I opened my mouth

But I didn't have an answer.

Because I didn't know.

Tornadoes—Jobless numbers rear their heads to the surface in the form of tornadoes.

Not afraid of her, afraid for her, Ronan

Kael's warped pleasure that she finally knows

A Monster or a Savior?

The air was too still.

The stone chamber lay in ruins, ground shattered, thick with the smell of scorched earth. I still felt my power buzzing under my skin — unstable, wrong.

Kael coughed, blood oozing out of his mouth, but those red eyes burned with something horrific. Satisfaction.

"You felt it, didn't you?" he rasped. "The truth inside you."

I swallowed hard, and my breath trembled.

No.

No, this wasn't the truth.

I turned to Ronan. He hadn't budged, his golden gaze fixed on me with something inscrutable. But I witnessed it  the strain in his shoulders, the way hands balled into fists.

I was scared of him.

My chest tightened.

"Ronan," I breathed, my voice almost gone.

He didn't speak right away.

And then he took a slow step toward me. "You lost control." His voice was steady. "But you can recover from it."

Kael chuckled weakly. "Come back?" He raised his head, staring at me. "She makes it clear she doesn't want to come back. Do you, little moon?"

Something inside me twisted.

I had felt it.

The power. The freedom.

For a moment, it had seemed easy.

With a snap of my fingers, everything in my path burned.

A cold chill slid through me.

No.

That wasn't me. That couldn't be me.

I turned to Ronan, my voice cracking. "Tell me I didn't—"

His jaw tightened. "You're not him, Arden."

Kael smirked. "Not yet."

Ronan's golden eyes grew dark, anger bubbling beneath the surface. "You need to leave."

Kael cough-gasped and pushed himself upright a touch. "And lose the moment when she understands what she really is?"

I shook my head, taking a step back. My hands shook, my breathing ragged. I couldn't be the thing Kael wanted me to be.

I wouldn't.

But what if I already was?

I turned and ran.

Away from Kael. Away from Ronan.

Away from myself.

Arden wondering whether she's the hero or the villain

Ronan not giving up on her

Kael realizing she's finally made peace with the darkness within her

Epilogue

The forest was silent.

Not that zen silence, either. The kind that's unnatural — the kind before a storm, before the world broke.

Arden was on the side of a cliff in a ragged dress with the wind whipping around her hair. Below stretched the valley in all its ruined splendor, the silver light of the moon covering a world left behind in her path.

She had done this.

The power still coursed through her, a constant, pulsing hum. She didn't fear it anymore. Not something she had to fight anymore.

But was it hers?

Or had she begun to become something else?

A shadow shifted behind her. She didn't need to look to know who it was.

Ronan.

His presence was stable, grounding. But he said nothing.

Because they didn't have words for what she'd done.

What she had become.

She let out a slow exhale, her breath disappearing into the frigid night air.

And then, just above a whisper, she asked the question that had nagged at her since that moment she had let go.

"…Was Kael right?"

There was no immediate answer from Ronan. When he did, his voice was low. Rough.

"I don't know."

Arden swallowed hard. She had thought he would deny it. To remind her that she was still herself.

But even he didn't know anymore."

Her hands curled at her sides, the power igniting again. The war wasn't over.

But the battle inside her?

That was just the beginning.