Chapter 36:
Not Alone Anymore
Grace shut the door behind her and didn’t look back.
The knight stayed outside, as ordered. No one would come in. No one would interrupt.
She didn’t care that her floor was soaked with blood. Didn’t care that the maid was still there. Didn’t care that her foot left red prints on the stone every time she moved.
She just sat down on the edge of her bed.
No posture. No elegance. No act.
Her head was bursting.
Not aching. Not pounding.
Bursting.
Like someone had crammed fire through her skull and locked the exit.
She couldn’t focus. Her thoughts came in jagged flashes. Words—faces—memories—too loud, too fast.
Too much.
She gripped her temples, breathing hard. Mana still thrummed beneath her skin, leftover from earlier. She hadn’t closed her Core. She hadn’t sealed it. She’d just walked away, half-lit and leaking like a cracked lantern.
Stupid. Sloppy. Who cares.
Everything burned.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think—tried to remember what she was supposed to do next.
But all that came back was a smear of blood, a broken scream, and the memory of her own voice, cold and quiet, saying: “I’ll take everything you have.”
She began to giggle.
Just a little at first. Tight, breathless, pushed through clenched teeth.
Then she let go.
A low, rasped sound at first. Then sharper. Rougher. More like choking than laughter.
“Look at me,” she muttered, staring at the floor, voice hoarse. “Look at this mess. You seeing this, huh?”
She didn’t raise her head. Just kept staring down at her blood-soaked toes, the streaks on the rug, the cooling corpse ten steps away.
“You watching, you smug, grinning bitch?” Her tone cracked. “The big bad version of me from the dream? The one who thinks she’s got it all figured out?”
She barked another laugh, raw, broken. “Well guess what, you cryptic piece of shit. I did it. I killed someone. You happy now?”
Her fingers clawed through her curls. Her scalp ached. Her shoulder throbbed. Her Core still hummed like an open wound.
“I ripped her fucking arm off. Didn’t even blink. You proud of that? You want to give me a gold star next time I visit hell?”
Another laugh, harder now, echoing against the stone.
“I’m so fucking done being pushed around,” she hissed. “By assassins. By voices. By freakshow nightmares with my face and too much eyeliner.”
She shook her head, giggling again. “You wanted a lunatic, right? You wanted to drag the real me out of the hole and let her scream? Good fucking job.”
She leaned forward, pressing her palms to her forehead like she could hold her brain in with both hands.
“Tell me, was this your plan?” she whispered, eyes wide, flickering pink at the edges. “Was this the scene? Is this the page where I snap? Where I ascend?”
She looked up slowly, eyes unfocused, tears mixing with blood on her cheek.
“Well fucking spoiler alert…”
She smiled.
“I’ve been broken long before this chapter.”
Her fingers twitched against her temple.
“So, I’ll break you too,” she whispered. “I’ll break everyone who thinks it’s a good idea to tinker with my head…”
The pressure surged again.
Her Core flared once, violently. The headache turned white. Not pain. Not sound. Just white. Blank. Empty. Gone.
Grace’s eyes rolled back. Her limbs gave out.
She collapsed backward into the blood-slicked floor, limbs sprawled, breath shallow.
The room fell silent again.
No more laughing. No more cursing. No more fire.
Just a girl in a puddle of red.
--:--
“Lady Marren!”
Elyne looked up from the desk, ink drying on a half-finished requisition form. She was seated in the southern study of the estate, halfway through a report she hadn’t wanted to read and already on her third cup of tea. The voice from the hallway didn’t wait. The door opened a second later and one of the estate guards stepped in — tall, pale, and visibly rattled.
She stood immediately. “What happened?”
“She’s awake,” the guard said. “Lady Grace.”
Elyne felt her breath catch. “When?”
“Not long ago. A servant went in… she didn’t come out.”
Elyne narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”
“She was caught stealing,” he said. “Lady Grace confronted her. Killed her.”
Elyne froze. Her voice went quiet. “She did what?”
The guard pressed on, clearly wanting to get it all out in one breath. “It didn’t stop there. She summoned one of her personal knights. Then marched across the eastern wing, barefoot, covered in blood, still in her nightshirt. She went straight to the servants’ quarters. Found the head maid. Had the knight throw her to the floor in front of the staff.”
Elyne stared.
The knight swallowed. “She cut off the woman’s finger. In front of everyone. Told her it was ‘one finger for a second chance.’ Then she walked away like nothing happened.”
For a moment, Elyne said nothing.
Then she slammed the quill down so hard the tip snapped clean in two.
Elyne stood up so quickly the chair scraped hard against the floor.
Her face had gone pale. Not with fear, but with something worse. Worry, layered under disbelief, wrapped in a barely restrained edge of panic.
She looked at the knight. “Where is she now?”
“In her chambers. She told the knight to let no one in.”
Elyne didn’t respond.
She was already moving.
She pushed past the guard without waiting for his salute, the hem of her robe catching briefly on the edge of the desk. She didn’t fix it. Didn’t slow down. Her boots hit the stone hall with a clipped rhythm that echoed behind her.
Guards stepped aside as she passed. Servants cleared the way without needing to be told.
Everyone had heard the rumors. But Elyne didn’t need rumors. She needed to see Grace—right now.
The hallways shifted as Elyne passed.
Servants who had been whispering near the stairwell fell silent instantly. A page who’d been carrying clean linens nearly dropped the stack as he caught sight of her. Two junior knights in the outer corridor straightened, saluted, and quickly stepped aside.
They all knew where she was going.
And more than that; why.
She could feel it behind her. The weight of the estate. The tension. The rumors. Every eye that caught a glimpse of her pulled away just as fast, afraid to meet her stare. Afraid to ask.
She didn’t care.
She had one destination.
Grace’s wing.
She turned the final corner and saw him.
The knight stood exactly where she expected — outside Grace’s door, posture perfect, back straight, gaze forward. He didn’t wear his helmet. He didn’t need to. She recognized him. Tall, broad-shouldered, the cousin from Grace— the one Liliana had handpicked. Quiet. Steady. Loyal to a fault.
She stepped toward him. “Open it.”
He didn’t move.
“I said open the door,” Elyne repeated, sharper now.
Still, he stood firm.
“She gave an order,” he said, voice calm but not apologetic. “No one enters.”
“I outrank her,” Elyne snapped.
He didn’t blink. “By station, yes. But she carries the blood of the duchess. And the duchess is not here.”This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Elyne stared at him, disbelieving.
“You think this is a game? You think this is about protocol?”
“I think it’s about trust,” he said. “And Lady Grace trusted me to guard that door.”
His words weren’t cruel. They weren’t even defiant. Just steady. Grounded. The way only someone who’d made up his mind completely could be.
Elyne took a slow breath, hands curling at her sides.
Then narrowed her eyes. “Move aside.”
The knight didn’t flinch. “Only the Duchess can overrule her word.”
Elyne stared at him like she was about to start shouting — or worse. But she didn’t. Instead, her voice dropped.
“Grace?” she called out, loud enough to carry through the heavy wood. “It’s Elyne. Open the door.”
No response.
She stepped closer, placing a hand against the door. “Grace, I know you’re awake. I need to talk to you. Please answer.”
Silence.
She knocked once, sharply. “Grace!”
Still nothing.
She turned back to the knight, voice dropping into something colder. “If something’s wrong in there and you’re standing in my way, I will kill you.”
His jaw tensed. Just slightly. Not in fear, in resolve.
“Then call the Duchess,” he said. “Until she speaks, the door stays closed.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Because they were right.
Elyne clenched her fists.
Around them, more footsteps echoed. A pair of handmaids paused at the end of the corridor, whispering. A steward lingered by the archway, pretending to check the wall sconces. The two junior knights from earlier stood at the far turn, helmets tucked under their arms, not interfering, but watching.
They’d all heard the rumors. They’d seen the blood.
And now they were watching her.
Elyne inhaled slowly through her nose, then exhaled.
Enough.
She turned on her heel without another word, robes swirling around her legs, boots clicking once against the stone. She didn’t storm off — she was too well-trained for that.
But her silence said everything.
Not just to the knight, to everyone watching. The handmaids. The stewards. The guards. The estate. She had been Grace’s guardian. The voice of the duchess in her absence. The final word in every hall, every decision. Now she stood in front of a locked door, denied by a single knight. Denied by blood, by loyalty — and by Grace herself.
She hadn’t lost control. She’d lost authority. And everyone around her had seen it happen.
--::--
Corax returned through the Veil in silence.
There was no sound when he slipped back across the threshold. No fanfare. No light. Only the faint shimmer of mana bending against reality as the world accepted his presence again.
Grace was his anchor.
She always had been in the mortal realm since he awoke.
He did not step into the mortal realm. He bled into it, like ink seeping into water. His form shimmered into being near the ceiling of her chamber, coalescing above the window where the moonlight filtered through old glass.
And what he saw froze him in place.
Grace was lying on the floor.
Her small body sprawled in a dark red puddle that soaked into the rug, trailing out toward the edge of her bed. Blood marked her nightdress. Her curls were matted. Her face pale. Still.
Beside her lay a corpse — limp, human, lifeless. The maid, no doubt. What remained of her.
And Grace didn’t move.
She wasn’t dead. He felt the tether, thin, but unbroken. Her soul still clung to the plane.
But something inside Corax shifted.
A sting. Subtle. Deep. Instinct more than thought. A thread of unease in his core, like the pull of old memory colliding with something it should not touch.
He had seen death. Watched war. Drifted through the last breath of kings and the final screams of forgotten gods.
But this?
This was different.
She had done this. And then collapsed beside it like it meant nothing.
He drifted lower, his light flickering slightly as he hovered above her body. Not too close. Not yet. Just near enough to see the rise and fall of her breath.
It was shallow. Uneven. But real.
Corax dimmed his glow and watched her.
She was still Grace.
But barely.
And whatever waited behind her ribs — whatever flickered in the hollow between thoughts — it had grown bolder.
It had tasted blood.
And it was no longer satisfied with just watching.
Corax hovered in silence.
He watched her chest rise and fall, shallow, uneven, barely enough to count as breathing. Blood clung to her skin, to the floor, to the edges of the sheets that had half-slid off the bed. Her body looked smaller now. Not in size, but in presence. Like something had broken open inside her and the pieces hadn’t yet found their way back in.
And the seed was awake.
He remembered Halveir’s voice in the throne room. When the Void seeds, it waits. Then it changes. Mind. Soul. Body. It didn’t consume right away. It corrupted first. Slowly. Quietly.
Corax had seen the beginning of that change. In the dungeon. In the bakery. In the way she smiled like she had someone else’s mouth behind her teeth. And now, here she was, not dead, but unraveling.
He had lied for her.
He had stood before one of the oldest spirits in the Veil and said he didn’t know where she was. Said he’d end it if he had to. Promised he would do what needed to be done.
But he couldn’t. Not yet.
Because somewhere inside the girl lying on that floor was the child who had called him, not with magic, not with ritual, but with will alone. The one who summoned him out of curiosity and loneliness, and stared at him like he was a question she intended to answer.
He wanted her back.
Not the heir. Not the duchess-in-waiting. Not the vessel threaded with something older than fear.
Just her.
He drifted lower, silently.
Then he opened himself.
No spell. No chant. No preparation. Just raw Veil-born essence — the core of what made him him — pushed forward and pressed into her chest. It shimmered like fractured light as it passed through her, invisible to any other eye, but real.
The moment it entered her, everything shifted.
Her breath hitched. Her fingers twitched. A shudder ran through her body, not hers, not completely. The thing inside her stirred. Reacted. Pushed back.
Corax didn’t stop.
He poured more of himself in, not to destroy it, but to contain it. To hold it. To cage it just long enough to give her room to be herself again. Thin strands of luminous pressure wrapped around the seed, not binding it completely, but stalling it. Silencing it.
It resisted. But it obeyed. Just barely.
And when it settled, Corax was no longer whole.
Half of his form was gone, dissolved into her. The glow that usually rimmed his orb was dim now, flickering at the edges like a star dying in reverse.
He had given her something he could never reclaim.
He didn’t know why. Not truly. Not fully.
Only that she fascinated him. Not because of her power, but because she should have broken long ago.
And somehow, she hadn’t. Not yet.
He hovered lower and mended what he could. Skin sealed. Torn flesh knit back together. Her breathing evened out, still shallow but stronger than before.
When he was done, he pulled back into the shadows.
What remained of him hovered, barely holding shape. Fragile. Transparent. Dim.
But he stayed.
Because if she opened her eyes now, she would see him.
And that was enough.
Corax began to clean up.
--::--
It was morning again.
Grace opened her eyes slowly, blinking once, then twice, until the soft light filtering through the curtains stopped burning. There was no headache. No pressure crushing behind her eyes. No heat curling under her ribs. The absence of pain was almost disorienting. Her body felt like it had been reset, the kind of quiet you only got after something loud had torn itself apart and finally gone silent. For a few seconds, she just lay there, still. Listening to nothing. Feeling… not normal, but intact.
She sat up carefully, letting the blankets fall around her waist. Her limbs moved without protest. No sharp pain, no wounds, no soaked bandages. Her nightgown had been changed. The floor was clean. Someone had erased the entire scene, scrubbed it down to sterility like none of it ever happened. But she remembered. All of it. The maid. The blood. Her voice, cold and final. Her own breath catching as the world went white.
Grace stood slowly, bare feet brushing against the smooth rug. Her balance was steady, but her thoughts felt strangely light, like something had been carved out of her and replaced with air. She scanned the room, the books untouched, the desk reorganized, a cup of water set neatly on the side table. Nothing looked wrong. But it wasn’t right either. The silence didn’t hum anymore. It waited. Like the room itself knew not to speak unless spoken to. Then her eyes shifted upward.
He was there.
Floating just beneath the ceiling beam, dimmer than usual, light flickering around the edges like he hadn’t reformed properly. Corax hadn’t spoken yet. Hadn’t moved. But he was watching her. The way he always did. Quiet. Patient. But this time… something was different. She could feel him. Not just in the room — inside her. His presence brushed against something deeper than flesh or thought. Like a thread tied between them.
“There you are,” she said quietly. Her voice was rough from sleep, but steady. “You ungrateful spirit…”
She trailed off before the edge of her sentence landed. Because that tether, the one she always ignored, always pretended wasn’t real, was glowing faintly now. Not with color. With presence. Her brow furrowed. “What did you…?” she murmured, but didn’t finish. She already knew. Or maybe she didn’t want to ask.
Instead, she sat down.
No ceremony. No control. She simply folded onto the rug, legs crossed beneath her, hands resting palm-up on her knees. She closed her eyes, breathing slow and deep, and the weight behind her ribs pulsed gently in return. No more pressure. No more screaming. The thing inside her — the one from the dark — it was still there. Still coiled. But caged now. Distant. Like a prisoner sitting just far enough back from the bars that she couldn’t hear the breathing anymore.
After a long while, Grace opened her eyes again. The tension behind them was gone. Her vision was clear. She didn’t look at the mess. She didn’t look at the door. She looked up, where Corax still hovered, faint and flickering.
“Ehm… Thank you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry…. I guess...”
A silence followed. Not cold. Not awkward. Just long enough to mean something.
Then he spoke.
“How yer feelin’, little one?” he asked. His voice was soft. Off-balance. Hesitant in a way he rarely allowed himself to be.
Grace smiled faintly.
It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t cruel. Just real.
Her eyes had cleared to blue, but within them shimmered something else now. The pink was no longer a hint. No longer a thread. It curled faintly at the edge of the iris, not like shadow, but like flame. And deeper still, Corax saw something neither of them had ever spoken of. A glow. Dim, ancient. Warm.
And Corax thought a single word as he saw it. —Iras—
“I feel better,” Grace said softly.
She didn’t have to explain what better meant. No fire behind her eyes. No voices scraping at the edges of her thoughts. Just a cold clarity and the ache of something deep in her bones, not pain, not even fatigue. Just weight. A weight she could manage now.
Corax pulsed gently above her, his voice beginning to form again, but she raised her hand slightly and shook her head. Not to silence him out of command, but to stop him from saying what she already knew.
“No,” she said, her voice low but steady. “I know it was never me.”
She didn’t need to explain what it was. The thing behind her eyes. The whisper that wasn’t hers. The thread pulled too tight, always just beneath the surface. “This is fucked up,” she said, and let the words hang there like fog. “But for now… you gave me something precious.”
She looked up at him then, not smiling, but calm. Still.
“Trust me. I’ll pay you back.”
Corax said something then,"Yer changin', little one... but I don't know into what." soft and unreadable.
But Grace’s expression shifted. Her face remained serene, even beautiful, angelic in the way candlelight sometimes caught her features and made her look like a portrait painted in reverence, but the mood behind her eyes turned.
Not rage. Not madness. Conviction.
“Nyras…” she murmured, and the name tasted like ash on her tongue. “This world.”
Her gaze didn’t lift. It stayed on her open palms.
“Everyone here thinks they can take something from me. That I’m just another piece on their board. A child to move. A name to control.”
She exhaled once, slow.
“But they don’t understand.”
She lifted her chin.
“I won’t let anyone take anything from me. Not ever again.”
Grace grinned.
Not wide. Not crazed. Just the slow, deliberate curl of someone who knew exactly what she meant to do.
“Let’s burn the world down,” she said softly. “And then rebuild it.”
Her eyes never left him.
“Die trying. Or achieve everything.”
It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even ambition.
It was a promise.
Corax said nothing at first.
Just hovered, flickering softly, his form half-repaired, barely holding shape. But then, after a long pause, his voice drifted down, quiet, almost wistful.
“I’d like to see it,” he said. “Your new world.”
Grace didn’t answer right away. Her expression didn’t change. But the light in her eyes steadied, the grin fading into something more grounded.
She closed her eyes again.
“But first,” she said slowly, “we need to plan what to do next… out of this mess.”
She exhaled, not tired, just done with pretending she wasn’t already thinking three steps ahead.
“My mental slip-up yesterday was a little unfortunate,” she muttered. “A bit dramatic. Bloody.”
Then, after a beat: “But it was also me. I snapped because I won’t give up control.”
Her eyes remained closed.
“I never will.”
A moment passed in silence. Not shame. Not reflection. Just clarity.
“Now…” she murmured, brows drawing slightly together.
“What should we do with it?”
She opened her eyes again, cool and deliberate.
“At first…”
Then both of them felt it.
A pressure in the air, thick and powerful. It moved like stormlight wrapped in silence, coiling closer with every step. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t fast. But it carried weight — the kind of weight that bent the world around it without asking permission.
Grace froze mid-thought. Her eyes sharpened.
No. Not that presence.
She stood quickly, the shift from meditation to readiness almost instant. Her mana flared and her core pulled tight, not in defense, but in recognition. Familiar. Unmistakable.
She snapped her eyes toward Corax.
“Disappear,” she whispered.
Corax vanished without a word.
A second later, muffled voices came through the hall, clipped, formal, armored.
Then the door opened.
Lady Liliana of Ashford, Duchess of the Eastern Reach, war-mage of the Seventh Circle, stepped into the room. Her eyes were calm. Sharp. Surveying everything in a heartbeat.
They landed on Grace.
And Grace — the girl who bled, who broke, who crushed throats and smiled at shadows — blinked once, her mouth parting without meaning to.
“Moth—” she choked.
Then softer. Smaller.
“...Mama?”
Liliana crossed the room in a single breath.
Her armor didn’t creak. Her boots didn’t echo. She was just there, and then she was at her daughter’s side, kneeling, pulling her close.
“Shh,” Liliana whispered, one arm wrapping around Grace’s small frame, her voice barely louder than breath.
“My little girl…”