Chapter 1
Two months have passed since Ardyn broke Vallen’s bind and escaped him.
The sanctuary has been repaired, although golden seams remain where Ardyn used Aurum to mend the damage. Life has settled into something almost peaceful.
Ardyn doesn’t trust it.
Vallen has disappeared entirely. His manor has been abandoned, and his remaining Shadows have vanished with him.
Ardyn and Draven have grown extremely close during those two months, but neither has acted on their feelings. They sleep in separate rooms, spend most of their days together, and have developed an easy, bickering companionship that feels dangerously close to domestic.
Open with Ardyn unable to sleep because Vallen’s silence frightens her more than his pursuit ever did.
Mirelle eventually finds them with news:
They found Vallen.
He’s living inside the House of Gilded Art with Bastian Crowe.
Ardyn found that freedom was not nearly as satisfying as she had hoped. There was no more golden script binding and burning the skin of her wrist. No more sleeping with one eye open, no demands waiting when she woke or requests for dangerous missions disguised as favors. No expectations. No chains. Everything was simply... quiet.
And somehow, the silence felt worse than the constant go, go, go that had consumed the last ten years of her life. For two months, anticipation had steadily built inside her, leaving her with the constant sensation of something looming just beyond sight. The sanctuary had given her nothing but safety and room to breathe, yet silence was quickly becoming something she couldn’t stand.
Ardyn sat within that dreaded silence now, perched atop the sanctuary as she watched the sun crest over the distant horizon. It was a far cry from the rooftop of Vallen’s manor, but it had become somewhere she could escape when the sanctuary walls began to feel too close. Somewhere she could be alone with the thoughts that refused to leave her.
Every morning for two months, she had climbed up here and watched the sunrise, waiting for the day Vallen finally struck. She knew him too well to believe he was somewhere quietly licking his wounds. Vallen schemed. He planned. He moved pieces across a board no one else realized they were playing on, yet Ardyn had heard absolutely nothing. The only information they’d managed to gather was that his manor had been abandoned and his Shadows had moved into the House of Gilded Art.
Vallen alone was enough to worry her.
But Vallen working with Bastian Crowe?
That terrified her.
Bells began ringing somewhere below as the Devout gathered for their morning prayers. Ardyn had learned to tune out most of the words by now, letting their voices blend into a distant hum as they drifted toward the rooftop. There was only one word she still listened for.
Draven.
Her eyes slipped shut as the name dragged an unwanted memory with it. The relic dagger sinking into Draven’s side. His eyes widening as the Aurum took hold. Blood spilling between his fingers no matter how hard he pressed against the wound. The horrible moment when his knees struck the floor and Ardyn thought she was going to watch him die.
A hand settled on her shoulder.
Ardyn jolted back to reality, Aurum flaring instinctively beneath her skin as she twisted toward whoever had managed to sneak up on her.
The Aurum faded from her fingertips as Draven dropped onto the stone ledge beside her, his legs dangling over the edge with the ease of someone who knew the fall would be more of an annoyance than an actual threat.
“You know, most people announce themselves before sneaking up on someone sitting several hundred feet above the ground,” Ardyn muttered.
“Most people don’t sit several hundred feet above the ground before breakfast.”
“I like the view,” she murmured.
A quiet laugh escaped him as he looked toward the horizon. “Fair.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The prayers continued below, the voices of the Devout rising through the sanctuary until Draven’s name reached them once more.
Draven closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, almost as though he could breathe in the prayers and the power they offered him.
Ardyn made no attempt to hide the fact that she was watching him. His skin was sun-kissed now, no longer carrying the sickly pallor that had frightened her when they first arrived. His black hair was tousled around his face in a way that told her he had probably rolled out of bed and come looking for her.
She liked that thought far more than she should have.
Two months, and still neither of them had done anything about whatever was growing between them. There had been lingering touches, embraces that lasted longer than necessary, and far too many moments where Ardyn caught herself staring at his mouth. But nothing more.
The timing never seemed right.
They both knew there was something there. They could feel it through the bond even when neither dared put words to it, but the timing had never seemed right.
After returning from Vallen’s manor, after Ardyn had broken the bind and pulled the relic dagger from Draven’s body, they had slept beside one another. She had curled against him sometime during the night, and his arms had remained around her until morning.
Then the sun had risen.
Repairs to the sanctuary had begun, and Ardyn had slowly found herself retreating to the rooms that had belonged to her as a child. Night after night, she slept alone in the same bed she had slept in a century before, despite the ache in her chest constantly urging her to cross the halls and find Draven.
She knew he felt it too.
Sometimes the bond betrayed him.
She would wake in the middle of the night with loneliness sitting heavily beneath her ribs, only to realize the emotion wasn’t entirely hers. Other nights she would lie awake and feel the faintest pull toward his rooms, as though some invisible thread between them had gone taut.
Still, Draven never came.
Not because he didn’t want to.
Because she had chosen her own room, and he would never make that choice for her.
Somehow, that only made her want him more.
“You’re up here every morning,” he said, his eyes still closed and his face tilted toward the rising sun.
Ardyn shifted her gaze to the sanctuary below, to the patched stained-glass roof and the golden veins threaded through the colorful panes. She had spent the first three weeks of her freedom repairing everything Vallen had broken, piecing shattered pillars and broken glass back together and sealing every fracture with molten Aurum.
She could have disguised the damage, smoothing the gold until the scars disappeared beneath the original stone. Mirelle had asked her once why she hadn’t.
Ardyn hadn’t known how to explain it then.
Looking down at the golden veins traveling through the sanctuary now, holding together everything that had once been broken, she thought she finally understood.
Broken did not mean ruined. Some things deserved to remember what they had survived.
“I like watching the sun rise,” she said, rubbing her palms against the cool stone.
“Is that all you’re watching for?”
She felt his eyes settle on her.
Ardyn leaned back until she rested against the sloped stone behind them, turning her gaze toward the brightening morning sky.
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
It was a lie.
She knew exactly what else she was watching for. Who she was waiting for.
“I have a question I’ve always wondered about,” Draven said after a long moment.
Ardyn didn’t reply, only turning to face him. His eyes were so piercingly blue in the morning sun that it felt like staring into chips of ice. She hummed, telling him to ask away.
“Why do you choose roofs?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.
“What?” Ardyn raised an eyebrow.
“Any building tall enough to make most people shudder, and you inevitably find your way onto the roof.” He watched her closely. “Why?”
Ardyn looked back toward the horizon, considering the question. She had never really thought about it before. Rooftops had simply become places she went when the walls around her started to feel too close.
“The wind,” she finally said.
Draven’s brow furrowed. “The wind?”
“You asked.” She said as a cool breeze swept across the rooftop, catching the loose strands of her hair and carrying them away from her face.
“I did. I’m simply waiting for the rest of the answer.”
Ardyn sighed.
“At Vallen’s manor, everything belonged to him.” Her fingers dragged absently over the stone beneath her. “The rooms. The clothes. The food. Even the jobs I took were his decisions.” She swallowed, her thumb rubbing over the smooth stone.
Draven’s jaw tightened.
“But the wind didn’t.” She lifted her face as another gust swept across the roof. “It went wherever it wanted. Over the walls, through the city, across places I had never seen. Nothing could hold it.” Another gust rushed over them, stronger this time and she closed her eyes, letting it wash over her.
Draven watched her for a moment. “It made you feel free.”
Ardyn shrugged. “For a little while.”
Silence stretched between them before Draven looked toward the sprawling sanctuary below.
“You know you can leave now.”
Ardyn smiled faintly. “I know.”
“You don’t have to sit up here and imagine it anymore.”
She turned toward him. “Maybe now I just like the wind.”
A slow smile spread across Draven’s face.
“Maybe.”
Ardyn bumped her shoulder against his. “Don’t ruin it.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
She settled beside him again, letting the wind rush over them. For once, she didn’t feel the desperate urge to follow it beyond the walls.
Maybe that was progress.
Or maybe it was simply easier to stay when Draven was sitting beside her.
“Now I have to ask you something,” she said, looking at him. His blue eyes were focused on her face.
“It’s only fair.” His lips tipped into a smile.
“Your eyes,” she started, and his entire body went still. “Sometimes they’re blue. Sometimes they’re black with those little stars moving around in them.” She waved vaguely toward his face.
His brow lifted slightly.
“Does it bother you?” he asked carefully, his expression suddenly difficult to read. His eyes were still blue, which was the only reason she kept going.
“When you go all galaxy, I know you’re about to do some scary shit.” She shrugged. “I always assumed it had something to do with your emotions.” Her brow furrowed as she studied him, catching the brief flicker of darkness through the blue. “Am I wrong?”
Draven let out a long breath, turning his gaze toward the sky. “You aren’t wrong.” He was quiet for a moment. “They represent different parts of me. The black and the stars are what I am.”
As he spoke, the blue disappeared. Darkness consumed his eyes, tiny stars shifting within the endless black.
“They are the eyes of the God looking through the mortal vessel.”
Ardyn watched the stars move. “And the blue?”
Almost instantly, the galaxies cleared, revealing that piercing blue once more.
“The blue is who I am,” he said. “It’s the part of me that is grounded. The part that feels as mortals do.” His gaze shifted away from hers. “Not many people get to see the blue.”
Something warm stirred beneath her ribs, but before she could decide what to do with it, Draven’s expression changed.
“If you ever see something else,” he said quietly, “you have to promise me you’ll run.”
“What?” Her brows furrowed.
“If you ever look at me and see nothing.” His chest rose with a slow breath. “No blue. No stars. If my eyes become voids, you run.”
Ardyn stared at him. “Why?”
“Because it means whatever remains of my humanity is gone.” His voice had lost its warmth. “There will be nothing left but Death.”
The birds chirping around the sanctuary went eerily silent. Even the wind seemed to still, leaving the air unnaturally quiet around them.
“Is that something that could happen?” she asked, studying him closely.
“Only if what grounds me is stripped away.” His eyes found hers. And stayed there.
“And what grounds you?” she asked, though the way he was looking at her told Ardyn she might not want to know the answer.
Draven went very still. His blue eyes held hers, something unguarded passing across his face before his mouth parted.
“Oh, thank the Gods.”
Mirelle’s voice rang across the rooftop before he could answer.
