Chapter 9 Ashes between us

The night was a mouthful of silence.

I stood beneath the blackened sky, its stars hidden by a storm that had been building since dusk. Something ancient stirred in the air unspoken, heavy. It wasn't just the pull of the mate bond anymore. It was something deeper, darker. Something that made my skin prickle as if unseen eyes watched from every shadow.

Ronan hadn't said a word since we left the ruins.

His silence spoke louder than any roar.

We were both drenched in blood and grief, but his fury shimmered just beneath his skin, like lightning behind clouds. I wanted to reach for him. To tell him he didn't have to carry this alone. But the words snagged in my throat, tangled in guilt.

Because I knew I'd brought us here. Every lie I told, every truth I'd swallowed, every moment I'd hesitated it led us to this.

To Kade's body on the cold stone floor.

To the scent of betrayal thick in the air.

To the silence between me and Ronan that hurt worse than any wound.

We camped beneath a crumbling outpost, tucked between cliffs and a ravine that whispered like it had secrets of its own. The wind shifted strangely here. The trees grew sideways. And the air had that haunted chill that made you believe in ghosts, even if you never had.

I could barely look at Ronan without feeling the weight of what I needed to say.

So instead, I wandered.

The moon was shy tonight. Barely a sliver of light followed me as I picked my way through the rocks, toward the cliff's edge. From here, the valley below looked like a wound deep and endless, its shadows writhing like they were alive.

My chest ached.

Not from fear.

From knowing the truth I'd kept buried too long would rip everything apart.

I wasn't just marked.

I was cursed.

The mark on my back the one that burned whenever Ronan touched mewasn't a bond mark at all.

It was a seal.

A prison.

And something inside me wanted out.

"I saw you."

Ronan's voice struck through the silence, low and rough. I didn't turn.

"I figured you'd follow." I said it too softly, like the wind might carry the words away before they reached him.

He stepped beside me, not close enough to touch. Just close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him. Even now, even in the aftermath, he still smelled like wild storms and pine and something untamable.

He didn't speak again.

So I did.

"I lied to you."

Silence.

"I should've told you what the mark meant. What I really am."

He didn't flinch. Didn't speak.

So I pushed on, like ripping the skin off an old wound.

"It's not a mate mark. It's not even from this realm."

That got his attention.

He turned, eyes sharp as shattered obsidian. "Then what the hell is it?"

My throat tightened. I stared down at the abyss below. "A brand. A curse from the Shadow Court. The Queen marked me before I was even born. She knew I'd be the key to breaking the veil between worlds. She sealed something inside me... something ancient."

His jaw tensed. "And you waited until now to tell me?"

"You think I wanted this?" I snapped, finally turning. "You think I liked waking up every night with my back on fire, not knowing what I was or why I kept seeing things no one else could? You think I enjoyed wondering if I was going mad?"

His silence cut worse than any scream.

I swallowed hard. "I didn't tell you because I didn't know what it meant until Kade's death. Until the blood unlocked the rest of the seal."

"And now?" he asked.

I looked down at my hands. They shimmered faintly, as if the moonlight didn't know how to touch them. "Now, I think whatever she sealed inside me is waking up."

He turned away. Fists clenched.

And then he said the one thing I hadn't prepared for.

"Maybe you're the threat."

We didn't speak again until the fires died.

We traveled fast, silent, the mountains falling behind us like memories we didn't want to keep. The closer we got to the Vale's edge, the more twisted the world became. Birds flew backward. Shadows clung to light. And I kept hearing whispers in the wind my name, always my name.

Ronan stayed ahead, always watching, never touching.

Something was breaking between us.

Or maybe it already had.

We reached the mouth of the Vale just as night began to bleed into morning. The trees here were wrong thick with veins, bark like old flesh. And the path... it pulsed. As if it had a heartbeat.

I didn't want to go forward.

But I didn't want to go back either.

Because I knew what waited behind us.

Death. And betrayal. And a war that had already begun.

"You're sure it's through here?" Ronan asked, not looking at me.

"Yes."

He stepped onto the path first.

I followed.

Each step deeper into the Vale felt like sinking.

Like I was being swallowed by something older than time.

It was there past the bloodroot trees, past the weeping stones, past the field of bones that we found the first gate.

It pulsed like a wound in the world.

I didn't know how I knew what it was. I just... did.

"The seal's breaking faster than we thought," I whispered.

Ronan didn't answer. He stood too still. Like a man on the edge of something he couldn't return from.

"I'll go through first," I offered.

He didn't stop me.

Didn't say a word.

So I did.

The moment my foot touched the threshold, the air ripped open.

A scream tore out of the gate not human. Not beast. Something else. Something ancient and angry.

And then the world exploded.

When I opened my eyes, everything had changed.

I was no longer in the Vale.

I was somewhere else.

Somewhere... wrong.

The sky was black. The ground beneath me pulsed like flesh. The air smelled of ash and decay. And in the distance, something laughed.

A sound I hadn't heard in years.

A voice I thought I'd buried.

"Welcome home, little key," the Shadow Queen purred.

I turned slowly, heart thundering.

And there she was cloaked in midnight, her crown made of bone and flame, her eyes burning like twin eclipses.

She smiled, and the ground cracked.

"You've finally come back to me."

I tried to move.

I couldn't.

Chains of shadow wrapped around my wrists, my ankles, my throat.

"You opened the gate," she whispered. "And now I can finally... step through."

The Shadow Queen steps forward, her hand reaching out, brushing Ember's cheek with a coldness that seeps into her soul. "You were never meant to escape," she murmurs, her voice like silk wrapped in thorns. Behind her, a portal opens showing Ronan, trapped in flame, screaming her name as the world begins to tear itself apart. "Now... choose, little flame. Him or the world."