{"In Aeldoria, power was worn like a crown. In Drevina, it had to be hidden like a wound."}
CAELAN'S POV
They said Drevina was no place for beauty, but I had carved mine out anyway. My cottage stood at the edge of a willow grove, half-forgotten by the town and far enough from the Sanctuary ruins to go unnoticed. Vines climbed the white stone walls, blooming with night jasmine, starflowers, and creeping witch-ivy. In spring, the garden exploded in colour, dahlias, bleeding hearts, and black poppies plants that should not grow together, but did, because I asked them to.
Magic still lived here. Quietly. Softly. Like a breath held in the dark, and I had been away from Drevina for three days. Three days since I crossed out of Aeldoria, the shining, cruel kingdom of the Fae, my other home, if you could call it that.
And already, I had slipped and used my powers. My mother stood in the threshold of my kitchen, arms folded, eyes sharp as crow feathers. She looked out of place in all this colour, all stern lines and bone necklaces, like she had walked out of one of the darker stories people told to keep children inside at night.
"You used your power," she said. Her voice was laced with disappointment, coiled and cold. "At the Sanctuary."
I sighed, turning back to the herb water I was steeping. Lemon verbena and crushed violet. It was not a spell. Not really. Just comfort.
"I didn't mean to," I muttered, though we both knew that was a lie dressed in cheap robes. "The veil was thin. Something was wrong."
"That doesn't matter." Her voice dropped low, not for drama, but dread. "You cannot use your magic anywhere near where the Fae might sense it. Not even a spark. You think they will not notice, Caelan?" She stepped closer, eyes fierce. "They will. And they will find a way to kill you for it. You are neither theirs nor ours, and the Fae do not tolerate what they cannot control."
I looked out the window, where morning glories curled around the frame and sunlight spilled over my little sanctuary. This home, this life, it was not enough, but it was something. Something I had made with my own hands.
"I only meant to push the darkness back," I said quietly. "Just for a moment."
Her silence was heavier than her words, and I dared not tell her what I felt in that moment when the stones of the Sanctuary stirred under my hands, and the old waters seemed to breathe. I did not tell her that I felt him, the Sovereign Abyssal Morkai.
But she must have seen it in my eyes, and her voice softened. "Caelan, remember that even if we are here in Drevin, they are still wary of your powers."
I turned from the window. "I know Ma," and that was the end of our conversation. Night came slowly in Drevina. The kind of slow that felt deliberate,e like the realm itself wanted to make sure you were truly alone before it dropped the curtain.
I lay in bed, the scent of lavender and fresh soil curling up from the herbs tucked beneath my pillow. Moonlight filtered through the ivy-covered windows, sketching silver veins across the wooden floor. Everything was still the kind of still that whispered: you should let this go.
The connection I felt in the Sanctuar,y that flicker of something impossible had dug itself beneath my skin like a splinter and I turned onto my side, staring at the pale glow on the ceiling. My fingers twitched the way they always did when magic hummed too close to my nerves.
"Just a whisper," I muttered aloud. "It would not hurt to do it again."
The wards around the house pulsed gently under my skin, my spell work, subtle and veined with living roots. I sat up, pressing both palms flat against the soft linen of the blanket, grounding myself. Then, slowly, I reached inward not just to my power, but through it. I pushed outward, toward that ancient, almost-forgotten thread, and I expected resistance and silence, but instead, the magic responded like a breath catching in someone else's throat.
A pull and then a flicker, and a heartbeat not my ow,n and I gasped and pressed on. I felt my body buzz with excitement, and it was all that it took, and I got out of bed and moved to the window of my room, staring out at the night sky.
"Oh Caelan, you are going to get into deep trouble" I whispered to myself and then pressed on again and finally felt him.
"Thinking of me already, my dear Sovereign? "The words slipped from me, uninvited and silk-soft, like smoke curling through a keyhole, and it hit him. His stillness on the other end of the connection was sharp, and the magic blood, even the silence of him, stirred something inside me, something wild and reckless and years buried. I had not meant to reach so deep. I was only going to taste the thread, just enough to see if it still held. But he was there, and I could not help but add, "I did not mean to wake you, I murmured, letting the words trace the inside of his thoughts like fingers on skin.
There was a pause long enough that I could feel his pulse echo against mine and then, faintly, his voice, rough and low:
"Careful?"
The hunger in that single word almost made me shiver, and I let a soft laugh ripple across the link between us. Are you alone? I asked, knowing the weight of the question and sending it anyway.
"Why do you care?" he snapped back, a little too fast, a little too raw.
I did not answer right away. I let the silence hang thick, humming with implication, and then pushed just a little deeper. I wonder if you know what you look like, I whispered, resting there in your fortress of pearls. You are supposed to be terrifying, untouchable, and cold. But right now... You feel so human. It is quite unexpected.
Something shifted and Infelt him sit up, breath quickening, mind opening like a door half-forgotten.
"Stay out of my head," he said, but there was no bite to it. And I knew he smiled, and I felt it before he admitted it to himself.
"I couldn't if I tried," I whispered. "You're like a storm I keep sailing toward, and every thought of yours echoes louder than the last."
"How the fuck are you able to reach my mind?" he asked. His voice cracked at the end of I,t not with fear but wonder.
"I have no fucking idea" I responded. "Maybe it's just you or maybe it's just me, or maybe it's always been both of us, breaking rules too old to remember."
His next words were barely spoken. "You're dangerous."
I smiled, soft and slow, like moonlight sliding across a blade and "So are you, "I said, quieter this time. "That's what makes it interesting."
And then, before I could be tempted to stay, to reach even deeper, to risk unravelling everything, I let go and pulled back as I felt my body shiver. I lay there in the dark, staring up at the wooden beams above my bed as if they would offer answers. My chest was tight, like something had curled up behind my ribs and refused to let go.
Gods, I could still feel him and not just the echo of his voice or the ghost of his breath but the weight of him. The way his presence filled the hollow places in me, like it had never truly left. Morkai was not just a memory. He was a wound that had not healed right, still tender, still bleeding beneath the skin.
I sat up slowly, pressing my palms to my face. My fingers tremble, and that instinct to be near him, to touch him, to fall into whatever gravity still pulled us together across realms. Morkai, Sovereign of the Abyssal Court, and what was I? A cast-off. A witch born Fae scraping out spells in the mortal realm, hidden among flowers and forgotten things. I knew how this ended and knew what it would cost.
Desire did not undo banishment. Love did not unmake thrones.
Even if I reached for him again, even if I found a way to touch his world, to feel his skin, to whisper his name aloud without flinching, we would be ruined. I would be the crack in his crown. He would be the flame in my blood. And the world, both fae and mortal, would crush us just to feel clean again. My hands would not stop shaking, and I moved from the window, wrapping the linen throw around my shoulders as I moved through my cottage. The garden beyond the windows was still drenched in moonlight, the blooms quiet and unknowing. But inside me, everything stirred.
I wanted him and the magic help me, I fucking wanted him body, soul, and all the danger between and I would do everything to get him, even if it cost me my life.