Chapter 125: True bodies
Vaeron remained motionless long after the door closed. The sound of the werewolf princess’s hurried footsteps disappeared down the corridor, leaving only the faint dripping of water behind.
His jaw tightened.
He could still feel the tremor of her wrist beneath his fingers, the shape of her wrist against them. It was small, warm, and too fragile.
His gaze dropped. There was a faint red mark where his fingers had closed around her skin.
Vaeron stared at it. Something inside him twisted. He hated that. He hated even more that he knew exactly why.
For a moment, he said nothing. Then his fingers curled slowly into a fist.
He had frightened her. Again. The thought irritated him more than it should have. Not because he cared whether she was afraid of him.
Fear was useful. Fear kept creatures alive around things they did not understand. But there had been something different in her expression this time.
It wasn’t merely fear. She had looked at him as though she had been trying to understand what had happened to him. Even after everything, she had still tried to help him.
Vaeron exhaled through his nose and turned his attention toward the bath. The water had already begun to cool.
He should have known better than to allow himself to drift that deeply into unconsciousness, but he had not slept properly in days.
Perhaps longer.
He couldn’t remember the last time his head touched a pillow without his mind immediately returning to the same problem.
Regarharon.
The name alone was enough to make his expression harden. That was where he had been all this while. Instead of resting and recovering in his chambers, he’d been with the Elders.
For nearly two days, they had been moving between the outer territories of Blackvale, examining the wards that surrounded the realm and attempting to determine exactly what had gone wrong.
The first signs had appeared shortly after the attack. At first, they assumed the disturbance was external because they had tested the boundaries. Something had attempted to enter, and that explanation was simple enough.
Too simple, to be precise.
By the time Vaeron had been summoned to the council chamber again, the Elders had already begun cross-checking the ancient warding records against the current ones.
The conclusion had been unsettling. Several of the wards surrounding Regarharon were weakened.
Not broken. Weakened.
There was a difference. A broken ward meant something had forced its way through, and a weakened one meant something had been interfering with it over time. But the more they examined the surrounding barriers, the stranger the matter became.
Some of the wards were almost completely depleted while others were weaker than they should have been.
Yet several—several were perfectly intact, untouched with not even the slightest fluctuation.
That had been what disturbed them most.
Vaeron remembered the silence that had settled over the council chamber when the Eldest had laid the findings before them.
One of the Elders had leaned over the ancient map, his fingers tracing the boundary lines. "If the breach were external," he said. "Then the disturbance would be consistent."
It wasn’t.
The wards had been tampered with selectively. Someone—or something—had managed to interfere with certain sections while leaving others completely untouched.
Vaeron had stared at the map for several moments before the answer became unavoidable. Someone was breaching the wards from within—someone already inside it, just like Vaeloria had assumed.
Now with proof and validation, that realization changed everything. They had begun searching immediately.
Vaeron had gone with the others. They had moved through the northern boundaries first, then toward the western territories, examining every ward stone and every point where the protective barrier intersected with the land.
But they found nothing.
No clear trail or obvious source—or creature waiting foolishly enough to be discovered—but the lingering disturbance in the magic.
However, that shattered shortly after.
Vaeron’s eyes narrowed at the memory. The phantoms appeared without warning.
One moment, the path had been empty, and the next, the air had changed. The temperature dropped so sharply that even the Elders stopped moving.
Then came the first shadow.
It emerged from between the trees, its form barely distinguishable from the darkness around it. Another followed, and then another, and within moments, they were surrounded.
Phantoms.
One of the Elders had warned them before the first attack even came. "They will not fall easily." He spoke through the attack.
He had been right. They were unlike ordinary creatures.
They had no true bodies to strike. They moved through the darkness, disappearing and reforming elsewhere, forcing the group to constantly turn their attention from one direction to another.
Vaeron remembered the first one lunging toward him. He moved before it reached him, and his claws cut through its form, causing the thing to simply scatter.
However, it never died. Its form disintegrated as his claws cut through, but a second layer, reformed behind him.
He’d turned just in time. The fight had lasted far longer than it should have.
The Elders had attempted to contain them with magic, but the phantoms broke through it.
One managed to slip past the barrier entirely before being intercepted, and the other emerged from the ground.
There had been no rhythm to them, or a predictable pattern, but movement in the darkness.
Several attacks, counterattacks—again and again and again.
They had spent hours fighting creatures that seemed almost impossible to kill. Every time one was brought down, it took considerable energy to ensure it did not simply reform.
By the time the final phantom disappeared, the surrounding forest was silent once more, but none of them had mistaken that silence for victory.
They were exhausted, the Elders more than most.
Vaeron had barely noticed his own injuries. He had been too occupied with the wards.
Something happened there—something that still did not make sense. And the more they investigated, the more certain Vaeron became that the attack had not been random.
The phantoms had not simply appeared, but they had been guarding something. Or someone.
That thought had followed him all the way back to Blackvale.
Even after the others had finally agreed to return, Vaeron had remained awake. They attempted to persuade him to rest, but he refused.
There were still too many unanswered questions.
And somewhere beneath all of it was the uncomfortable possibility that the attack at the fair and what was happening around Regarharon were connected.
Though it was already obvious, it made much sense now.
He returned to his chamber only because his body had eventually forced the matter. Even then, he had not intended to sleep.
Then he found her, seated on his bed, her attention completely immersed in whatever she was reading not noticing him standing at the doorway.
For a moment, he attempted to say nothing. Watching her alone seemed to fulfill him in ways he couldn’t explain.
She was the werewolf princess, his supposed enemy, and a punishment on mortality’s accord.
Why did she elude a certain kind of relief when her presence was supposed to make him despise her? Wasn’t that the prophecy? He thought. Or did the prophecy mistake everything for someone else?