Shadows So Cruel

Malyr² finds Galantia¹ at the cliff where their fates first crossed as children, though neither knew it then. He claims his love was real — that he'd hated her for making him feel what he shouldn't for a presumed Brisden, and loved her all the harder for it. She refuses his kiss, his touch, his overtures about bonding. When he leans in, she spits on his lip.

His shock crystallizes into cold calculation: he asks her to choose between a five-count and a sudden push. She tells him she'd rather jump than bond. He whispers for her to fly — and shoves her off the cliff. Falling, terrified, she erupts into white feathers. Both Malyr's² and Sebian's³ ravens guide her unkindness safely to the beach below. She has learned to fly through fear.

Tidestone's bells toll for real when Malyr's² forces strike. Lady Brisden⁷ — who Galantia¹ warned to flee — abandons her escape carriage and presses a cloth-wrapped amulet into a maid's hands for her daughter. Lord Brisden⁸ has discovered his daughter is a Raven and sent house guards to seize her.

A wooden splinter pierces Lady Brisden's⁷ thigh when she falls shielding Galantia¹ from a soldier. Galantia¹ flees to the bell tower, the only high point left, but a premature ballista strike brings it crashing down on her.

Buried in rubble, she cracks the amulet's salt crystal. No shadows come — only a gaping emptiness that swallows her from within. Malyr² finds her by following his shadows, which pour into her void unbidden. She is not a deathweaver. She is something far rarer.

Asker⁴ leads Galantia¹ and Sebian³ to the gallows on the cliff overlooking the sea. Lady Brisden⁷ hangs from the middle noose, her green dress tarred, her blonde hair matted with pitch, white down clinging to the embroidery — each feather evidence of the secret she kept for nineteen years.

Lord Brisden⁸ killed her after discovering his wife had harbored a Raven under his roof, then escaped by ship. Galantia¹ collapses, clinging to boots still warm from the morning sun.

She will never hear the answer Lady Brisden⁷ gave her husband at the end — that she had loved her daughter the way she should have all along. Galantia¹ calls her mother for the first time meaning it, grief pouring from a heart that finally understands what thirteen lost children and one stolen one had cost this woman.

In the quiet of their shared bed, Sebian³ tells Galantia¹ what held him back from kissing her. Six years ago, his bondmate Ravenna¹² was pregnant and unable to shift. He'd gone to buy her favorite pie — and his unkindness was attacked by a great owl, knocking him unconscious. He woke to find his camp burning, his sister draped over a barrel being violated by Prince Domren,¹⁰ already dead.

Ravenna¹² burned alive in their hut while he lay concussed in the snow. Asker⁴ blamed him for years, calling him a drunk and a failure. The truth was simpler and crueler: he'd been getting pie. He apologizes for leaving Galantia¹ unkissed, then finally says he loves her. Their first kiss erases five agonized years of distance, and she tells him to please shave.

Malyr's² shadows have been building for days without release — Galantia¹ refuses to absorb them, and watching her kiss Sebian³ has driven his jealousy past coherence. He traps her in a cage of darkness, forces his mouth to hers, and pours shadows through her defenses. She shifts and escapes. He chases through forests, pins her behind a frozen waterfall, and forces himself inside her while his bond claws at hers.

She slaps him. For one instant, his pitch-black eyes clear and he sees her tears. He withdraws. His voice breaks on an unfinished apology. She tells him never to hold back, so she'll never forget what he is. His instructions to Sebian³ are clipped: train her to fly. They're going to Valtaris.

At Vhaerya's border, Galantia¹ walks into the cursed shadows with Malyr² on one flank and the deathweaver Lorn⁶ on the other. The darkness feels familiar — three-quarters of it is Malyr's,² released accidentally as a boy when a catapult crushed his sister and grief became a blast that killed thousands.

The road is paved with perfectly preserved corpses. Galantia's¹ focus fractures as Lorn⁶ taunts her, and when she stumbles, Lorn⁶ strikes with burning shadows that prevent her from shifting. Malyr² shields her, coughing black blood as his own shadows lash his face open.

Galantia¹ feels the bond scream with approaching loss — and her void answers, echoing his power in a blast that hurls the darkness back. Both collapse. She wakes with her palm on his bare chest, his shadows already streaming into her.

Before dawn, Malyr² enters Lorn's⁶ quarters with an ultimatum: bond with her fated mate Aros⁹ and leave forever, or die. She refuses, taunting him with memories of the dungeon where they were both violated as children — how she'd recreate his powerlessness to trigger the arousal and self-hatred that kept him chained to their shared darkness.

Their toxic bond was a decade-long loop: her provocation, his rage, mutual degradation mistaken for connection. When she attacks, he realizes no exile is severe enough.

He suffocates her with shadows, weeping as her body goes still, then carries her to a pyre he'd already built — knowing she would never have let him go. He lights the torch and keeps a whispered promise: her ashes will drift on the wind forever.

Galantia¹ enters the chancery and offers what she once swore she'd never give: the bond. She's not doing it for love — she's doing it because four people died to keep her alive, and lifting Valtaris's curse is the only way their sacrifices mean anything.

Malyr,² reading in his nest, doesn't look up. He tells her he will never bond — he's already arranged to send her and Sebian³ to the island of Lanai, relinquishing his claim because he forced himself on her and is unfit as a mate. She knocks the book from his hands.

Sebian³ arrives, already knowing about the plan, and supports the bonding — not because he wants to share her, but because her void is starving and only Malyr's² shadows can feed it. After long silence, Malyr² agrees: tonight, where they first met.

On the cliff where their fates first crossed, Sebian³ braids Galantia's¹ hair into the pattern of a bonded Raven and pledges himself — not through a soul-bond he cannot give, but through a vow to treasure and fly with her until the end.

Then he sits on a rock with roasted chestnuts and watches. Malyr² and Galantia¹ dance to distant music from minstrels in the bailey. His shadows pour into her void, and the brightness at his core expands as their bond seals — anoa reaching for anoa — and he calls her his future queen.

That night, her amplified void causes shadow blasts that set the chancery ablaze. Her hands must be bound with cotton strips. She is not merely a void. She is a thief, capable of stealing and wielding any Raven's gift — the rarest power in recorded history.

Over three painstaking days, Galantia¹ clears Valtaris's shadows one road at a time, mounted behind Malyr² as he controls the flow ahead. The black shingles begin to sparkle.

At the Perch, Malyr² digs through rubble to reach his sister Naya's crushed body, shadows spiraling out of control until Galantia¹ presses her absorbing palm to his chest and drains them. In the hot spring carved into the mountain, he tells her what he's practiced for days: that he will be the darkest patch of sky around her so everyone can see how she sparkles, and that he will love her beyond death among the stars.

They make love in the steaming water — tenderly, for the first time — until her hand wanders to his backside and he recoils as if burned, eyes flooding black. He shifts and flees without explanation.

Lord Aros,⁹ Lorn's⁶ bereaved fated mate who arrived for the coronation, ambushes Galantia¹ at the hot spring with a net and sedatives. His fate-gift showed her coming alone.

He drugs her ravens, rows her to a waiting ship, and surrenders her to Prince Domren's¹⁰ soldiers — not to kill her, but to ensure Malyr² suffers the way Aros⁹ suffered watching his mate destroyed. The soldiers stab Aros⁹ and leave him bleeding in the boat. Domren,¹⁰ now styling himself king after his father's death, takes custody.

On the voyage to Ammarett, he rapes Galantia¹ repeatedly and orders his men to do the same. She is dunked in the ocean to exhaust her ability to shift, then locked in Ammarett's deepest dungeon. Malyr² feels the bond screaming but cannot trace her through the sedation's fog.

Malyr's² anoa slips through a ventilation shaft carrying a message tied with blue ribbons: steal my gift, wield my darkness, fight your way out. When Lord Brisden⁸ arrives to cut off her finger as leverage, Galantia¹ absorbs the anoa's shadows, kills the jailor with deathweaver power, and blasts through the keep — collapsing part of the mountain.

Outside, Malyr² leads hundreds of Ravens against the gate while Sebian³ picks off archers with shadowy arrows. They breach the keep. In the throne room, Malyr² fights toward Brisden⁸ and slashes his face open.

Then the wounded Domren¹⁰ hurls a dagger at Galantia.¹ Sebian³ throws himself into the blade's path, fires one final arrow through Domren's¹⁰ skull, and collapses. Galantia¹ steals his pathfinder gift as his dying wish — so some part of him stays with her forever.

Asker⁴ delivers a letter Sebian wrote months before the battle — the night he shared supper with Asker⁴ and Marla⁵ and learned the truth. Asker's⁴ recurring vision showed a dagger in Ammarett's throne room and one of two men dying to save Galantia.¹

The identity kept shifting: sometimes Malyr,² sometimes Sebian.³ Sebian³ chose himself without hesitation, ensuring the bonded pair would survive to rule and raise children. His letter asks them not to grieve but to get drunk, dance around fires, and make love like it's spring.

Galantia¹ and Malyr² are crowned at Valtaris, where human farmers and Raven families now work the same soil. On the temple roof under the stars, Malyr² drinks wine and talks to Sebian³ about mashed apples and baby names — living fully, the way a farmer's son demanded with his dying wish.