They could not see him.
None of them could, not Aeren, not the silver-clad guards with their polished blades and illusion-slick eyes.
Not the mortal girl with the fire in her gaze and his sister's face.
He had been watching them for days. For years. For decades.
Perched within the fractured edges of the old archway, where magic had long since soured and shadows thickened unnaturally, he observed the field.
His form stretched like mist along the stone, unmoving, unbreathing. Only his eyes remained, piercing, full of slow-burning hate.
There.
Aeren Ashthorne on horseback. Elegant, poised, his back straight as a sword's spine. .
His lip curled, his heart filled with bitterness and rage.
Fool.
Bastard.
He watched Aeren ride across the training field, his hair catching the wind, as the white horse, Velithrae, he recalled, moved with a gait so smooth it might as well have been dancing.
And just standing there.
Was the girl.
His shadows pulsed at the sight of her.
She stood still, the mortal Keira, gaze fixed on Aeren, her eyes lit with some quiet awe. And it was wrong, it was blasphemy, because her face was the same.
That mouth. That jawline. Those haunted, curious eyes.
Elya.
My sister.
He drifted lower, forming a shadow across the broken pillar behind her. No one noticed. They never did anymore. That was the punishment, the curse Riven had carved into him after the bloodletting under the Winter Moon.
Banishment. Not death. It was never death. That would have been mercy.
"I see you," he whispered, voice like cracked glass dragged over stone. "Little copy. Little echo."
She shifted slightly. Perhaps she felt it, a chill along her spine, a flicker of unease. But she didn't turn.
His smile was cold.
It had taken him decades to gather strength again, to bind himself to the forgotten places in the palace grounds
In it he had almost given up.
But no.
He was patient. He had learned patience in the void Riven cast him into.
All this time he had been calm, at peace.
But today, his rage stirred.
He watched Keira tilt her head, saying something to Aeren as he slowed the horse and approached.
He didn't need to hear the words. He knew the cadence of her voice before she spoke. Elya had been a harp in a storm, soft, unrelenting, full of questions she had no business asking.
But she had been killed. Murdered.
His entire world shattered.
The only thing he had ever sworn to protect, gone.
By the same prince who claimed to love her. The same prince who now walked this place like a god. The same prince he had one considered a close friend.
"Does it haunt you still, Riven?" He murmured. "Does her name choke you, even now? Does the sight of this mortal drag memories to your mind? Does it remind you of your failures?"
The wind tugged through the trees. Aeren dismounted, the white of his tunic catching the light. The girl stepped back quickly, nervous.
She fears them, he thought. Good.
But then she looked up again, and her gaze was steady. Resolute.
He hated how familiar it was.
He hated that it made him ache.
He pressed closer to the edge of the ruined stone. His body was smoke, his fingers wind. But his anger? That was real. That was whole.
He had waited so long to rise.
"You should have killed me," he whispered, "but you didn't. You left me broken, and you forgot the old laws. You thought the curse would bind me forever."
His eyes burned like coals.
"Aren't you curious? What happens when old things wake?"
He looked back to Keira.
He had seen the way Riven's eyes followed her earlier. The tension in the throne room. The way the court had gone still when her name was spoken. She didn't know what she was, not yet.
But he did.
He watched her press her hand gently to the horse's neck. The beast leaned into her touch. Of course it did.
Elya had always been good with animals.
You can't be her, he thought furiously. You are only mortal. A trick of blood. A coincidence.
But the resemblance—
It gnawed at him.
"Gathering your strength, are you, Aeren?" He mused, eyes narrowing as the High Fae adjusted the saddle and gave instructions to one of the older human women that had been with him for some years. "Do you think you can protect her? The way none of you protected Elya?"
He drifted further back, into the deeper part of the ruin where no light reached.
He could still hear the echo of Riven's voice, that night beneath the moon...
The memory cracked through his thoughts.
Riven's blade. Her piercing scream. The look on her face. His own hands, bloodied too late.
She had betrayed them, yes. She had lied to all of them. But she was still his sister.
And now this mortal girl walked the palace halls like a ghost reborn.
Why?
The wind shifted.
His shadows thickened. His power curled at the edges of the broken stone.
Not long now.
They were unraveling, all of them. Cael foolish Cael, with his mockery and reckless games. Aeren, with his guilt and unreadable silences. And Riven, the king in waiting, whose control cracked more by the day.
He would wait just a little longer.
Just until the girl remembered who she was.
Or until someone else told her.
And then?
Then the court would burn.
His eyes closed. For a moment, he could almost hear her laugh again, Elya, not Keira, free and bright, back when they were children chasing stars through the forest of the old kingdom.
He clenched his hands until his form trembled.
That kingdom was gone. Riven had killed it. And now his crown sat high while everything beneath it rotted.
But soon…
Soon, he would rise from shadow to flame.
And this time, he would not miss.