Page 149 of Bound to the Dreadlord

In fear.

They see what I’ve become. They feel it rolling off me like smoke from a fire that has not gone out.

I no longer hide it.

Let them see.

I cross a scorched plain, the remnants of battle still etched into the ground. Blackened stone. Cracked bones. Swords rusting where they fell.

This is his land.

His war.

His scars.

And yet it calls to me.

The wind changes. The air tastes like home.

I follow it.

And I don’t stop.

Not until I see the tower on the horizon—the dark silhouette of the stronghold rising from the ash. Rebuilt stone. Flickering torches. A beacon for something old, something dangerous, something mine.

He’s there.

He’s always been there.

And I am not the girl who left.

I am not a victim.

I am not a ghost.

I am everything he broke… and everything he could never destroy.

I am loving and choosing him out of my own free will.

He’s my home.

56

VEYLAN

Ipush open the doors to the throne room, not expecting anything but dust and silence.

Instead, I see her.

For a moment, my mind refuses to accept it. My breath stalls. My heart forgets how to beat.

She stands beneath the fractured light pouring in from the broken stained-glass windows, her figure cloaked in gold and shadow. The throne room has long since crumbled—its banners torn, its walls cracked, its seat of power just a relic of ruin. But she looks untouched by time.

Otherworldly.

Unreal. Perhaps a ghost I have conceived in my head because of how much I pine for her.

I blink.

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