The Fallen Princess: Unbound

Chapter Fourteen

“Bring it.” Maeryn’s voice cut cleanly through the low murmur of the sanctuary, and the room obeyed the way living things obeyed an old warning, quietly, quickly, without argument.

People rose from where they’d been scattered along root-latticed balconies and shadowed walkways. They gathered in a loose ring around the long table where Zaria, Zakai, Aldric, and Koen sat, their red eyes bright in the lichen glow, their faces unreadable beneath hoods and inked markings.

Zaria felt the circle close in like a held breath. The sap-ink band around her wrist tingled faintly, as if it recognized what was coming and wanted to remind her she had already stepped into this willingly.

Maeryn stood at the head of the table, one hand resting on the carved wood as if she owned the very grain of it. Her tattoos, bark-black and sap-dark, ink catching the pale lichen light like living shadow.

Koen sat beside Zaria, still as ever, his posture composed, his expression blank. But Zaria had learned by now that stillness wasn’t always calm. Sometimes it was a door held shut. A pair of guards approached from deeper in the sanctuary, moving with practiced care.

Between them, cradled in cloth that looked like woven ironroot, was a rectangular shape heavy enough to bow their arms slightly. The crowd parted just enough to let them pass, then closed behind them again.

Aldric leaned forward a fraction, squinting as though he expected the book to leap up and bite someone. “If it does something dramatic,” he whispered, “I’d like to request a warning first.” Zakai didn’t even look at him. “Be quiet.”

Aldric sat back, chastened for all of half a heartbeat. “I am,” he whispered, as if this was his idea of restraint. The guards lowered the bundle onto the table in front of Zaria with a reverence that didn’t feel like worship so much as respect for something dangerous.

The ironroot cloth was wrapped in crisscrossed layers, knotted in a way that looked less like binding and more like containment. Zaria stared. Her mouth went dry. This was the object she had crossed oceans and corrupted forest to reach.

The thing Christian had called a chance. The thing Callen had opposed with every instinct he had. The thing that might decide she had no right to return unchanged. Zakai’s hand moved, slow, toward the bundle.

“I’ll take it,” he said, voice calm and firm. “If it wants blood, it can have mine. If it wants a cost, it can take it from me.” Zaria turned sharply, heart tightening. “No.” Zakai’s eyes flicked to her, surprised only in the smallest way, then hardened into stubborn loyalty.

“You have a family. Children. A—” “A war,” Zaria cut in, quieter now but no less steady. She reached out and placed her hand over his wrist, stopping him. “And I am the one who needs it. I am the one who will use it. So I am the one who will pay.”

Zakai’s jaw flexed, the muscle jumping once. “Zaria...” She shook her head. Not angry. Just tired in a way that came from carrying too many lives in her hands. “You don’t get to barter yourself for me,” she murmured. “Not here. Not for this.”

Koen’s gaze shifted to her then, red eyes sharpening. “It will make you pay,” he said, voice low enough that only the four of them, and Maeryn, could hear. “Not metaphorically. Not gently.” Zaria met his gaze and didn’t flinch. “I know.”

Koen’s expression didn’t soften. If anything, it tightened, like he didn’t want her courage to be mistaken for ignorance. “You can still refuse,” he said.

Zaria’s lungs pulled a breath that felt heavy. “And how many will die if I do?” Her voice came out weary, not theatrical, just worn down by inevitability. “How many lives will be saved in exchange?”

For a moment, the sanctuary seemed to quiet further, as if even the roots overhead wanted to hear her answer. Maeryn’s eyes narrowed, assessing the shape of Zaria’s resolve the way one tested a blade for cracks. Then she nodded once.

“Open it,” Maeryn said. “And consent.” Zaria’s fingers hovered over the ironroot cloth. The crowd was close enough she could feel their attention like heat against her skin. Her wrist tingled again beneath the sap-ink band.

She didn’t hesitate. She tugged the knot free. The cloth loosened in a slow unraveling, sliding away with a faint rasp, like dry leaves dragged across stone.

Beneath it was the book, thick, old, its cover not leather but something darker and smoother, almost like bark polished by centuries of hands. There were no words on it. No title.

Only faint grooves carved into the surface, patterns that suggested binding sigils without forming any one symbol clearly enough to name.

Zaria’s breath caught. Even closed, it felt awake. Not warm. Not cold. Aware. She placed her palm on the cover. The book didn’t thrum. It didn’t glow. It simply accepted her touch with a weight that felt like a gaze turned upon her from somewhere very far away.

Maeryn’s voice came again, firm as law. “Say yes. Out loud.” Zaria swallowed, throat tightening. She glanced once at Zakai, his expression tense and protective. At Aldric, strangely serious now, humor held back like a knife in its sheath. At Koen, still, watchful, his gaze fixed on the book as if he knew better than anyone how easily a person could be reduced to a tool.

Zaria drew a breath and said, clearly, “Yes.” The world tilted. Not like falling. Like stepping through a doorway that wasn’t there. The sanctuary vanished.

The table, the roots, the faces, the lichen light, all of it dropped away as if it had never existed, leaving Zaria standing alone in a space that was not a room and yet felt contained. The floor beneath her feet looked like water.

It rippled faintly when she shifted her weight, but it wasn’t wet. It didn’t cling to her boots. It reflected a dim, silvered light she couldn’t locate, a glow that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Around her, there was only darkness. Not empty darkness... darkness with depth. Darkness that felt like an ocean, vast and watching. Zaria’s breath sounded too loud. Her heart beat once, heavy, and the ripples beneath her boots pulsed outward, rings spreading through the reflective surface like something had answered her.

Then a voice spoke. Not from ahead. Not from behind. From within the dark itself. The cost you must pay is in memories of the one you love. Zaria’s stomach dropped. Her chest tightened so sharply it hurt.

“Who?” she demanded, the word scraping out of her throat. “Who do you mean?” The darkness seemed to lean closer, and the floor beneath her feet rippled again, deeper this time, as if the space itself inhaled.

The one you call River. “No.” The word came out raw and immediate, like instinct. Like refusal was the only way to breathe. “No,” she said again, louder, her voice breaking against the void. “Pick something else.”

The darkness did not answer immediately. It did not bargain like a person. It waited, patient and unmoved. Zaria’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I already lost him once,” she choked, and the sentence shattered around the pain that rose with it. “Don’t take him from me again.”

Her throat burned. Her eyes stung. Her lungs felt too small for the grief that surged up, sudden and violent like a wave breaking over her head. She didn’t try to look brave here. There was no one to impress.

There was only the dark and the voice and the reality of what she’d agreed to without knowing what it would demand. “Please,” she rasped, and the word tasted like humiliation and love and desperation all braided together.

“Take something else. Take... take my sight, take my strength, take years off my life, take—” Her voice broke. “Not him.” The floor rippled under her boots with every tremor of her body, each sob sending rings outward as if the space could feel her cracking.

“I can’t—” she gasped, pressing her palm to her chest as if she could hold her heart together physically. “I can’t lose him again.” Her knees threatened to buckle. Tears fell, hot and unrestrained, and the silvered floor caught them in its reflection like small, bright wounds.

The darkness remained. Unmoved. It did not comfort. It did not accuse. It simply spoke again, slow and inexorable as tide. You have consented. Zaria’s mouth opened, another refusal forming... And then the world snapped.

She was back. Back at the table. Back under root-arches and lichen light. Back with faces and red eyes and breath and the quiet run of water.

Her body jerked as if she’d been yanked from deep water too fast, lungs drawing in air so sharply it hurt. Tears streamed down her face in hot tracks she hadn’t had time to wipe away, her chest heaving as if she’d been running.

Hands grabbed her shoulders. “Zaria!” Zakai’s voice. Close. Urgent. His fingers shook her once, not hard, just enough to anchor her back into her skin. “Zaria, look at me.” She blinked, disoriented, vision blurring.

She looked at Zakai, startled by the fierce worry in his eyes. Her cheeks were wet. Her throat was raw. Her heart was pounding like it had been shattered and stitched together too quickly. Zakai’s voice lowered, controlled but strained. “What did it take.”

Zaria stared at him. The question didn’t make sense at first. Not because she didn’t understand words, because her mind felt… blank in a specific direction, like turning to look at something and finding only fog.

“I…” she began, and stopped. She reached for the answer the way she reached for light in the dark. Nothing. Her brows drew together. She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she said, and the honesty of it startled her.

Zakai’s face tightened. “Zaria—” She shook her head slowly, confused. “I don’t—” Her voice faltered. “I don’t know what it took.” Aldric let out a breath he’d clearly been holding, tension easing only a fraction. “That seems… bad,” he murmured.

Koen hadn’t moved. But his eyes were fixed on Zaria’s face with a stillness that felt almost predatory, not hungry, not cruel. Assessing. Watching for the shape of the wound. Maeryn’s gaze held Zaria in a hard, steady line. “Do you remember the bargaining?” she asked.

Zaria blinked again. Her lashes clumped with tears. “Why... ” she began, and her voice cracked strangely. “Why am I crying?” The question landed in the sanctuary like a stone dropped into water. Zakai went still. Aldric’s mouth opened, then shut.

Koen’s eyes narrowed the slightest fraction, and Zaria felt suddenly cold beneath her cloak. She lifted her hand to her cheek and wiped at the wetness, watching her fingers come away damp. Her brow furrowed deeper.

“I was… somewhere,” she said slowly, trying to assemble pieces that weren’t there. “There was dark. A voice. It—” She stopped, because the more she reached, the more the memory slid away like oil through fingers.

It was there and not there. A shape without detail. A pain without a name. Zakai’s grip on her shoulders tightened, then softened, like he was trying not to hurt her. “Zaria,” he said, voice rough. “You were saying a name.”

Zaria stared at him blankly. “A name?” she echoed. Her own voice sounded distant to her. Not numb exactly, just… disconnected, as if the thing that should have made her react had been cut away cleanly.

Zakai’s throat worked. “River,” he said carefully, as if speaking it might break her. “You were saying River.” Zaria blinked. The name sat in her mind like a pebble in an empty bowl. No warmth. No grief. No love. Just… sound.

“I…” She swallowed. “I don’t know who that is.” The words came out soft. Confused. Not denial... truth. Zakai’s face went pale in the lichen light. Aldric’s expression sobered completely, humor fleeing him in an instant as if it had never existed.

Koen’s gaze flicked once toward Maeryn, then back to Zaria, as if confirming what he already knew would happen the moment she said yes. Maeryn’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes sharpened with something like grim approval. Not pleasure. Not cruelty.

Recognition of the book’s work. “The book is yours,” Maeryn said. Zaria turned toward her slowly, still wiping tears she didn’t understand. Her chest ached with the aftermath of a grief she could no longer hold in her hands.

She looked down at the book. It sat on the table in front of her, closed and quiet, as if nothing had happened at all. As if it hadn’t just reached into her and taken a piece of her life without leaving a bruise anyone could see.

Zaria inhaled shakily. Then nodded once. “I understand,” she said, even though she didn’t... not fully. Not yet. But the book was there. And the war was coming.

And somewhere deep inside her, beneath the confusion and the salt of tears, her body still remembered that she had screamed. Even if her mind no longer knew why.