Chapter 439: How Long Can She?

Elien;

Balinar is still speaking when a voice cuts him off.

"Gather what’s needed," he says to whom I believe is one of his men in the shadows. "We leave within the hour. I want him back at Elkhorn before—"

"You can’t leave yet, Balinar"

The voice comes from behind him, as one of the cloaked figures steps forward from the loose half-circle they’ve maintained since the ritual ended, and Balinar stops mid-sentence.

I watch his shoulders go rigid before he turns around to face the figure.

"Excuse me?" He replies in what seems to be utter shock, and the figure lifts a pointed finger at me.

"The child," the figure says, and my skin crawls at how his voice is layered—Carrying an authority I haven’t heard any of them use with Balinar before. "She does not leave with you. Not intentions you have for her."

My brows crease at the words, and Balinar turns fully now to face the figure. The pleasant, patient cruelty he’s been wearing since he struck me slides off his face entirely—replaced by something colder as he raises a brow.

"I was not aware that the Sect had opinions on what I do with what belongs to me." He speaks, and I shut my eyes as I look away.

I hate when he talks about me like that. I hate it.

"We have an interest," the figure corrects, nd my brows crease.

They...have an interest in the baby?

"The child is not yours to dispose of." The figure continues, and I look back at it...At them.

"She is Ashfang filth growing inside my property—" Balinar begins, but he is cut off.

"She is power," another voice interrupts, and I realise more than one of them is speaking now. It’s...different figures contributing pieces of the same argument like a single mind split across several mouths.

"And we require her alive. We underestimated the younglings’ value. We cannot let you lay waste to such resources."

I don’t fully understand what I’m hearing, but my hand finds my stomach, as I stay pressed against the wall—watching them argue. I’m too tired and too rattled to make proper sense of anything they’re saying. My cheek still throbs where he struck me; I can still taste my blood. My mind is in shambles.

"What resources!? It’s barely fully formed. It’s nothing but filth!" Balinar spits, and the figures fall silent.

"You forget yourselves," he adds, and something in his voice shifts. It’s no longer just fury in it, but wounded pride.

"I did not haggle for your cooperation like some merchant at a market stall. I FREED you!!" He rages, and I feel the chamber go still.

The figures look amongst themselves, but Balinar keeps talking.

"Twenty of you, sealed beneath that mountain for decades, rotting in a curse older than any of your names. I found the binding. I broke it. I gave my own twin’s blood to the altar to buy your freedom, and you would not exist outside that prison today if I hadn’t." He continues as his jaw tightens.

"You may be stronger than me, in certain rooms, on certain nights. But do not mistake my patience for something you’re owed. Do not forget the reason you’re all here. I built the door you walked through!" He screams, and the silence that follows feels different—heavier, though none of the figures lowers their heads for him.

I watch the way they hold themselves, still and unbothered...and I understand, somewhere beneath my own fear, that whatever debt they owe him doesn’t run as deep as Balinar seems to believe it does.

"We remember what you sacrificed," the first figure says finally, flatly. "That is not in question."

"Then explain yourselves. How dare you go behind the agreement we had and demand that I keep that thing growing in his womb! You only ever asked for Elian at the start; you have no right to ask for more now! Killing that runt is my reward. Nothing will take that from me. Do you understand!?" Balinar snaps, but the figures say nothing.

The anger on Balinar’s face deepens as he glares at the figures.

"You know what? I had other plans, but now, since you’ve all forgotten your place, I will cut that bastard out of him right now!" He growls as he grabs a knife from his waist, and as the long blade catches the lantern’s light, I freeze.

It takes me a beat too long to understand what that means as he turns to me.

My mind is moving slower than it should. I keep circling back to the fading marks on my wrist, to the silence where Elián used to be, to the ache in my jaw—and it isn’t until Balinar takes his first step toward me that all of it finally clears enough for the actual horror of the moment to land.

He wants to kill our baby. Right here. Right now...

"No—" I breathe, scrambling backwards, with my palms scraping against cold stone. My whole body screams with the strain of trying to move fast enough while carrying the weight of a child I’ve never had to carry through a fight before.

"Balinar—" one of the figures starts, stepping forward, but Balinar doesn’t stop.

He crosses the space between us, and I don’t have anywhere left to go—my back finds the wall immediately, cold stone pressing hard against my spine, and I throw both arms up on instinct, trying to shield the only thing that matters right now.

"You will not," I gasp out, voice cracking, "touch her—"

"I built you," he says, and his blade is already lifted, "I can unmake anything that dares to grow inside you without my permission. And apparently."

Without thinking much, I throw myself at him.

I don’t know what I think fighting will accomplish. Even though I’m good with combat, he’s always been stronger than me—He has always used that strength like it was owed to him, and being pregnant, exhausted, still raw from the inside where Elián was torn away from me a few minutes ago, I have nothing close to the strength this needs.

I claw at his forearm anyway as I try to twist away...As I try to angle my body so any strike meant for my stomach lands somewhere—anywhere else instead.

My nails claw through his skin, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.

He catches both my wrists in one hand and slams them up above my head, pinning me completely against the wall with his own weight, and I feel the immovable heat of him at my front, trapping me completely between him and the stone wall.

"Stop," I beg—instantly hating myself for begging. Hating that after everything, after years of swearing I’d never let him hear me beg again, it’s the only sound left in me. "Please, stop, she hasn’t done anything—" I plead as tears well in my eyes and pour weakly.

"She shouldn’t exist." He breathes against my face as he lifts his blade higher.

"Balinar, we would advise you don’t—" The figure begins, but his snarl cuts them off.

"Shut up!"

The malice in his eyes tells me there’s nothing pleading will do. He’s already decided, and no one will save me. Not even the creatures.

"She’s all I have left. Don’t do this...Please. I’ll do whatever you want..." I beg further, and a vicious smirk splits his face.

"You’ll do whatever I want either way." He replies,

And with that, he swings the blade down.

I shut my eyes immediately.

"Elián!!" I scream inwardly. Useless and desperate, I reach for a presence that still isn’t there. A presence that hasn’t answered once since he was torn away.

"Elián, I’m sorry, I couldn’t—"

’What the—" Balinar’s shocked whisper cuts through the haze, and my eyes snap open.

The first thing I see is light. Light between Balinar and me. Soft...and gentle.

I look down, and freeze when I see that the light is coming from my stomach.

Blue...Impossibly blue. Suddenly the colour bursts brighter, and bigger, and it’s not just blue light anymore.

Balinar lets go of me instantly and rushes away as the light engulfs me.

My brows crease at first, then I freeze when I see that the palm of the hand that pinned me in place is now...burnt.

The light bursts into flames. Flame that swallows me whole, creating a perfect, closed orb around me, and my mouth falls open.

I brace for pain, but it never comes. The blue flame doesn’t hurt. There’s no heat against my skin, no burn, nothing but the strange, weightless sensation of being wrapped in something that moves like fire and glows like fire but touches me like nothing at all. Like I belong to it, and it would never hurt me.

Balinar staggers back even further with a scream I don’t expect; his blade clatters to the ground as his hand—the one that was pinning mine seconds ago—erupts into a ball of blue flames.

He shakes his hand violently, screaming as he kills the flames with his cloak.

I still don’t fully understand how hot the fire actually is. My body is safe and unharmed in the fire’s centre. In fact, it feels almost gentle...soothing.

But I start to understand when one of the Sect members lunges backwards too fast, too late—the hem of its cloak caught the flame’s outer edge, and the fabric goes up instantly. The creature beats frantically at its robes, stumbling further back from the light with the rest of them.

The whole circle of hooded figures retreats in near-perfect unison after that, watching the new orb of blue fire like they’re recalculating something—reassessing a threat none of them accounted for when they first agreed to whatever bargain brought us all into this chamber.

Balinar hisses several feet away, cradling his burned hand against his chest, and staring at me through the flames with an expression I’ve genuinely never seen on him before, not in all the years I spent learning every version of his face there was to learn.

"That’s—" he starts, and stops, as his eyes drop to my stomach...to the source of the light still burning protectively around me. He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I watch the realisation land on his face... As I watch something in his understanding of the world rearrange itself against his will, piece by piece, until his expression settles into something new entirely.

I press my palm flat against my stomach, feeling her there beneath it—steady, alive, humming with something ancient that I never once suspected she carried. Something that didn’t come from me and didn’t come from Elián either... not exactly. This is entirely her own.

She did this. Our daughter...did this.

Barely half her entire conception time, and she just conjured flame hot enough to blister a man who has never once, in all the years I’ve known him, been afraid of anything at all.

The orb of fire, however, doesn’t roar for long. I suddenly feel it beginning to flicker at the edges...thinning—the efforts of maintaining it clearly taking something neither of us can afford to keep spending for long.

These flames aren’t strong enough to last. They aren’t strong enough to end this, not permanently, not the way I wish it could. But it’s enough, for now, to hold him back.

Balinar straightens his spine slowly, still nursing his burned hand against his chest, and the shock on his face begins—slowly—to shift into something very unsettling.

He smiles.

"Well," he says, low, in mock admiration, watching the flames flicker "Isn’t that interesting?"

I don’t answer. I don’t have strength left to.

He takes one careful step back, out of range of the heat still radiating off the struggling flame, tilting his head as he studies me with the patience of a man recalculating a plan rather than abandoning one entirely.

"Let’s see how long the runt can keep that up." He whispers, and I shiver in fear as the flame flickers harder.

Oh no...what now? What happens if the flame dies? How long can she keep this up??

I need help. Someone...anyone... Please, help!!