Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
LARA
M y fingers tremble against the wrinkled silk of my court dress as I smooth the delicate material, trying to erase the evidence of what happened between us.
Everything has changed in the space of a breath—one moment lost in the dangerous passion of being pressed against the maze wall, the next watching Ivrael’s body contort and shatter into something I never could have imagined.
I can’t tear my eyes away as the ice dragon that was Ivrael launches himself into the night sky. The sound is like an avalanche compressed into a single thunderous beat of those massive wings. They catch the twin moons’ light and reflect it, sending it dancing across the maze walls as he soars over the towering ice walls, his long neck stretched forward as he pursues the hunters.
The elegant lines of his new form cut through the darkness. When he aims back into the maze, presumably at the hunters, what he breathes toward them isn’t fire—but it’s not ice, either. It’s like a flash of pure starlight, too bright to look into.
The display is breathtaking, beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache—and terrifying in its raw, untamed power.
My legs threaten to give out as the reality of what I’ve just witnessed sinks in. This is what he truly is—not just the cold, controlled duke I’ve known for the past year, but something enormous and elemental.
I wrap my arms around myself, but I can’t tell if I’m shaking from the bone-deep cold he left behind or from the overwhelming realization that everything I thought I knew about Ivrael, about this world, about my place in it, has just shattered like the ice still falling from where his wings first unfurled.
At my feet, the ribbons that until recently bound my wrists pulse with the blue light of their magic. Even released from them, I’m bound to forces I’m only beginning to understand.
Quickly, I kneel down and scoop up the ribbons, compelled to save them, though I don’t know why, and tuck them into my bodice.
Above me, his sinuous form wheels against the sky before sending out more starflashes, and my heart clenches with emotions I’m not sure I can even name. Fear mingling with wonder, for sure—but underneath it all, a dangerous thrill I can’t quite suppress.
Because despite everything—despite the terror and the cold and the knowledge that I should run as far as I can—part of me wants to see more, to understand what other impossible things exist in this world of ice and starlight.
In his world.
By all rights, I should be horrified. Everything I know about survival screams at me to run, to hide, to get as far away as possible from the creature of frost and fury that Ivrael has become.
I just watched the man I’ve spent a year caught between hating and wanting transform into something that shouldn’t exist outside of fairy tales and fever dreams. My rational mind catalogs the impossibility of it—the way his elegant frame shattered and reformed, how his aristocratic features elongated into that deadly muzzle, the sound of bones breaking and reforming.
But horror isn’t what floods through me. Instead, there’s only a bone-deep certainty pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
He’ll protect me.
For all his cruel edges and cold calculation, for all the times he’s proven himself exactly the monster I accused him of being, he won’t let them hurt me. The realization should frighten me more than his transformation did.
What does it say about me that I implicitly trust the very person who bought and imprisoned me?
A crack like breaking glass echoes through the maze—sharp and sudden as a gunshot—followed by screaming that makes my skin crawl.
The sound cuts off abruptly as Ivrael’s roar shakes the very ground beneath my feet. It’s a sound of pure fury, of avalanches and arctic storms, of death by freezing. It should freeze my blood, should send me running in blind panic.
Instead, something deep inside me responds, resonating like a struck bell. The sensation ripples through my chest, down my spine, out to my fingertips. It feels like recognition.
Like awakening.
Like something ancient and powerful unfurling beneath my skin, answering his call.
The maze walls begin to shudder and crack as Ivrael tears through them, his massive form demolishing this careful construction. The sound of shattering ice fills the air as he hunts the hunters, and I can feel his rage in each impact, each explosion of crystals.
Shards of ice rain down around me in a deadly, beautiful cascade, catching moonlight and starshine, turning the air into a storm of diamond dust.
I hold up my hands instinctively, expecting pain—but that’s when I feel it.
Power surges through my veins like liquid starlight, burning cold and blazing hot all at once. It floods every cell, every nerve ending, until I’m not sure where the sensation ends, and I begin. My skin tingles with it, my breath catching in my throat as the magic rises in me like a tide.
The force of it nearly brings me to my knees.
Is this what Ivrael meant about my heritage? About royal blood?
The power thrums through me, eager and wild. It feels like flying. Like falling. Like finally understanding why he chose me.
The falling ice stops mid-air, suspended in a glittering cloud around me like stars plucked from the night sky.
My skin tingles—no, it sings—with the awareness of every crystal, every jagged fragment. I can feel them all, their edges and angles humming against my consciousness like notes in a frozen symphony. The sensation floods my nerves until I’m dizzy with it, until I can barely tell where my body ends, and the ice begins.
When I flex my fingers experimentally, the shards dance and swirl in response. Not just responding—anticipating, eager, like they’ve been waiting for my touch. Like they know me.
The movement feels as natural as breathing, as inevitable as heartbeat.
“What the hell?” The words escape in a whisper that clouds in the frigid air, equal parts wonder and terror. My voice shakes, but my hands are steady as I direct the ice to spin faster, testing the limits of this impossible new ability.
Above me, one of the hunters screams again—high and desperate—before cutting off in a wet gurgle. Good. The vicious satisfaction that floods me at the sound should probably frighten me, but all I feel is savage joy.
Let them feel what it’s like to be hunted. Let them know what it means to threaten what belongs to ? —
The thought stops me cold, sending a shock through my system that makes the hovering ice shiver and chime.
When did I start thinking of myself as belonging to Ivrael?
I press my fingers to my lips, still swollen from his kisses, and try to sort through the tangle of emotions threatening to overwhelm me.
Desire and resentment. Pride and shame. Power and surrender.
But there’s no time to examine this revelation, this seismic shift in how I see myself—because the maze is literally falling apart around me.
Another of Ivrael’s roars shakes the foundations, and great chunks of ice break free from the walls.
My newfound power flares in response to the danger, to the resonance of Ivrael’s rage above. The magic feels like frost racing through my veins, like starlight caught beneath my skin, and I can’t tell anymore if I’m trembling from cold or from the sheer overwhelming force of it.
All I know is that everything has changed—the maze, the magic, my understanding of my place in this frozen world.
And maybe most terrifying of all, my understanding of myself.
I sense everything around me with a clarity like never before.
So I turn my attention to my power.
The power is a brilliant, electric blue, crackling with tendrils of white light that dance and sway with my movements. The metallic tang of magic flashes across my tongue, like a burst of energy fizzing and crackling with each movement.
As I raise my hand, the icy ground below crackling and popping with the release of energy, the world around me glows with a light that holds an otherworldly radiance.
The frozen ground beneath my feet smells of crisp winter air, earthy minerals, and that faint scent of ozone and electricity, like before a storm.
There’s also a hint of something darker, a scent of danger and destruction that lingers in the icy mist swirling around me.
A tingling sensation courses through my veins, as if my blood has turned to liquid fire. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying, like holding a live wire that surges with electricity.
Like holding starlight.
I reach out with this strange new power, feeling the structure of the ice, the patterns of cold that hold it together. It’s like seeing music or tasting light—impossible to describe but suddenly as natural as heartbeat.
With a flick of my wrist, the magic shifts and bends. The ice responds to my touch, reforming into crystal steps that spiral upward, rising gracefully from the chaos and destruction at my feet.
I gather my skirts and run up the stairs I’ve created, my feet sure despite the slick surface. It’s like conducting a symphony—each step melting away as I move forward, the ice rejoining the swirling cloud of fragments that follows me, leaving behind a shimmering trail of shattered shards.
With a wave, I call the shards to follow me.
I reach the top of the staircase and come face-to-face with a hunter, a tall Starcaix man with olive skin and cruel eyes, his crossbow shaking in fear, his eyes gleaming with terror.
Without thinking, I gesture sharply. My cloud of ice shards launches forward like thousands of tiny daggers, catching him in the chest and throat.
He falls without a sound, blood freezing before it can stain the ice.
I should feel horror at what I’ve just done. Instead, savage satisfaction courses through me. They came to hurt me, to use me for whatever schemes brought them here.
They deserve whatever Ivrael and I do to them.
The ice dragon Ivrael lands on a section of intact wall, his massive form somehow perfectly balanced.
He’s easily three times my height, his blue-white scales gleaming like fresh snow. His wings spread wide, and I catch my breath at their beauty—delicate as frost on a windowpane but strong enough to shatter stone.
Those impossible eyes find mine, still that striking ice-blue with swirling golden sparks.
Still his eyes.
Ivrael’s head snakes down toward me, and I reach out without fear to touch his muzzle. His scales are cold but don’t burn, and I swear I feel him lean into my touch. A low rumble vibrates through him—not quite a purr, but something satisfied and possessive.
Trust me , that sound seems to say.
And despite everything—despite the year of captivity, despite his manipulations and secrets….
God help me, I do trust him.