Chapter Twenty-One
When Hadrian was taken from me, hung and burnt from the branches of a tree, the world ceased to make sense.
By then, my memories had returned, flooding back like a storm breaking through the dam. I remembered everything. Who I truly was. That I am Hecate, a goddess. The truth behind Hades and me, the cruel intricacies of that wretched curse.
And I remembered this, too: that each time Hadrian and I die, we are reborn. Again and again, bound by fate and blood and divine cruelty.
But not this time.
This time, I will not die. Even if it means I must endure centuries without him, even if the ache of his absence threatens to hollow me out, I must remain.
I must stay alive, if only to avenge him.
And to break this curse once and for all.
So I will vanish. I will wait. And I will find a way to burn it all to the ground.
Tabitha Wysteria
Alina had led Kai and his companion through the gilded heart of the city and into the palace’s embrace, guiding them wordlessly through marble corridors and vaulted archways until they reached a vast chamber, strewn with jewel-toned cushions and low settees, the air perfumed with warm vapour from the sunken interior pool at its centre.
She had not spoken a word nor offered explanation.
She needed the silence, needed it to soothe the tempest within her mind.
Why was Kai Blackburn here, in the Kingdom of Light?
And who, exactly, was the woman who accompanied him?
There was something faintly familiar about the wyverian at his side, a whisper of recognition brushing at Alina’s thoughts, though she couldn’t yet grasp its source.
Kai Blackburn looked much the same as she remembered.
Tall and powerfully built, a body carved through years of relentless training, shaped in both muscle and spirit.
He wore black leather, his twin hook swords strapped across his back like old, faithful companions.
His short black hair was just as she recalled, and the tall, curved black horns rising from his head completed the image.
He was handsome, undeniably so. Perhaps the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on.
The stranger beside him matched his height, as was often the case with wyverians.
She was slender, almost willowy, with pale skin and eyes as dark as polished obsidian.
There was nothing outwardly remarkable about her.
She looked, truthfully, like many other wyverian women.
And yet… there was something in the way she held herself, the subtle grace of her stance, the way her eyes roamed the world with quiet wonder, that made Alina hesitate.
As they crossed the threshold, Alina gestured for them to sit, but neither of the wyverians obliged.
And so, she remained standing too, her back straight, gaze steady.
A moment later, the chamber doors opened with a quiet sigh, and in walked Mareena, clad in a flowing white gown that shimmered like sunlight on sand, her hair veiled beneath sheer silk.
The phoenixian princess came to Alina’s side without uttering a word to their guests.
Alina caught the small tremor in Mareena’s hand, saw how it hovered near Alina’s arm as if the phoenixian meant to offer comfort, and at the last moment, thought better of it.
‘You’re alive.’ Kai’s voice broke through the silence, low and thick with emotion. His eyes, dark as onyx, gleamed with a strange mix of sorrow, relief, and something else, something deeper, harder to name. ‘Everyone believes you’re dead.’
‘Do they?’ Alina arched a brow, though the words did not entirely surprise her. She had vanished from her homeland in the dead of night, fleeing with Hessa, the fire at their backs and the future unravelled before them. There had been no time for goodbyes, no space to fight or to stay.
‘Good,’ she said simply, her voice cool and resolute. ‘I want it to stay that way.’
Kai stepped forward and, without warning, cradled Alina’s face in his palms, as though needing to feel her beneath his fingers to believe what stood before him was real.
‘You’re alive,’ he breathed again, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Mareena cleared her throat gently. ‘Perhaps we should leave you both to speak,’ she said, her tone gracious but firm.
‘I’ll show your companion to your rooms in the meantime.
’ With a graceful sweep of her arm, she beckoned to the wyverian woman, who hesitated just long enough for Alina to notice the unease darkening her features.
She clearly disliked being separated from Kai.
Kai cast her a reassuring wink. A familiar gesture, one that once upon a time might have been meant for Alina. She observed it now with quiet detachment, no longer moved by what had once stirred something warm within her.
When the doors closed softly behind Mareena and the wyverian woman, Alina reached up and gently removed Kai’s hands from her face, her fingers cool and steady.
She could no longer abide others touching her, especially not the skin once held, once worshipped, by Hessa.
However, Kai’s touch had felt slightly different.
A reminiscence of the past, and a small part of her craved for it.
‘All this time…’ Kai said, unsheathing his swords and propping them carefully against one of the room’s marble columns. ‘You’ve been here?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘And the dragons?’
She offered a slight shrug. ‘They just started to arrive.’
‘You look different.’
‘Is that a bad thing, wyverian?’ she asked with a faint smile, resurrecting the old nickname she used to tease him with in another life, one lost to time and fire.
‘No, princess,’ he replied, smiling back, though his stare lingered. ‘But you look sad.’
She nodded once, then turned away and strode towards the open terrace, stepping into the golden warmth of day.
Leaning over the carved stone railing, she drank in the view of the sprawling city.
High above, two large birds swooped in graceful arcs, descending with a flutter to perch beside her.
Their bodies were pure white, but their heads and long, spear-like beaks were ink-dark.
Alina raised a hand and ran her fingers lightly over the feathers of one, her eyes narrowing as the sunlight spilt across the terrace and caught in her hair like flame.
‘Who is she?’ Alina asked, her voice cool, though her eyes gave her away. She nodded faintly towards the door through which the wyverian woman had just vanished.
‘Just a friend,’ Kai replied, a little too quickly.
Alina arched a perfectly sculpted brow. ‘Is that so? She didn’t look at you like you were just a friend.’
‘Alina…’
She sidestepped his presence and the warmth of his nearness, slipping back inside as if the sunlit air had suddenly turned stifling. ‘It’s all right, Kai. A great deal has changed. Months have passed since we last saw one another. You are entitled to… feel something for someone else.’
‘No. Not her.’
‘Why not?’ Her brows knit, a shadow appearing behind her gaze. ‘She’s a wyverian. The match would make sense.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Then help me.’
Kai exhaled slowly, heavily. ‘I can’t.’
Alina said nothing. Instead, her eyes drifted towards the nearest wall where brilliant mosaics bloomed across the stone, depicting great phoenixes soaring over the city, their wings ablaze with divine fire.
‘They say the sparks from a phoenix’s wings can guide their people through the darkest desert nights,’ she said. ‘So that no phoenixian soul ever truly loses their way.’
‘Alina…’
‘Are you staying?’ she asked, her voice quiet but steady. She kept her eyes fixed on the mural. ‘Will you remain in Kairus or do you intend to keep travelling?’
‘Where you go, I go.’
She tensed, but let the words roll off her like a breeze across scorched sand. ‘Then you’ll teach me to fight. Like a wyverian.’
Kai gave a short laugh.
Alina turned to face him, lifting a brow in challenge. ‘I was trained in the Dunayan way. Now I learn the ways of the Phanax. And you, Kai Blackburn, will teach me your way too.’
A slow smile curved his lips. ‘Are you commanding me, princess?’
Her head tilted, her smile sharper this time, colder. ‘Yes. But you’re forgetting something, wyverian. I am no longer a princess.’
With a sudden glint of steel, Alina unsheathed the daggers hidden against her hips and lunged.
‘I am a queen.’
…
Kai laughed as he staggered backwards, his blades abandoned by the column, far too distant now to be of any use.
He could almost convince himself that the fierce woman before him was the very same one who had once slapped him across the face atop a quiet hill in the drakonian lands.
But that girl, though formidable in her own right, was gone.
This Alina was something else entirely. She was a warrior born of sorrow and flame, carved by grief and reforged in fire.
She moved with startling elegance, a fluid fusion of wind and steel, her strikes as graceful as they were lethal.
Kai, for all his years of training, had never studied the combat techniques of other kingdoms. Such things were kept guarded, whispered only within palace walls and passed down through bloodlines like precious heirlooms.
Alina lunged again, her dagger whispering past his ear, so close it kissed the air beside his skin.
He couldn’t help but chuckle, and the sound only seemed to incense her further.
He wasn’t mocking her. Gods, no. He was in awe of her.
The Alina Acheron he had once known had been remarkable even beneath the weight of corsets and tradition.
But now… now there was no denying the fire in her eyes.
He caught her wrist on her next strike, slamming her arm against the marble column behind them. In one smooth motion, his other hand pressed flat against her chest, pinning her there. His body loomed close, his mouth brushing the space between her cheek and ear.