Chapter 37 #2
An image came without permission. Her hand sliding along his chest, feeling the strength there, his hand closing around her wrist and pulling her in, her body pressed against his as his mouth found hers with that same intensity he brought to everything else.
She longed to step closer, to be within arm’s reach, to experience that power firsthand instead of from across the room. Yet, she also craved ripping that smirk from his face with a show of her own magic after what he’d done.
The contradiction sat like a weight on her chest, two conflicting truths.
Kiran’s hand lifted to rest against the dragon’s neck, fingers pressing into the line of its scales as he stroked it in slow passes.
His attention never left Imani, his mismatched eyes holding hers the entire time, burning through the distance between them with an intensity that refused to release her.
The bond answered it again, stronger this time, and the thought hit her before she could stop it—as long as they lived, she would never be free of him.
It comforted and frightened her in equal measure.
She moved ahead of the others, the group parting around her as his attention locked onto her. Emotion flashed behind his green eye—desire first, unhidden, then a deeper and more conflicted emotion rising beneath it. Imani wished she could read his mind.
She put her hand on her hip. “You behaving would be the more alarming development.”
He rose smoothly and walked to her in a few strides. “Even now, you step forward as if you’re mine,” he murmured, with an edge that cut straight through Imani.
“You say that like you’ve ever been able to keep anything that matters,” she sneered.
“I kept you longer than anyone else ever could,” he said, grin widening. “Long enough for you to learn exactly what you’re capable of.”
Her face remained blank, but the bond in her chest twisted.
“You call it betrayal,” he continued, wild eyes still locked on hers, “but you didn’t run from me, Imani. You became something worse.”
A pause. Then softer—
“You became a queen who makes the same choices I do.”
Silence pressed in around them, but Imani’s heart raged against her ribs at the insult, drowning out the rest of the room. Still, Imani ignored it as a slow smile pulled at her mouth. She tilted her head toward the entrance, keeping her eyes on Kiran as a colder feeling took hold.
“Now,” she said loudly, the command brimming with satisfaction as she stood there, unflinching, already knowing exactly what it would do to him.
A shadow at the entrance drew every eye as Saevel stepped fully into the chamber, his massive frame filling the threshold. The obsidian crown jutted from his skull, marking him in a way no one could deny. He advanced a single step, eyes sweeping the room before he pointed to the throne.
“You kneel to a lie,” he said, voice booming in the chamber. “Your king stands before you—and the man on the Throne is a fraud.”
Saevel advanced, dark hair falling around his face, while Kiran stood leaner at the throne with short dark hair, one green eye and one black, his pale bone wand loose in his hand. The same jagged obsidian crown gleamed on both their heads.
Competing voices echoed through the chamber as eyes landed on the black obsidian crown jutting from Saevel’s skull. Heads turned, bodies shuffled, and the word ‘king’ circulated in fragments, disbelief transforming into certainty.
The difference between the brothers was suddenly impossible for Imani to ignore.
Saevel’s crown had formed from the same ancient authority that recognized him as Niflheim’s true king.
Kiran’s existed only because he kept feeding flesh magic into a glamour convincing enough to imitate what the realm had never actually given him.
Her mouth gaped. Like Saevel’s crown, Meira’s had likely formed naturally too.
Imani’s had probably not.
She had stolen Meira’s Divination magic years ago, and the theft had created a bond neither of them understood.
When the Crown of Life finally chose Meira, that bond had carried the magic backward and reproduced it through Imani as well.
Her crown was real magic, not a glamour like Kiran’s, but it had never meant the realm had chosen two queens.
Meira had been the true queen all along.
Imani possessed the crown only because their linked magic had duplicated what belonged first to her sister.
Sickness rose in her belly, but she closed her lips into a hard line.
Kiran’s pointed glance silenced the gathering, restoring quiet. Then air left him in a slow exhale, smoke spilling from his mouth and curling upward.
The dragon lifted its head, muscles tensing, claws scraping stone as it adjusted its stance.
Torches along the walls flickered violently, flames bending and snapping as the pressure in the room surged and dropped unevenly.
Several High Sentinels rose to their feet without realizing it, while others stepped back as if distance could protect them from what was unfolding between the brothers and the Essenheim queen.
The Throne’s magic wavered, its influence no longer singular, its weight splitting between two forces now occupying the same space.
Kiran opened his arms wide and let a manic smirk spread across his face. He kept his wand held between the fingers of his left hand, taking the center before the room could fully turn against him.
“This is not your king,” he shouted, pointing at Saevel.
“What you see is a man dragged from obscurity, broken and unstable, dressed in symbols he no longer has the strength to bear.” He cocked his head at his brother.
“So this was your plan?” he taunted. “A disruption meant to splinter this summit before it could begin. And she”—his gaze cut briefly toward Imani—“is the one who brought my brother to our door.”
A wave of unease moved the chamber as Saevel rounded on Kiran.
His sheer presence and magic signature captivated attention.
Imani remembered when she first felt that signature…
and remembered thinking Kiran’s was stronger.
She stole a glance at the now-alert dragon, and doubt crept into the back of her mind.
What have I done?
Doubt did not change why she had brought Saevel here.
Whatever kind of king he became, he was not Kiran.
Imani had spent too long watching her heartmate gather a kingdom, power, and creatures beneath him to believe Niflheim would ever be enough.
As far as she understood it, Kiran wanted Essenheim next.
He wanted her beside him, her Crown of Life tied to his rule, and eventually every kingdom in the Mesial Realm answering to no authority but his own.
Saevel might prove dangerous or cruel. But he had a legitimate claim to the Throne of Destruction, one kingdom, and a heartmate standing beside him.
Imani could work with that. What she could not tolerate was leaving Kiran in possession of Niflheim long enough to turn its power against Essenheim and call the conquest love.
Saevel looked at the Throne, nearly crushing his wand in his fist.
The Throne reacted at once, its dark surface catching light in a new pattern, faint lines of power moving across it in response to his proximity.
Saevel bared his teeth, then walked forward, and the room moved with him—High Sentinels and nobles shifting in their seats, the dragon’s head tracking his approach, the Throne’s dark surface catching light differently with every step he closed between himself and it.
“You sit on a stolen seat, brother,” he announced, flipping his wand up and pointing it at Kiran. “After you killed our father, you put on a glamoured crown that was never yours to claim. I am now the king of this kingdom, and you are nothing but a usurper clinging to power you do not understand.”
“Prove it,” Kiran demanded with a crazed look in his eye.
“Father has been having me prove it for years. I sealed the river oaths with Niflheim in the lower vault, a place where the stone drinks what is given and remembers it,” Saevel said.
“I’ve always been the Heir Apparent, you sniveling snake, and the Throne of Destruction answers to blood, not force. It binds to the line, not to theft.”
The obsidian surface of the Throne pulsed again as he spoke, faint currents of power moving in response, visible to every witness. “You forced your way into it,” Saevel added. “You carved your claim into flesh and called it rule. But the Throne does not forget its king.”
At those words, Imani understood exactly what Saevel’s existence meant for her. Kiran had counterfeited the Throne’s obedience. She had not, but authenticity and rightful inheritance were not the same thing, and the crown growing from her own skull could no longer protect her from that truth.
Nausea continued pitching in her stomach.
Chairs scraped against stone as some High Sentinels stood while others leaned forward, their attention swinging between the Throne and the man now standing before it, uncertainty breaking through in visible waves.
The dragon moved next, its massive head turning fully toward Saevel, body adjusting with a low rumble in its throat.
Voices rose again, low at first, then louder, splitting into competing lines as factions formed in real time; some looked to Kiran for direction, while others watched Saevel, mouths agape, waiting for confirmation. Faint pulses of power moved unevenly around them.
And then the Throne answered.