Chapter 31
SERIS
The moment the cheering reached its peak, something inside me cracked.
Not broke. Just fractured. Like ice under pressure that hadn’t quite given way yet, but would, if I didn’t move.
I pulled my hand from Daemon’s. Turned. Walked back through the arched doorway into the castle’s shadowed interior.
Behind me, the roar of the crowd faded to a distant rumble.
My footsteps echoed too loud in the empty corridor.
They were uneven, limping, and every step a reminder of how much the battle had cost. My missing hand throbbed with phantom pain, nerve endings screaming for something that would never answer again.
Queen.
The word followed me like a curse.
I found myself in what must have been a receiving hall. Tall windows let in streams of dusty light. Portraits lined the walls. Every previous king and queen was represented, now dead. Their legacies reduced to canvas and fading paint.
I stopped in the center of the room. Turned slowly, taking in the grandeur, the history, and the weight of everything these walls represented.
A palace. A crown. A kingdom.
And me, a girl who was barely considered better than livestock.
The crown felt heavier than battle ever did.
Fighting, I understood. Survival made sense. But this? Standing in gilded halls while people expected me to rule them, to make decisions that would shape their lives?
How was I supposed to do that? I knew about the crushing weight of responsibility, but recognition was something unfamiliar.
Queens were supposed to be wise. Dignified. Born into power and trained from childhood to wield it.
I was none of those things.
I’d never wanted power. Never dreamed of thrones or crowns or authority over others. I wanted freedom. I wanted to live without fear.
Instead, I stood in a palace.
Footsteps approached from the doorway. Quiet. Measured. Instantly recognizable.
“You don’t have to run,” Daemon said.
“I’m not running.” I didn’t turn around. “I’m thinking.”
“Looked like running from where I stood.”
“Maybe thinking looks like running when you’re moving away from a crowd.”
His footsteps drew closer. Stopped a few paces behind me.
“Seris.”
The gentleness in his voice hurt worse than the accusation would have.
I closed my eyes. “I don’t belong here.”
“Where do you belong?”
“I don’t know.” The admission scraped my throat raw. “But not in a palace. Not wearing a crown. Not making decisions that could destroy or save thousands based on whether I guess right or wrong.”
“That’s what ruling is,” Daemon said quietly. “Making impossible choices with incomplete information and hoping you don’t damn everyone in the process.”
“Then why would anyone want it?”
“Some want the power. Others accept the responsibility because someone has to.” He moved closer. I felt his presence at my shoulder, solid and grounding. “You know which kind my father was. You’ve seen what the throne became under the wrong hands.”
I opened my eyes, staring at the empty dais. “I never wanted power over anyone.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to survive. To stop being hunted. To live without being a weapon or a threat or a thing people used for their own purposes.” My voice cracked. “Not to rule them.”
“Then don’t.”
I turned. Stared at him. “What?”
Daemon met my gaze steadily. “Ruling doesn’t mean dominating. It doesn’t require you to become something you’re not or abandon what you believe.” He stepped closer, voice dropping. “Seris, destiny doesn’t remove choice. It just changes the options available.”
“Those options include walking away.”
“They do.” No judgment in his tone. Just truth. “You could leave right now. Go anywhere. I’d make sure you were protected, had all you needed, and that no one hunted you again. You’d be free.”
The offer hung between us. Genuine. Possible. Real.
“But?” I asked.
"But you won’t." The corner of his mouth lifted. "Because you’re not someone who walks away when people need help. The entire time I’ve known you, you’ve made the choice to fight for those who need help around you.
I’ve also seen the doubt that burdens you before these choices, but you end up choosing to fight anyway.
Your mother’s legacy, perhaps. Lyralei’s too.
Right now, it may be overwhelming, but the truth is…
you have a chance to not only fight for those you love but also protect and help them flourish. "
He reached out slowly, giving me time to pull away. When I didn’t, his hand cupped my cheek.
"You're afraid of becoming what the crown represents, because you’ve only seen the crown used for conquest and blood." His thumb brushed along my jaw. "But we can show everyone outside these walls something different."
Daemon was right, but his words didn’t lighten the burden of the choice.
"I don’t know how to rule."
"Neither do I. Not really. I was trained as an assassin, not a king. Everything I learned about governance came from watching my father make the wrong choice over and over." He smiled without humor. "But we don’t have to repeat his mistakes. We can build something different. Something better."
"Like what?" The question came out sharper than intended, edged with desperation. "How do we reshape a kingdom that’s been rotting from the throne for generations?"
"By invoking what we learned in Vaelthorne.
" His eyes brightened with something almost like hope.
"Equality. Restraint. Magic as a tool rather than a weapon. Community instead of conquest. The Fae built something beautiful there. It wasn’t done through domination but through balance and mutual care.
Right now, the citizens of this kingdom are more receptive to the Fae than they have been for centuries. The time for change is now."
Ruling not as dominance but as protection.
Using power to shield rather than strike.
Creating systems that prevent corruption instead of enabling it.
"The throne itself needs to change," I said slowly. "Not just who sits on it, but what it is. What it represents."
"Agreed."
I lifted my chin while in his embrace to face him. "Protection for the Fae who remain. Legal recognition of their rights. Safety for anyone with magical ability, not just Veil-touched, but all forms of power that have been hunted or suppressed."
"Done."
"Laws limiting the crown’s authority. Councils with real power to check royal decisions.
Transparency in governance so corruption can’t hide in the shadows.
" The ideas flowed faster now, building momentum.
"And accountability. If we make the wrong choice, if we abuse the power entrusted to us, there has to be consequences. Real ones."
Daemon smiled, genuine warmth breaking through his usual careful control. "You’re describing the opposite of everything my father built."
"Hope so." The word came out fierce. "It must be different. Let every stone of his reign be torn down and replaced with something that actually serves the people instead of consuming them."
I thought of Vaelthorne burning. Of Lyralei falling beneath a volley of arrows. Of Captain Malzaun and his veterans throwing themselves against impossible odds so I could reach the throne room.
Of my mother.
How many people had died to bring us to this moment? How many lives had been destroyed by rulers who treated power as personal possession rather than sacred trust?
The crown stopped being simply a burden in my mind. It became something else entirely.
Responsibility that gave birth to hope.
Not for myself. Not even for Daemon. But for everyone who’d bled and burned and sacrificed so that the cycle of corruption could finally, finally end.
If I walked away now, their deaths would mean nothing. The kingdom would fall to whoever grabbed power next, and nothing guaranteed that person would be better than Aeron Thorne. The Devourer was gone, but greed and cruelty remained. Someone would fill the vacuum. Someone would claim authority.
Better it be someone who understood the cost. Who’d felt the weight of powerlessness and swore never to inflict it on others.
Better it be someone who’d rather burn the crown to ash than let it corrupt what she loved.
I met Daemon’s eyes. "I’m terrified."
"I know."
"I don’t know if I can do this."
"Neither do I." His honesty should have frightened me.
Instead, it steadied something deep inside.
"But I know we can try. Together. And I know that trying honestly and carefully, with full awareness of how badly things can go wrong, is better than abandoning the responsibility to someone who won’t care about the consequences. "
The truth of it settled into my bones.
I’d never wanted this. Would never choose it over freedom, but freedom wasn’t measured in the absence of responsibility. It was measured in the ability to choose what you carried.
I could choose this. Could accept the crown not as inevitability but as a deliberate decision to protect what remained.
"Alright," I said.
Daemon’s expression shifted, filling with profound relief. "Alright?"
"I’ll do it. We’ll do it." I hugged him tighter. "But not as tyrants. Not as conquerors. As stewards. As temporary guardians holding power in trust until we can build systems that don’t require heroes to keep them from collapsing into darkness."
"Agreed." His fingers laced through mine, careful of the scarred skin.
"We dismantle everything that enabled my father’s reign.
We create safeguards against corruption.
And when the work is done, when the kingdom is stable and the people safe…
" He paused, searching my face. "We step down.
Let someone else carry the burden. Maybe try making friends with Wraith-hounds. "
An unexpected laugh escaped me, despite the pressure of being Queen. The promise eased something I hadn’t realized was crushing my chest.
Not forever, then. Not an eternal sentence. Just… long enough. Long enough to fix what was broken. To set foundations that would hold even after we were gone.
Long enough to honor the dead by building something worthy of their sacrifice.
"Okay," I whispered.
Daemon smiled, real, warm, and heartbreakingly beautiful. Then he leaned down and kissed me.
Soft. Gentle. Nothing demanding or urgent, just… present. Here. Together. Choosing each other and this impossible future with full knowledge of what it would cost.
When we pulled apart, he kept hold of my hand. "Ready?"
"No."
"Good. Neither am I." He turned toward the doorway leading back to the balcony. "But let’s go anyway."
We walked together through the castle corridors and back up to the room I’d woken in. My legs felt steadier now. The phantom pain in my missing arm faded to distant background static.
By the time we reached the balcony, I could breathe again.
I walked over to the view of the city as Daemon held me, arms wrapped around me from behind.
I looked out over the city. Saw the destruction clearly now. The Devourer’s corruption had torn through the capital like a plague. Rebuilding would take years. Maybe decades.
But sunlight broke through the smoke.
Pale gold light slanted through the haze, illuminating dust motes and scattered embers, turning destruction into something almost beautiful. Morning light. The kind that promised day would follow night.
Daemon’s hand tightened around mine.
I squeezed back.
For the first time in my entire life, the future belonged to us.
Not to kings who saw me as a weapon. Not to prophecy that demanded my power. Not even to the Devourer who’d tried to claim my magic for the Void.
To us. To the choices we would make. The world we would build. The joy we would leave.
It was terrifying, but it was ours.
I lifted my face to the sunlight and let myself believe, just for this one perfect moment, that we might actually survive what came next.
That survival might finally, finally mean something more than simply refusing to die.
That we could take all this broken, bleeding wreckage, and forge from it something worth protecting.
Something worth living for.
I knew the future might be full of impossible choices.
And I didn’t run.
The End