Chapter 13 #2
I grab the nearest thing I can—a porcelain vase—and hurl it. It shatters against the head of a guard trying to restrain Mallen.
Everything halts.
Eyes whip to me. Shocked. Silent.
“Now that I have your attention…” I snarl. “You can all just stop.”
The guard clutches his bleeding head, too stunned to speak. Mallen and Darian breathe like creatures dragged from opposite ends of the same storm, sides heaving, bruises already blooming across their skin.
The silence between them isn’t peace—it’s a powder keg.
Every breath is a fuse waiting to be lit.
“Take him to the dungeons,” Mallen snarls, pointing at Darian.
“He attacked the princess,” Darian snaps, teeth bared.
Two guards close in on him anyway.
One grabs Darian’s arm. The other reaches for his sword.
It’s all happening too fast, and no one’s thinking. They’re still fighting, still ignoring me.
“Stop,” I command.
Everything stops. The room goes silent. Even Darian stops. Mallen too.
My voice cuts like steel. I’ve never used it like that. I wasn’t sure I had it in me. Maybe they have heard it before, buried under doubt, waiting for me to use it.
“I‘m fine. Your concern is noted, Darian. You will apologize.”
He bristles. “I know what I saw. You don’t have to defend him—”
“I’m not,” I interrupt. “I wasn’t in danger.”
Darian exhales. “He attacked you.”
“I will not repeat myself. Apologize, or leave.”
Silence cleaves the room. The Guard salutes. “Your Highness.” He takes Darian by the arm.
“You cannot be serious. I am the prince of Larksbind.”
“You are a guest in my chambers.”
Mallen stays silent. His fists are still clenched.
He’s poised. Ready to move. But he’s watching me with an expression I don’t understand.
It’s not just surprise. It isn’t just awe.
It’s complicated, fiercer too—pride maybe, or hunger—for the girl I’ve stopped pretending to be.
It’s like he hates that I defended Darian, but he’s seeing me now.
All of me.
And he likes it.
“Princess—” Darian starts again.
I slice his words with a finger, held up in the air. That’s all it takes.
“Darian, if the next words out of your mouth are not an apology for your behavior, I will have you and your men removed from the palace until you remember your manners.”
I notice the subtle smirk lighting up Mallen’s face.
I know that look.
It’s the glint of a serpent coiled, not yet striking—patient, watchful, every muscle taut with quiet menace, waiting for the opportunity to be dangerous again.
I arch my eyebrow.
Darian flinches. Grits his teeth.
I wait.
His shoulders fall. “I’m sorry.”
I nod and then glance at the wreckage around me.
Smashed ornaments. Crushed furniture. My sanctuary has been reduced to a battlefield.
Curtains torn from their hooks, shards of porcelain glittering like ice across the rug.
The chair my mother once sat in, broken at the leg.
I want to scream again. Or fall to my knees.
Or gather every shattered piece and pretend I can fix what’s already gone.
But I just stand there, rigid, at the center of a mess that mirrors the turmoil inside me.
Because I will not shatter.
“What was it you wanted, Darian?” I ask.
“To thank you for sending a healer. It’s more than we expected. Your father gave me leave to come to your rooms and…”
His voice trails off, but I’m barely listening.
My pulse hasn’t slowed. My throat still burns.
The air tastes of ruin. Mallen’s gaze keeps flicking to me like he’s counting every breath.
And Darian—his bruised face is too open, too human.
He meant well. He always does. That doesn’t mean I forgive him.
“I want everyone out,” I say. “Escort Darian back to his quarters.”
For a moment, he looks like he might protest. Then he thinks better of it. He nods and leaves without another word.
The guards file out too. Only Mallen remains.
“Azhara, I—”
“Don’t. I can’t bear to talk.”
He bends to start picking up broken pieces, as if that can repair what just happened.
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t need to.
The guilt is eating at him, but that doesn’t undo the wreckage.
Doesn’t silence the jealousy that still coils beneath his ribs.
Doesn’t fix the fact that I’m suffocating in this palace with one man trying to protect me like a secret, and another trying to save me like a prize.
And underneath it all, the magic of death bound in me is growing hungrier, more sentient, more desperate to devour everything I love.
Everything is shifting, and nothing sits right. I cannot say how, only that the Reaping is wrong this year. This was not meant to happen. More is hidden from me than I dared believe, and the truth presses close with no way out.
I walk away and lean against the archway leading onto the balcony. I stare out at Threnos, at the marble towers burning gold in the daylight, the silken banners drooping as another afternoon passes, the thousand windows watching like eyes I can’t escape.
Starsfall gleams like a dream, but I know the rot beneath.
I know that beauty can be a prison.
I cry. It rips out of me, its pain violent and loud and soul-deep. An agony so sharp it won’t let me sleep tonight. Won’t let me breathe. My chest caves in and I know—without doubt—what this hurt is.
My heart’s breaking.
It burns. It scorches. And I realize why too late.
A heart can’t break unless it loves.
And I do.
But Mallen loves like a wound, not like a cure. He is the storm I keep walking toward, praying it won’t devastate me. He was never going to save me. Because the terrible, inescapable truth is that the only shield strong enough to face what’s coming is the one I build myself.