Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Then I watch as three fae wielding axes of pure moonlight surround him, and they start cutting.
Not to kill quickly, but methodically, severing his connection to the forest one branch at a time.
Each cut makes him scream, the sound raw and terrible, echoing through both the clubhouse and this frozen fortress.
I watch his forest connections sever, watch the trees outside stop responding to his calls, watch him collapse to his knees as the very thing that makes him what he is gets thoroughly destroyed.
“Stop,” I breathe, hands clenching into fists despite the iron burning deeper into my wrists. “Please stop.”
The prince ignores me, the vision continuing its brutal tour through the battle.
I see Ivy’s greenhouse in flames, centuries of cultivation burning while she fights desperately to save what she can.
Ash in phoenix form, taking on six fae at once, her flames burning bright but not bright enough against their combined magic.
Luna is calling impossible tides of water, drowning fae warriors, but I can see the exhaustion in every movement, the way she’s flagging under the relentless assault.
Then Scar, five centuries of vampire fury condensed into deadly speed, moving through enemies like death incarnate, but even he’s bleeding from wounds that aren’t healing fast enough.
They’re magnificent.
Every single one of them.
Fighting with everything they have, refusing to surrender, refusing to break.
But they’re losing.
Not because they’re weak, but because the prince sent an overwhelming force, because he’s willing to sacrifice dozens of his warriors to take what he wants, because this was never about a fair fight.
This was always about breaking them.
About breaking me.
The vision focuses on the fractured crystal dome at the center of the main club room, and I see the space where Raze’s flame used to burn, now empty and dark.
The symbolism hits like a physical blow to the chest. His fire is back inside him, burning through his veins, no longer contained in that crystalline prison.
He’s whole again.
He is powerful.
Everything he was meant to be.
And it might not be enough.
“They die well,” the prince comments, tone carrying approval like he’s complimenting particularly entertaining theater.
“Your dragon has built something impressive. A family of monsters who actually care for each other.” He looks at me, winter-ice eyes assessing.
“But caring makes them vulnerable. Love makes them weak.”
Something snaps inside me. Not breaks. Snaps into place, like a puzzle piece finally finding its position.
“You’re wrong about them,” I force out through a throat that wants to close around sobs.
“Love doesn’t make them weak. It makes them fucking terrifying.
” I straighten despite the chains, despite the cold eating through my bones, despite everything screaming that I should stay small, quiet, and broken.
“Because they’re not fighting to protect territory or reputation or power, they are fighting for family. And family doesn’t surrender.”
The prince’s smile shifts, becoming something sharper, more interested. “Is that so? Then watch this.”
The vision zooms in on the main club room, focusing on the front entrance where the fighting is thickest. I see Raze in partial dragon form, scales crawling over his arms and shoulders, fire and ice spiraling together as he tears through fae warriors with claws that freeze and burn in the same breath.
He’s terrifying.
Everything a dragon should be.
But something about the movement feels… delayed. Like the world lags half a heartbeat behind him.
The prince lifts one elegant hand, and the battle shifts.
More fae pour through the doors, through shattered windows, through walls that fracture under silver magic that glows too bright, too smooth, like paint instead of power.
They don’t fight like soldiers. They move like a tide scripted to rise, endless and convenient, filling the club room faster than physics should allow.
Maul goes down under a crush of bodies, but his fall is too clean, like gravity forgot to be brutal.
Wreck staggers, shadows flickering thin around him as a spear pins him to the floor, yet no frost creeps outward the way it always does when he’s hurt.
Bennett’s wings flare under a rain of arrows that strike with perfect symmetry.
“No…” The word slips from me before I realize I’m speaking.
The prince doesn’t look at the vision. Instead, he watches my face. “They cannot win this,” he murmurs.
Raze roars, fire lashing outward, ice following in jagged spirals, but every warrior he drops is replaced by two more that step into place too quickly, as if the space between breaths doesn’t exist here.
Scar lunges toward a fae cluster, and for a flicker of a second, his eyes look… empty. No hunger, no fury, just movement without intent.
My stomach twists.
“They’re losing,” I whisper, even as something deep in my chest protests.
“Yes,” the prince says softly. “And they will continue to lose until you choose correctly.”
Another wave crashes through the club room.
Ivy’s vines ignite instantly, turning to ash before they even have time to tighten.
Luna’s water fractures midair, shattering like glass instead of flowing.
Flux stumbles between forms, caught in a loop that repeats the same motion twice, wolf to hawk to wolf again, like a story being rewritten on the fly.
“Stop…” My voice breaks. “Stop hurting them!”
The prince’s smile deepens, pleased in a way that makes my skin crawl. “They are outnumbered,” he says gently. “Even dragons drown eventually.”
Raze staggers in the center of the illusion. Fire flickers unevenly across his scales, ice cracking beneath his feet, and for one impossible second, I swear the flame inside him dims, not like exhaustion, but like someone turned a dial.
“They’re… slowing,” I breathe out.
“They are failing,” he corrects.
A silver spear punches through Flux’s side, and he falls too quietly, no snarl, no fight. Rhett disappears beneath a swarm of fae that move in perfect formation, shadows behaving more like smoke than living darkness.
Wrong.
All of it’s wrong.
But the fear still claws at my ribs.
The prince exhales slowly, satisfaction threading through the sound. “Such devotion.”
He gestures again, and the vision narrows, pulling tight on Raze.
His dragon drops to one knee, wings trembling under the weight of relentless attacks.
Fire flickers unevenly across his scales, ice cracking beneath him, and for one impossible second, the flame inside him gutters like it’s being starved of air.
Scar reaches for him and freezes mid-motion, held there like a statue while silver light crashes down.
“I said… stop!” My hands shake. “Please!”
The prince laughs, soft and cold. “Hope is such a beautiful weakness.”
The illusion shifts again, widening to show the clubhouse drowning in motion.
Brothers fighting back-to-back. Blood on stone.
Magic is tearing through walls that have stood for centuries, and the fae don’t slow.
They close in tighter, the formation tightening like a noose being drawn closed, inch by inch.
Raze rises again at the center of it all, shoulders squared despite the weight pressing down around him. Fire and frost spiral outward in a violent pulse that sends several fae flying, but even that surge feels… contained. Like the world refuses to let him be what he truly is.
“They will fight until nothing remains,” the prince murmurs, voice warm against the edge of my fear. “Loyal creatures, but… predictable creatures.” Another strike lands. Another brother falls. “They cannot reach you,” he continues quietly. “And they cannot survive this without you.”
The vision lingers on Raze, his breath rough, his eyes blazing with fury that refuses to die even as the tide closes in.
“Choose,” the prince whispers. “Save them… or watch the last thing you love grind itself into the dirt for a cause already lost.”
“I’ll do it!” The words rip free of me before I can think. “I’ll join your court. Just please, stop!”
The prince gestures, and the chains around my wrists suddenly extend, iron links snaking across the frozen floor to bind me to a throne I didn’t notice before, carved from a single piece of ice so clear I can see straight through to the starlight pulsing beneath.
“Good girl. Now… we wait.” He waves his hand through the air, the illusion vanishing, taking my hope with it as he settles into a throne beside mine. “And when your dragon arrives, you’ll have front-row seats to his destruction.”
“But the battle… they were—”
He laughs, cutting me off. “Oh, little witch, how easily your small mind is fooled. Your dragon and his minions are on their way right now. What you witnessed was a mirage, a simple trick—”
“You played me into agreeing to be your consort?” I yell at him in disgust.
He grins, his black eyelids flicking again in that uncomfortable way they do. “I used any method necessary to get what I want… there’s a difference. And you caved so easily, it was like child’s play.”
“You fucking arrogant, piece of—” I test the chains again, pulling until my wrists bleed, until the iron burns through skin and muscle, until pain whites out everything except the desperate need to break free.
He laughs as the chains hold.
But I don’t stop fighting.
Because Raze is coming.
My brothers are coming.
My family is coming.
And the prince made one critical mistake.
He thought love made us weak.
He has no idea what a family of monsters is capable of when you threaten one of their own.
Or the enemy he just made out of his ‘consort.’
And I intend to make him regret ever calling me his princess.