Chapter Twenty-Five #2
And still the seelie keep coming.
Not panicked, not disorganized because the prince has prepared for this. Layers of defense fold over one another, aerial assaults bleeding into ground formations, magic blooming and collapsing like living architecture.
We punch through the outer defenses in less than five minutes anyway. The battlefield behind us becomes a ruin of frozen corpses, shattered crystal, burning wings, and bleeding starlight.
The fortress doors loom ahead, massive structures carved from single pieces of preserved night sky, sigils igniting across their surface as they try to seal against us.
I don’t slow down.
Fire and ice detonate simultaneously as I slam into them, the combined elements creating stress fractures that spiderweb across impossible architecture before the entire structure explodes inward in a shower of frozen starlight and melted reality.
Inside, the prince waits.
He stands at the center of a throne room that stretches upward into infinity, walls pulsing with captured constellations, floor reflecting battles fought in dimensions I can’t even perceive. And there, chained to an icy throne with iron that burns her flesh, is Roxy.
Our eyes meet across the impossible distance.
I see her fear, her rage, and her absolute refusal to break even now.
I see the iron chains around her wrists, the same kind I used on her when she first stumbled into my world, and something in my chest cracks open with fury so profound it transcends fire and ice and becomes something entirely new.
“Dragon,” the prince says, his voice carrying musical poison. “How predictable! But you are too late. I’ve already taken her as my consort.”
I don’t respond with words.
Human flesh tears away as scales erupt across every inch of skin, wings bursting from my shoulders with enough force to crack the throne room floor, tail lashing out to reduce a marble pillar to dust. Bone stretches, reforms, and locks into place with brutal precision as the dragon rises, not wild and feral but deliberate and controlled.
But this isn’t the creature that burned villages three centuries ago.
This isn’t even the cursed monster who could only wield ice while his fire died behind glass.
Fire and frost surge together beneath my scales, red and orange with glacial blue, wings unfurling in a storm of heat and killing cold that should be tearing me apart from the inside out.
But they don’t.
The elements fold inward instead of exploding, almost like they’re being sucked in like a vacuum.
Flame drains to a soundless glow. Frost tightens until the air bends around me, light thinning at the edges of my wings like something is swallowing it whole.
Not shadow, not darkness, just a hollow pressure that warps everything it touches, heat and cold compressing into a dense, invisible gravity that makes the throne room feel smaller, heavier, wrong.
The fae sigils along the walls flicker, their glow stuttering as if the realm can’t decide how to react. Colors dull. Sound drops away. Even the Prince’s Court hesitates, eyes tracking the faint distortion curling around my body like cracks in reality no one else can see.
I feel it inside my chest, not rage, not hunger, but a dense, coiled force demanding release.
My dragon pushes for annihilation.
But I hold it back.
The pressure deepens instead of breaking loose, the unseen weight settling over the room until every breath feels like it has to fight its way through something thick and ancient.
The room goes still. One of the closest fae stumbles, sliding toward me with the suction, but he grips onto a column of ice, holding tight before he’s sucked into whatever the hell I am creating.
Scar’s voice cuts low behind me. “Prez… what the fuck is that?”
Even Wreck pauses, hollow eyes narrowing, hunger replaced by something like wary fascination. Ruckus takes an involuntary step back, gold at his throat dimming as probability stutters around me.
And then the prince laughs.
Not mocking.
Not pleased.
But shocked.
“Impossible,” he murmurs, his voice stripped of its usual arrogance. His gaze tracks the distortion curling around my wings, the way heat and frost collapse into something that makes the air buckle. “You shouldn’t be able to do that. Not without tearing yourself apart.”
The fae around him hesitate, their formation faltering for the first time since we entered this realm.
He widens his eyes with something that looks dangerously close to fear.
“That is not fire,” he says quietly. “And it is definitely not ice.” His smile twitches, reverence and horror warring in equal measure.
“That is the thing of legends that ends courts.” For a heartbeat, real terror flashes across his face.
“If you lose control…” he murmurs, almost to himself, “… this realm will not survive you.”
The dragon inside me surges, urging me to unleash it, to let the pressure tear outward and erase everything standing between my girl and me.
But I don’t.
I force it tighter, holding the collapse in place, refusing to let rage decide what happens next.
Because this isn’t about destruction.
It’s about balance.
The prince’s smile falters completely.
Silence spreads through the throne room, not the fragile quiet that follows battle, but something heavier, older, a pressure that settles into bone and breath alike.
Fire and frost continue to collapse inward beneath my scales, the unseen weight bending the air around me until banners lift without wind and fragments of broken marble slide slowly across the floor toward the invisible pull radiating from my wings.
The Seelie Court watches.
No one moves.
Even the music woven into this realm seems to falter, notes stretching thin before fading into nothing.
The prince rises from his throne with deliberate slowness, eyes fixed not on my claws or my fangs but on the distortion warping the space between us. His court shifts uneasily behind him, their perfect formations faltering as instinct begins to whisper what pride refuses to say aloud.
“But you are holding it,” he murmurs at last, voice quieter than before, stripped of its theatrical arrogance. “You could unmake this court before your next breath… and yet, you do not.”
My wings flex, the hollow pressure tightening reflexively, and a ripple moves through the room as fae warriors instinctively step back from something they cannot see but clearly feel.
“This ends now,” I say, my voice carrying through the distortion like thunder trapped beneath frozen glass. “Give. Her. Back!”
Roxy stands at his side, iron chains glinting faintly with seelie magic. Her chin lifts when our eyes meet, stubborn and fierce even in captivity, and the pull inside my chest tightens until fire and ice grind together in perfect, terrible harmony.
The prince’s gaze lingers on her before returning to me, the faintest curl of a smile ghosting across his mouth.
“You walk into my realm with a power that predates our oldest songs,” he says softly, taking one measured step forward. “And you expect me to simply surrender what I have claimed?”
Scar shifts beside me, fangs bared in a silent promise of violence. Wreck’s shadow stretches across the fractured floor, hunger coiling tight but restrained. Behind us, every brother holds position, a wall of living intent that presses against the throne room’s fragile composure.
“You think I fear death?” the prince jabs, tilting his head as if genuinely curious, his eyelids flickering defensively.
“No,” I answer, the pressure around me deepening another inch as light thins at the edges of my wings. “You fear extinction.”
A crack runs across the vaulted ceiling, thin as a blade but unmistakable, starlight leaking through like a wound.
Ruckus mutters behind me, his voice barely audible, “Yeah… he definitely fears that.”
The prince’s gaze flickers upward, then returns to me with something darker settling into his expression. Slowly, almost reverently, he steps closer, studying the way fire and frost fold into nothingness around my form.
His breath leaves him in a whisper, “Voidfire,” he says under his breath, the word carrying the weight of something forbidden. “The thing of legend.” Several fae recoil at the name, their glamour flickering.
“You shouldn’t exist,” he continues, his voice low and awed despite the tension coiling through the room. “That state belongs to myth… to endings written before our people learned to sing.”
The dragon inside me surges at the recognition, urging release, urging annihilation.
I force it tighter instead.
The pressure compresses, heavy and controlled, bending the throne room another fraction closer to collapse without allowing it to fall.
“I’m still standing here asking instead of annihilation,” I say evenly. “That should tell you everything you need to know.”
His eyes narrow. He looks at Roxy again. “You would burn our realm for her,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
A long, heavy pause.
“And you would refuse to burn it… for her.”
My jaw tightens. “Yes.”
Understanding flickers through his expression, slow and reluctant.
He exhales. “How inconvenient,” he murmurs.
The prince waves his hand through the air, the chains binding Roxy flare once, magic shivering along their length before fracturing into glittering shards that dissolve into nothing.
Gasps ripple through the court.
Roxy doesn’t run, she walks toward me, steady and deliberate, the void-pressure bending around her instinctively as if recognizing something it refuses to harm. When she reaches me, I fold one wing around her without thought, shielding her from the lingering tremor running through the room.
The prince watches closely. “You have changed,” he says at last.
“Yeah,” I reply. “That’s the fucking point.”
For a heartbeat, it feels like the court might surge forward again, pride warring with survival.
Instead, the prince steps back.
Just one pace.
A concession so subtle most mortals would miss it, but to the fae, it might as well be a bow.
“Take her,” he growls, his voice steady but tight with restrained fury. “And leave my realm standing.”
Scar lets out a low, satisfied laugh. Wreck’s hollow smile widens, shadows curling lazily at his feet now that the tension has shifted.
I don’t release the pressure immediately. Instead, I meet the prince’s gaze, letting him feel exactly how close his court came to ending.
“If you ever touch what’s mine again…” I say quietly, “… I won’t think twice about sending your entire realm into whatever is waiting on the other side of this… what did you call it?”
“Voidfire,” he softly replies.
“Because that sounds like a real shitty place. So remember that’s what awaits you if you come after my girl or my club again!”
His eyes flicker with something like respect. “That…” he replies softly, “… I believe.”
Only then do I let the collapse ease.
Light rushes back into the throne room. Sound returns in a slow, trembling wave.
The invisible weight lifts, leaving behind a silence filled with wary recognition.
I shift back slowly, wings dissolving into skin, scales fading as Roxy remains anchored against me, her presence steadying the fire and frost beneath my ribs.
“About time you showed up,” she mutters against my shoulder, voice rough but warm.
Scar claps my back and hands me a pair of jeans. I slide them on as we stride toward the door. “Nice exit, Prez. Very apocalyptic.”
I huff a quiet laugh, tightening my hold on Roxy’s hand as we walk from the throne room.
And this time…
The Seelie Court doesn’t move to stop us.