Chapter Nineteen
ELYSSARA
Vessira’s eyes widen in shock as I stride defiantly toward her down Kryntar Castle’s halls. I wear my braids like a crown, my kohl like armor, and my dress like a reminder of what I can survive.
I shove down my pain, set a torch to my despair, and bury my torment. It has no place in battle. It will claw its way out eventually—but not today. Not now.
“You can’t wear that,” she croaks, voice fractured, though I know she’s not thinking of me—her need for self preservation is as obvious as the scars on my back.
“I wear what I want,” I say dismissively, though I swallow down my nerves all the same.
“He’ll flay the skin from your bones,” she pleads, her voice at a fever pitch.
“He’ll flay the skin from your bones, Vessira,” I snarl, closing the distance between us, “for you were unable to do the one fucking job that made you valuable to him: break me.”
She closes her eyes in the face of the truth.
“I beg you,” she pleads, voice breaking.
“Would you have stopped if I begged?” I ask, tone like a dagger hidden under silk.
She whimpers, because we both know the truth.
“Now, take me to your owner,” I spit.
Vessira’s shoulders drop in defeat, and she leads me down the hollow, cursed halls of this forsaken castle. The doors to the dining room rush towards me, and I know, deep in the marrow of my bones that I am about to cross a threshold.
I stand up a little taller, pulling my shoulders back and imbuing my every move with a regality that feels foreign. False. Like stolen royalty. Like a lie.
One of the guards at the intimidating doors to the dining room sees me approaching, and despite his shock at my appearance, he bellows, “Elyssara, the Lightborne.”
Every guard drinks in my scars, my curves—the whole defiant shape of me.
Hushed remarks and secretive whispers fill the hallway, but I don’t look away. I stare down every one of them: unafraid, unyielding, unbroken.
The doors push open with pomp and formality, and I steel my nerves before stepping over the threshold.
The air thins, and the stakes rise.
Maldrak’s dining room unfurls before me—just as obnoxious as last time. The white marble table that splits the room is veined with black that runs through it like the curse that runs through the Marked. The table stares back at me like a warning of what my fate will be if I do not kneel.
Maldrak’s blue eyes are the next thing I see; charming, alluring, and entitled.
“You never disappoint, Elyssara.” His tone is smooth as oil. His jaw tightens. A vein pulses at his neck. I’ve angered him. Or at the very least, I’ve commanded his attention.
“I always rise above expectations, yes,” I reply in a way that sounds like agreement. But we both know I’m playing a dangerous game.
“I wasn’t aware battle was on the cards tonight, Princess,” he nudges, holding out his elbow to lead me into the snare he’s undoubtedly set for me.
I hook my arm under his, keeping up this illusion of pleasantries, but my skin crawls. It feels wrong. He feels wrong. In the same way The Decay feels wrong. But I swallow it down.
“Every heartbeat is war inside Kryntar Castle,” I say with candor. A risky move to push him like this.
His gaze rakes over my shoulders and onto my back. His pupils dilate just enough for me to notice, before he says, “You seem to be handling it quite nicely.”
“I was born for battle,” I counter smoothly.
He doesn’t react. He simply pulls out an ostentatious chair for me, and gestures to it with a flourish of his hand, and I take my seat to the right of the head of the table.
He takes his place, crossing an ankle over a knee and leaning back in his chair.
He clicks his fingers to a servant, who promptly fills two goblets with rich, crimson wine.
Maldrak takes a small sip, swirling the wine through his mouth before swallowing and sucking his teeth.
“I heard you tried out a new little trick on one of my commanders,” he says, as if striking up a casual dinner conversation. I notice the way he grips his goblet, like his rage is barely leashed. He seems… rattled.
Good. I’ll push further.
I lean forward, planting my elbows on the table. “It’s just the beginning of what I will do every day you keep me here,” I whisper with malicious intent.
Maldrak leans forward, reaching for my hand, and holding it in the palm of his.
“You see, Elyssara, I don’t want to fight or force you.
I want you to choose this path of conquest for yourself.
” He traces tender circles on the top of my hand with his thumb, and I want to recoil, but his grip tightens.
“But you forget that you are not the only Starborn with magic of the gods in their veins,” he says the words like they should mean something to me.
Like I’m missing something. And that’s when I feel it—
“ARRRRGHHHHHHHH!” I scream an unholy sound, trying to wrestle my palm from his to grab my head in agony, but he’s too strong.
Pain bursts in my vision, my head feels like it's caving under the pressure of a vise.
“I can force you, Princess. I will force you if I must. I will get inside your head through the runes I draw on your skin. I will Mark you with Death’s darkness and make you do all manner of things that benefit me,” he promises.
He’s a fucking Runewright.
Kael didn’t tell me.
He didn’t prepare me.
He didn’t warn me.
Did he mean to? Did he set me up?
Fingernails scratch at the walls of my mind, seeking, searching, forcing a way in.
“Get the fuck out of my head!” I rasp, throat raw.
“I’ve given you chances, Princess—so many chances,” he mocks.
“But you will not come to heel. Kryntar Castle is a place of obedience, my queen. A good queen obeys her king,” he lilts, the fingernails of his magic looking for the cracks of my mind.
And I know—he won’t have to search for long to find them.
My mind was fractured from the moment Maldrak’s Arcanist opened the Gateway of Threads to Kryntar.
“I will never obey you!” I screech, desperately trying to build a fortress around my mind.
“Oh but you won’t have a choice, darling,” he sings. “You will simply be the puppet while I pull your strings.”
My chest tightens and the air rips from my lungs.
No.
NO.
FUUUCCCKKKK.
My mind splinters, nails scraping and skittering through memories.
“GET OUT!” I howl like a beast, but he doesn’t let up.
Insidious magic coils through the labyrinths of my mind like a hunting serpent, twisting and constricting until I can’t locate my own thoughts. He is so thoroughly consuming me, it’s as if I cease to exist.
His magic hunts and finds its prey, weaving through the cracks in my mind to chew on my memories, my heartbreak, my pain, my grief.
He laughs. Sick and sadistic. As if he’s feeding on my torment.
My head splits in agony, and I clamp down on the screams that build in my throat.
I can’t break now.
I can’t let him win.
I suck in a sharp, hungry breath.
I press my feet into the onyx floors, anchoring myself to the present.
I will not lose myself.
Through it all, my bones hum a melody only I can hear.
It reaches for me through Maldrak’s magic like the sun cutting through fog.
So I call.
“Duskae, grant me your power,” I breathe.
She answers instantly.
Duskae’s magic hurls Maldrak from my mind. Walls of molten gold wrap around my memories—protective, alive, responsive to my very will.
Because it is.
Duskae is the Goddess of Choice. Unfated. The one they never saw coming.
And so am I.
And that’s when his mask of control snaps.
“You fucking bitch,” he snarls, recoiling from me.
“You can’t fight me forever, Lightborne.
I’ll starve you. Isolate you. Fuck you. Breed you.
Torture you until you hand me the keys to Virellin Castle and all of Dravara like the common-born rat you are.
” He stands, hands clenched at his sides and teeth bared.
“No wonder Kael handed you over—he’d had you on your back enough times and discarded you like the filth of the slums we always knew you to be.
Your parents would be disgusted at the whore you’ve grown to be—falling to your knees for a cock but not a crown. ”
My stomach churns at the truth in his words and it swallows my defiance whole.
Because I did—I acquiesced.
I allowed my heart to blind me from my mission. My vengeance. My vow for retribution.
And it cost me everything.
My own magic flares to life, drowning my veins in fury, and drenching the room in golden light from my fingertips. Maldrak has already taken so much—my friends, my destiny, my strength. My love. He doesn’t deserve another breath in his lungs.
My hands buzz with the crackle of raw, unfettered magic that begs to be unleashed, clawing at the confines of my control. And that’s when I catch my reflection gleaming off the onyx walls.
Blinded by rage.
Possessed by fury.
Ravaged by the seduction of violence.
I am no daughter of Duskae, Goddess of Choice—for I am not choosing. Rage has chosen for me.
I’m meant to be the spark that awakens when the world is on the edge of collapse—but I look possessed of the sort of magic that ends worlds, not saves them.
I look like a beast of brutality.
But light unbound can blind the land,
A ruin born from an open hand.
The prophecy slices through my rage, cutting it down to nothing.
I fall to my knees.
Not in obedience.
In defeat.
Wherever I go in the known realms, they will try to control me—forever a weapon to be commanded. Used. Abused.
The protective walls around my mind crumble. Useless. What am I defending?
“Good girl,” Maldrak croons, reaching again for my hand, but right before he reaches me—
My darling. A voice whispers through the jagged cracks of my mind, so faintly I question its existence.
I’m coming, my love. The voice grows louder, and I whimper at the sound of it.
Because I know, in every tendon and sinew of my body, that it cannot be what I wish it to be.
Another illusion.
Another warp of reality.
Another false hope to contradict my despair.
Another whimper escapes me, unbidden and raw.
And through my submission, as sharp as the edge of a blade—
I’m coming for you, Elyssara. Don’t stop fighting.
It’s real.
I bare my teeth and clench my fists one last time.
I will endure.
Because he’s coming.
Kael is here.