CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Verena
IT LINGERED ON ME STILL.
The blood. The ache. The significance of what I’d lost.
Then Callum’s voice dragged me back, pulling me into the stone cottage. He paced the floor, heavy-footed and restless. “You’re upset with me?”
My stare stayed fixed on the window, its spherical frame carved like an unblinking eye into the world. The Indra Mountain usually crowned its center, but tonight they blended into the dark, hidden by night’s privacy. Another hour, maybe, before that veil lifted.
My fingers unclasped, falling to the table, the wood cool beneath my palms. “You think?”
I was grateful this place still belonged to us and was still untouched. A secret stitched between blood and rebellion. I couldn’t imagine it staying that way if the dragons discovered it.
Callum exhaled, hands clasped behind his back as he prowled.
His pacing was driving me mad. Back and forth. Back and forth. Every step echoed another memory.
Obrann stomping across the platform. Ronan closing in on Rook. On me.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Putting ourselves with the dragons as allies is dangerous, V. I know that. They’re unpredictable and arrogant—”
“You’re just listing reasons why I should have been at that meeting. Why you should have told me from the start—”
He raised a finger. Just one. And the sheer audacity of it shocked me into silence.
“And I wasn’t sure if they would burn you to dust the second they learned who you were.”
There it was, the second crack in my heart as the words landed.
Callum had never used who I was against me. Not when it would’ve been easy. Not even when I’d made a life out of hiding it.
I’d worn the mask so well, they’d trusted me to guard the most important being in Luamis. Callum had watched Gemma train me. Watched me melt into shadow. Watched me become the kind of invisible that only survives by precision.
How could he think I would slip?
I tried to gather myself from the blow. But the truth curdled in my gut. Was this it, the beginning of Callum losing his everlasting trust in me?
The chair groaned as I straightened, lifting my chin, refusing to let him see the fracture. “Tell me, is it better or worse that their prince obliterated a part of me without hesitation, while his dragon comrade burned half our village?”
My thumb dragged across my wrist, over the scar the bracelet had left. The burn had healed, but its memory hadn’t.
The Viper hadn’t surged since the bracelet was gone. It didn’t need permission. It never had. What vanished with that stone wasn’t control.
It was restraint.
The snake had been a buffer between my anger and what lived beneath it—a thin, brutal filter that kept the curse from drinking too deep.
Without it, I didn’t feel the Viper stronger…I felt myself weaker.
He caught the despair glinting at the corners of my eyes, sweeping to my side, laying a hand on my shoulder.
“That was not meant to happen,” he promised. “I don’t know how he learned who you were. I swear it.”
For someone so terrified of the dragons knowing my truth, he didn’t seem half as shaken as he should have been.
His head bowed, shaking slowly back and forth. “I don’t know why they burned half the village but, no one was harmed.”
I scoffed, rolling his sympathy from my shoulder.
“No one was harmed? They just lost the only homes they had. Homes they could barely afford to begin with. Now they’re forced to sleep on the streets.
But yes,” the fireplace at my back crackled, flames snapping against its patchwork of mismatched stone, the sound making me flinch, “thank the gods at least no one is aiding a scratch as well.”
How could he not see that everything was harmed. Maybe innocent bodies hadn’t burned, but memories had. Entire lives had been reduced to dirt.
I pretended not to stare as he stepped away, retreating to the desk beneath the window.
He lifted a slip of parchment, thrusting it toward me like an offering. “We have the funds to help them rebuild.” I shoved it back at him. “They will be okay,” he insisted, as if gold and paper could stitch over fire and grief.
It did nothing for me.
My fingers drummed against the table, its surface worn smooth by time. By choices both new and old. Choices we had made together. Until recently.
So, I asked, “Am I a liability?”
The usual glow in his eyes was gone when his head snapped up. “What?” The paper crumpled in his grip as it slipped against his thigh. “No. How could you even ask me that?”
He’s lying. The voice wound inside me.
Wood trembled when my palms slammed against the table, the crack reverberating in warning.
A sting shuddered through my fingers as a surge of dark energy ripped outward, rattling the portraits on the wall, stirring dust that hadn’t moved in years.
With it came a charred scent, stale spice mixed with vanity.
Frames crashed to the floor. Glass splintered. Callum didn’t duck as shards scattered, only lit himself ablaze, the flames scorching the pieces before they could land at his boots.
The power was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving only the tremor in my hands. I could feel it now, waiting for me to slip, to surrender. The curse was getting stronger, curling tighter around my soul.
The pale of his skin returned as he crouched among the wreckage, carefully lifting one frame.
I didn’t need to see it. I already knew which one it was just by the way he cradled it.
“Tell me what’s different,” he insisted. “What are you feeling right now?”
What was I doing? Callum was not my enemy, I reminded the curse. Myself.
Glass crunched beneath my boots as I crossed the room. “That gift didn’t control the curse, Callum. It controlled what I fed it.” My voice felt too tight.
His eyes moved to my wrist, brows pinching as he took a step close enough that I could see the question behind his eyes. “So, now what?”
Something else lingered there, as if some part of him had always wanted to know what would happen if I lost that leash.
A bright heat flared behind my eyes, my throat burning with the effort to keep it down. “Now,” I said, “I feel everything at full volume.”
He nodded, exhaling slow and measured. “Okay. Then we adjust, as we always do.”
“What am I, then?” I asked. “Because your face says even you don’t believe I’m not a liability. And you, of all people, don’t look at weapons with pity. So, tell me what I am.”
The faintest lift traced his lips, not quite a smile, his eyes drawn back low as he held the frame out to me.
“I remember when you brought that home. You were so excited to show Gemma. She cried after you gave it to her.” His head tilted, a slow shake.
“I don’t think I ever drew her a picture like that. ”
My thumb swept through the dust shielding the glass. It must have lain untouched for years, the weight of time layered thick across it. Beneath the smear of nostalgia were three very badly drawn figures.
A girl, tiny and fierce, her brown hair trailing in a long braid.
Eyes wild and teal, a smile devouring half her lopsided face.
I used to practice that smile in the mirror.
Next to her was a tall boy, hair in flames, eyes made of molten gold.
The mouth was cut into a single, stubborn line.
In his hands were purple and blue flowers, the same that had once littered the grass surrounding our cabin.
My own smile faded. “What am I?” The question slipped out a second time, quieter now. The demand of someone who no longer knows what’s left to lose.
“Verena…” Callum’s sigh hung between us.
Behind the girl in the picture stood an angel. Gemma. Silver hair flowing, arms outstretched.
My fingers traced the ragged crack that split her neck where the frame had fractured.
I didn’t know what stung more, that Callum had planned without me despite our promises.
That we’d once sworn to be a team. That we’d protect that bond above all.
Or, that somehow a part of me that was never supposed to die already had.
A piece Callum himself had given me. A piece now lost, reminding me of my own fate.
“Verena.” His voice darkened to caution.
“What?” I snapped.
His hands lifted, palms open in surrender. “Your fangs…”
He didn’t need to say it: Calm down before you lose control.
My fingers flew to my mouth, feeling the sharp length of them. I hadn’t even realized they’d slid free. “Sorry, I—”
“You’re angry,” he said gently. “And rightfully so.” He summoned flame into his palm, throwing it over the remaining broken glass until it all broke into powder. “But we all have our jobs in this.”
I ran my fingers up the underside of my braid, loosening the strands that clawed at my scalp. The tension screamed behind my eyes, a migraine already impending.
“Allying with the dragons is not a good idea.” My fangs unwillingly slipped back to canines as I exhaled. “You gave them one simple instruction, and they immediately did the opposite. What are you thinking?” I returned to the table, laying the picture down carefully.
“I’m thinking,” he exhaled, swiping a mug from the counter and joining me, “we need what the king fears.” When his eyes met mine, there was nothing soft left. “And that…is Prince Ronan.”
His name was a serrated edge dragging down my spine, every syllable a wound reopening.
“That prince,” the word caught on my tongue like spoiled wine, “is nothing but a heartless creature. A wretch who worships only his own freedom. He won’t even claim the throne meant for him.
” I braced my chin on my knuckles, elbows digging into the oak, eyes narrowing with quiet cruelty.
“No one has walked Ryuu’s soil since the kingdoms crumbled, Callum.
Haven’t you ever wondered why?” My tongue pressed against my teeth, a sharp click in the silence.
“No, you don’t need to wonder. You already know. ”