CHAPTER TWENTY
Verena
“YOU ARE NOT A CAGED RABBIT,” I snapped, following Elva onto the balcony.
The wind tore past, catching her hair. She smoothed a strand from her
shoulder, calm where I was fury.
“No,” she murmured. “I am the prized mare.” Turning away, she fled back inside.
I scoffed, trailing her steps. “How can you think so little of yourself?”
Fingers drifted down the sage silk of her gown as she stood before the mirror. The smile she forced was fragile, splintering at the edges.
“I will be queen, Verena.” The quiver was too obvious as they skimmed the ivory ink etched along her arm, a mask of strength over skin too soft to bear it. “There is no higher ruling of oneself in our world.”
My eyes flicked up, catching my reflection beside hers. She was delicate, draped in pastel and grace.
I looked night deep. Cloaked, scarred, marked. My image wavered in the mirror, as if even glass rejected me.
“Yes—” I stepped back. “Because what grand things a gagged queen can do.” Plush sank beneath me as I dropped onto her bed, the pink canopy falling in a soft cascade, veiling me in roses. “Might as well hog-tie you above a fire.”
Her eyes glistened, shoulders tensing as she turned. “Why are you being so cruel?”
I shot to my feet. I wanted to fight for her. Fates, I wanted to see her rise into the woman she was meant to be. But it gutted me, seeing how she’d folded in on herself. How she’d stopped resisting. As if she had woken one morning and decided this cage was all she deserved.
“Why are you not fighting for yourself?” was all I said in its place.
I had never pushed her. Never forced her hand. Always waited, always watched her slip and get back up, no matter how leisured. But now, I needed her to answer.
Her shoulders drooped, a single tear slipping loose at last as she neared. I pressed a tissue into her hand, settling back onto the bed as I patted its edge.
She joined me, the mattress hardly shifting beneath her frame. “What fight do I have to offer?” The tissue twisted in her grip. “I’m not trained like you. I have no strength. My powers are…” Her lip curled in self-disgust. “They’re nothing.”
A sharp breath cut through my teeth. “Is that what they told you?” She dabbed at her nose, her other hand clutching the heart pendant at her throat. “That if you dared to resist, you’d only lose anyway?”
I could already taste the blood of the palace rats who’d ground those lies into her.
First her eyes, then her head, and then her shoulders, all dimmed. Trained into inferiority. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.” The word lashed out. “It fucking matters.”
I grasped her arm, gently, eyes scanning every inch of her skin, searching for marks, for fresh cruelties I couldn’t yet see.
She never understood that even if the bruises vanished, they stole something every time.
Her palm unfurled toward the ceiling releasing a sparkle of light, small and fleeting, gone before it could take shape.
“I have made my choice,” she said, and the shadow in her eyes darkened further. “For my kingdom.”
Her kingdom. As if this kingdom had ever given her anything in return.
Csolenia was once alive with brilliance, streets painted in saffron and song, halls gilded not just in gold but in welcome. Now the colors had been leached, leaving only corridors of elegant malice.
And Selvarra swore that I was the toxin.
Some nights I almost believed it. Some nights I thought, Let it collapse, all of it. The palace. The polished legacy.
But Elva still needed me.
I caught her hand and said, “It isn’t a choice if you only have one option.” A flare returned in her eyes, thin, but there. I leaned my forehead to hers, the canopy falling around us like a dome. “So let me offer you option two, hm?”
She didn’t speak or pull away; her flame hadn’t guttered out completely. It was there, only hidden, waiting.
And I would see to it that she set this kingdom ablaze again.
A few hours later, the mirror threw back someone I hardly recognized. Or maybe just a version of myself I hadn’t met yet.
Elva had worked her silver tongue on Obrann, convincing him to let me attend tonight’s royal celebration as her guest.
Guest, not her guard.
I’d resisted, of course, but she had insisted with that damn stubbornness she only reserved for me until I caved.
For once, try to enjoy yourself, she’d said, instead of hovering like a mother hen.
Not my choice of phrasing but, fine.
The gown was the final lie to keep me looking as though I belonged here. As though I hadn’t plotted a dozen ways to gut them all.
Tessi, Elva’s housemaid, had paraded gown after gown before me, each neckline plunging low enough to invite hel itself. I made a clumsy excuse about modesty, unwilling to show the scars etched across my chest.
She had only scoffed, then returned hours later with black silk, cut from the last bit of beauty left in the dark. The bodice clung close, wrapping my shoulders, collared high at the throat.
I hadn’t quite mastered glamouring the way Elva had, but it was enough to fade the Viper mark into not being noticeable where it still showed out of the neckline.
But the back, gods, the back. The fabric plunged low, from the nape of my neck to the tops of my hips, exposing me completely.
I twisted, cursing under my breath as the lace pressed sharp at my tailbone. She had really left little to the imagination.
It had been a decade since I last wore a piece of elegance. Back then, Callum and I had been allowed into a palace gala at Elva’s side—na?ve, dazzled, too blind to see the poison laced into every word Obrann spoke.
Since then, our invitations had changed. No longer guests. Just guards, stationed where we blended.
Now, the reflection displayed something else entirely. Not a dreamer. Not a guard. A weapon woven into radiance.
A shriek split the room, and I reached for the dagger strapped to my thigh.
“You are divine!” Elva squealed, clapping her nails together, mauve-stained mouth wide with delight.
She circled me like a cat, trailing one finger down my bare spine; my back arched at the tickle.
“Scandalous,” she teased. The sorrow from earlier was gone, not a trace left.
“Seriously, V, you should dress up more often.”
I glanced at the mirror again, this time with her beside me. Where my gown was fitting more like a serpent’s skin than fabric, sleek and dangerous, cut from midnight itself, hers sang of royalty.
Ivory satin corseted her torso, gold lace draped thick across her breasts before sliding off her shoulders and pooling on the floor.
Waves tumbled loose down her back, the top swathed by a delicate lattice settling over her hair like a crown made of constraint. Ivory beads dripped down over half of her face, framing her beauty even as it hid it.
An ornament meant to silence, to protect, to suffocate.
And fates curse me, how I hated that she needed to wear it at all.
It was tradition, she had said the first time I ever saw her in it. For the Luamis heir to shield their beauty, their brilliance, from their court until they took the throne.
To me, it was only another cage made pretty.
I tipped my chin, angling my shoulder as I caught another glimpse of the back of the gown. Hips tilted, ass pushed out—my reflection smug.
Okay, maybe all those squats were good for something after all.
“And what exactly am I dressing up for?” I muttered, silently thanking the Gods Elva had at least let me wear flats.
Floral and vanilla swirled as she drifted past, her fingers curling one of my wayward strands. She clicked her tongue at the mess of a bun Tessi had finally surrendered to—low, loose, unpolished. It would have to do.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she mused, mischief sparking as she pinched my ass. I yelped, swiping at her hand while she laughed. “No one makes fighting leathers look as good as you. But sometimes it’s nice to step into a skin we don’t usually wear.”
I shifted, silk sliding like temptation down my side. This fabric was enough to seduce the dark itself.
My brow arched. “Shall I fetch my leathers for you to wear to the ball, then?”
“One day you can parade me through Selvarra in nothing but fighting leathers,” she promised. Her hand batted mine away as I tried to smudge the crimson staining my own lips. “But, not tonight.”
After kissing my cheek through her veil, she swept toward the door, where Fritz stood waiting, arms crossed, eyes already bored of our chatter.
He bowed low as she approached, gaze softening when he rose. “You look just like your mother, princess.”
The smile she offered trembled into brightness, throat bobbing as she swallowed down the honor of it.
Her arm slipped through his without hesitation, tossing me one last look over her shoulder. “You’re a dream, Verena. Own it.”
I dragged my palms down my bodice, fabric melting under my fingers as soft and heady as the rose clinging to Elva’s skin.
Movement prowled lazily, purring low, scales rasping the bars like the thing inside me could taste what wrapped us.
Not a weapon. Not a haunt. Tonight, I would be someone else entirely. I would be the woman drowning in silken dreams, instead of nightmares.
At least for a few hours.
The ballroom was painted a picture of prosperity masquerading as love.
A deception, a lie, framed in gold and roses.
A grand staircase poured into the hall in a river of marble, and down it glided the king and queen, their hands twined for show.
The queen only appeared on occasion—ceremonies, obligations, things that demanded her presence.
And each time, she looked…dimmer. As if something inside her was being taken, piece by piece.
There was no glow. No radiance. Nothing of the light she was meant to embody. And I think…she felt that too.
Behind them, Perseus and Elvira descended, the prince arrogant in his armor of charm, Elva luminous enough to draw every breath from the room.