CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Verena
KILLIAN RAMSAY. NOT A MYTH, but a resurrection forged into flesh.
He needed no introduction, everyone in Luamis had heard of him.
Hel, everyone in Selvarra was familiar.
His reputation wasn’t built on questions but on brutality. Piece by piece, he’d dismantle you until nothing remained.
He was said to have come from a far-off continent after his realm’s collapse. The last risen of a kingdom long buried. But what was never told was that that kingdom wasn’t buried, it was erased.
A memory bled back without warning—Nezra, the vision she had forced into me of Saintoria, the Angel’s realm. I remembered the sky first, painted in dawn-fire. Then their wings of cloud, spun from the breath between realms.
But the Angels weren’t cowering in that memory like Obrann’s story would suggest, they moved among the Gods themselves, untouched by fear, as allies.
I remembered the Valkara, her oath binding her to guard Selvarra. She wasn’t erased. Not even betrayed. She had been chosen.
The chains rattled as I shifted, cold iron biting into bone. The narrative Obrann fed us, the ashes, the slaughter, even the extinction, it was all wrong.
Callum had known, for centuries he’s known. I didn’t expect him to give me history lessons along with training but, wouldn’t it be relevant that history had gotten it wrong purposefully?
The Gods, well, they had always loved their secrets.
Obrann’s voice shook me back. “His gift will leave very little room for resistance.”
So it began in the mind, then. Not with steel.
I wasn’t sure which was worse: that he could peel back every thought, or that he could plant one I’d never know wasn’t mine.
His eyes caught mine, still on the surface, but rippling with delight at the mention of pain. I winked at him past the grit of my teeth, defiance stirring uneasily. The cell door unlatched in my mind.
Death I could bear. Torture at his hands? No, thank you.
“Your Majesty, this isn’t necessary,” Callum’s shackled hands clasped tight. “My mother has served faithfully for centuries. We’ve never given you reason to doubt her loyalty to the crown.”
“There is a thin line between confidence and arrogance.” Obrann flicked his hand. “You have insulted me for the last time.” A lazy finger pointed, sealing the command. “Start with him, Lord Ramsay. If you will.”
Callum stiffened as Killian closed in. “What secrets shall we peel from you?” Killian murmured, his eyes shifting as he stared into Callum’s mind.
Too easily Callum exhaled, his shoulders easing. Was he surrendering, or was Killian so ruthless, so skilled, that he tore through shields like they were nothing?
Killian’s pupils flared and Callum froze, body rigid, eyes unblinking. Killian tilted his head with a kind of curiosity that promised more than pain. “You lesser always make such a mess of your minds. Do you ever stop to clean in there, or is it all noise and guilt?”
Callum disorganized? I think he might have dipped into the wrong mind.
Despite it all, Callum gave a crooked grin. “You’ll find plenty of both, try not to get lost. Just wipe your boots before you walk in.”
Smothering a smirk, Killian stepped closer and said, “You understand that I now hold your mind. That you will only speak the truth. If you try and fight it or lie, I’ll know.”
Callum’s nod was slow, mechanical. “If I tell the truth, you’ll twist it anyway. Seems like we're both predictable.”
Killian’s glare burned for half a second, blue haloing to gold. “Careful, your fear is dripping, even from your eyes.”
Chains rattled as Callum leaned to meet him, irises alight with whatever glow the shackles hadn’t dulled yet. “I’m angry, not afraid. Learn the difference before you dig too deep.”
Killian snickered, almost impressed. “Very well.” His hands clasped behind his back as he prowled in a circle. “Did you murder the prince?”
“No.”
I exhaled. A truth, clean and easy.
“Did you help plan it?”
Gemma’s breath faltered, gag muffling the sound.
“No.”
Another truth. Thank the gods I didn’t tell him.
Killian stopped before him, lowering until his smile was all teeth. “Bow to me.”
I cocked my head, what kind of demeaning request was that?
Obrann lounged, almost bored on the throne, otherwise uninterested in Callum’s answers. Likely because he knew it wasn’t him who killed Perseus.
But Callum, godsdamn him, folded and dropped to a knee, his chin bending low like a broken man.
Killian’s laugh echoed, low and mocking. “Rise.” Callum did. “How did that feel?”
There was a tic of his jaw, his throat working as he fought. “It felt,” his glare cut upward, defiant even as he obeyed, “necessary.”
Fair enough.
Killian nodded once then straightened his spine. “Are you the leader of a rebel group sworn to destroy the Luamis throne?”
Greedy for the answer, Obrann, at last, curved forward.
Sweat carved a trail down Callum’s temple as he opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Killian said, cruel as a snare, “Drink from your goblet.”
And Callum. Fucking. Did.
Shackles rattled as I sprang for him, but a vicious yank snapped me back, iron biting, my elbow slamming against stone, white-hot pain tearing up my arm. “Callum,” I gasped. “Don’t—”
But he drank. Every drop. Silence swallowed the room while we waited—but nothing happened. No poison. No collapse. Thank the fates.
“No,” Callum declared, “I am not the leader of a rebel group aiming to take down the Luamis throne.”
Truth. Or close enough to feel like it. The ease in his voice, the confidence, it set my skin crawling.
Apparently, that was all the confirmation Obrann needed because his hand slashed toward Gemma as he groaned, “Her next.”
I heard the struggle first, the chain’s drag, her strangled fight. Then the guard kicked her, right in the ribs. She whimpered as she hit the ground, her body limp as cloth.
My shadow moved before I did, darkness humming low in my blood, but muted, muffled. I even struggled to hear it.
With a newly filled goblet in hand, Obrann eased back, one leg draped, a maiden massaged his free hand. “Forget that one,” he drawled, swirling his wine. His stare cut to me. “Do the girl instead.”
Ah fuck.
Killian shifted his focus, the chains clanging as the guard yanked me upright. My legs shook from fury, from the effort of holding every secret in its cage.
If Killian Ramsay got in, if he saw what I’d done, what I’d planned, he’d rip it all apart. He’d rip me apart.
I forced everything down. Behind steel. Behind venom. Behind dark iron gates that no Angel should be able to pry.
And then I kicked. My leg snapped back, cracking into the guard’s knee. He howled, losing his grip, the shackles slipping from his fingers.
I spun, then froze. Not just still…taken.
My fingers refused to curl. My heart stuttered in its cage. My body, my will, none of it my own. Killian’s magic twisted through me, rooting deep, making me a marionette before I could even draw breath.
Relax, little vixen.
The thought wasn’t mine either. It moved across my shields like mist seeping under a door.
Don’t make this worse than it already is.
My skull pulsed, my shields straining like glass about to crack. His magic slipped through the smallest gaps, cool and invasive, curling into every hidden place I’d bricked over.
I shoved back, tried to at least, clamping more than steel around my thoughts. Tried to bury them deeper, anywhere he couldn’t reach.
We all have secrets, don’t we?
My stomach dropped. Fuck. He heard that.
I heard that too. A smile curled through his tone. You’re going to tell me everything you don’t want to. And you’re going to enjoy it.
Panic reached up my throat, choking me on nothing until my body was yanked hard from behind. Sensation returned in a flood of needles across my skin, my lashes fluttering violently until the burn eased.
Everyone really underestimated blinking.
Just relax. His mental fingers combed through hidden drawers. Let the truth float up, I’ll find it.
Exactly what I feared. I didn’t need some smug Angel with ocean eyes and a god complex rifling through what wasn’t his.
He already knew what Callum carried, had tasted his truth. So why hadn’t he spoken up?
When my vision cleared fully, I could see the guard still hunched over his knee, both hands clutching it as he cried out. I spat, and by some divine stroke of luck, it landed square on his cheek, sliding with gravity’s grace right into the corner of his mouth.
Bullseye.
He roared, spitting threats about hel and sending me there himself.
Please. Hel was nothing new to me.
A low purr brushed my skull, Killian’s amusement, not a sound but a ripple. Oh, not a vixen, it slid in. Something far more damning.
His grin flared as my eyes caught the flash of diamonds at the tips of his canines. Of course he wore jewelry on his damn fangs.
He stopped in front of me, tilting his head. “You’re calm for someone with an Angel in their head.”
I met his stare, making sure he saw how unimpressed I was. “I’ve had worse in there.” Have worse. “So be careful, you never know what’s hiding in the murk.”
Giving a humorless laugh, he dipped his chin. “Comforting. You’re not afraid?”
I shrugged, eyes fixed on his. “Should I be? Sorry to disappoint but you’re not exactly unnerving with all that finery.”
There was the thinnest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe I should try harder then.”
A pulse rippled through my skull, and for a heartbeat I thought he might strike me down. Instead, he said, “You’re interesting. I almost hope you survive all this.”
Darkness rattled against its cage. “That’s the thing, Angel. I’m always the one that survives.”
For a moment, Killian only watched, eyes unreadable. Understanding or warning. Maybe both. He stepped forward, closing any distance left between us. “Then let’s begin.”
I narrowed my stare, picturing what it would be like to drain all the blue from his eyes until they were nothing but dull grey. “By all means,” I said. “See what’s left of me.”