CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Verena
IT WAS SILENT IN MY HEAD. Absolute, maddening silence.
And nothing good ever came from being trapped inside your own mind.
A distant scream broke it, splintered echoes across my skull, then sobbing, fading when the noise returned.
My noise. My screaming.
Blood spread across the marble, seeping into every polished layer, staining my hands, my knees.
It’s not real. Another nightmare. Open your eyes.
But they were already wide. Already raw. Inside me, my pulse split, then shattered. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
Gemma’s body spilled forward, a nightmare, a truth I couldn’t wake from. My pulse beat twice, off rhythm, once my own, once the curse as it stretched at last, not in a hiss, not in a coil—but in another scream.
My body shuddered, shackles snapping from wrists like threads. The guards stumbled back, wide-eyed when the stone cracked beneath me. I pitched forward, catching myself on trembling hands.
Recognition at last, it purred. Now they will see. Now they will kneel.
The pain was ecstasy. The ecstasy was destruction.
My scream split into two, mine and the monster’s, as we rose together from the floor, black lines spidering outward over my face with every pulse.
Gemma’s blood still pooled and I promised, with every shred of my soul, they would choke on it.
But it wasn’t me anymore. I floated in an endless obsidian pool inside my head, weightless, soundless, watching through the Viper’s eyes.
My head lifted slow, fingers no longer blood red, but dipped in black as they reached for the small dagger hidden in my waistband. The blade flew, a streak of silver lightning aimed straight for Obrann’s face.
He didn’t anticipate it. His hands lifted, too sluggish and useless. Even the guards lagged. But someone else didn’t—
Metal met metal in one sharp, ringing breath, and my dagger spun midair, cut down, clattering to the floor.
My soul slammed back into its cage of skin, ribs cracking under the weight of it as Reve Mayweather stepped through the blood between us.
He raised the point of a nix-metal sword, its edge dragging near my throat. “Verena,” the click of his tongue echoed loud, “that’s no way to treat our king.”
I knew it.
The delight touching his lips wasn’t courageous. It was currency. He’d sold himself to whatever foul power Obrann kept under his crown.
And Gemma had been the one to pay the price for his bargain.
I looked down to my hands, where black leaked further up my arms. I didn’t even know how the chains had been broken, perhaps some miracle ripped from the last shred of my soul. A miracle not meant to be wasted.
The first thing I was going to do was claw Reve’s godsdamn eyes out as I cleaved my way to Obrann.
I hissed, the sound tearing through my teeth, and Reve jerked back, his sword dropping just enough to scrape against the cursed mark beneath my shirt.
“Bring them both to the dungeons!” Obrann yelled, shoving a guard forward. “Now!”
They all stepped wide around the gore, halting at the sight of me. All together they pivoted for Callum instead. He hadn’t moved, was still on his knees, still staring at her. Our mother. Knowing it should have been me.
“I want them in separate cells,” Obrann added. “Not beside one another. I want them to hear each other’s screams but never see how close they come to death.”
The guards crept forward as bravely as they could, hesitant but obedient. And I stood, ready to tear them all to fucking scraps.
Obrann’s teeth ground together as if biting back his own rage. “Restrain her!”
Heat bled through fabric like molten when Reve shoved the blade back into my chest. Another guard lunged for my wrists, trying to lock fresh chains, heavier ones.
I snapped, twisting my body to the guard behind me, all fangs and fury. Claws raked across his throat, tearing skin and muscle into strips.
He gurgled, trying to scream, but it was drowned. I ripped him down, shredded him until his face was nothing but pulp.
Until the floor was stained an even darker red.
Another step and I’d tear through the next one, and the next. Until Obrann himself was limp at my boots.
That step didn’t come.
It was quick, subtle, barely a scratch. Then the sting built and my body locked as I blinked down at my arm where Reve’s blade had nicked me—the tiniest cut, casual as a sigh.
It burned. Not like fire or poison. Like sinking.
My veins recoiled, shadows shriveling back into my skin. A dizzy haze wrapped around me as my breath hitched, control slipping from my grasp as my heart skipped its pace.
“What…the fuck,” I rasped, clutching at the cut as if I could will it closed.
Reve circled me, polishing his blade from my blood before sheathing it. “Nix doesn’t care how keen the edge is, beastie.”
Before I could lunge for his throat, cold iron slammed around my wrist. My elbows snapped out, blurring in my periphery.
The curse still crouched behind my ribs, wearing my face like a mask so I turned, baring fangs, letting it gleam between my teeth as my free arm lashed out. The guard who had cuffed me lurched back, dropping the remaining chain, barely avoiding the slash.
Obrann’s footsteps thundered closer, surrounded by trembling men leaving stained steps in their wake.
I reached for the shackle clamped on my wrist, but my shoulders sagged as the world tilted, color draining, everything slipping back into its muted hue.
For the first time in too long, I felt fragile.
“My son suffered,” Obrann said, too close to me now. My arm whipped out again, a weak fist in the dark. It never landed. The second restraint snapped over my wrist, and I crumpled to the ground. “But you,” his pause was a knife to my throat, “your torment will not be so brief.”
Hollow. That’s what I was. Hollow and gutted.
“Good.” My cheek ground against the marble. “Pain was never the fear. Do your worst. I can survive it knowing Elva will never be chained to the evil you called a son.”
The weight in my chest crushed me flat, like a boulder lodged between ribs, between lungs. I reached inward for the other, the impulse, the hunger.
Nothing remained. Not even its shadow. Not even the cage that held it.
Jewels clicked in quiet laughter as Obrann crouched low, fingers ghosting across my cheek, down the scar, resting at my throat. My body didn’t flinch, not really. Only my spirit recoiled.
“You think you saved her?” His words brushed the shell of my ear, breath bitter with hate. “The wedding is postponed, Verena. Not canceled.” The black of his eyes swirled, ink devouring ink, until I couldn’t tell where iris ended and pupil began.
Callum said nothing as the guards dragged him up, wrists and ankles shackled, his head hanging in a lull.
“She can’t marry a corpse,” I muttered, lips barely moving.
Obrann wiped his fingers on his knee as if my skin had left a stain there, eyes sliding past me. I didn’t need to follow it to know where it landed, to feel the grin twist across his face.
I forced my chin up anyway, to where Elva stood at the foot of the dais; skin returned to its natural shade; hands knotted in front of her gown. Golden waves spiraled over her shoulders, tears pouring down like rain at dawn.
Fritz still hovered behind her, still refusing to look up.
“We’ll see about that,” Obrann chuckled.
A sound worked its way out of my throat before I could stop it, half sob, half snarl. Breath wouldn’t come. It had abandoned me the moment Gemma fell.
Somewhere near, Callum exhaled, a rough tremor of life. His body stayed slumped, but I knew he had heard every word.
I reached inward one last time for the curse, only to find cold emptiness, like a lock without a key.
Obrann raised a hand, a summons meant for one person. Elva obeyed, her steps tiny as she skirted the pool of blood. When she reached him, he tucked a strand of hair from her collarbone with a lover’s touch and let his fingers drift to the heart-shaped pendant at her throat.
The catch in her breath was imminent.
“The effect of nix metal on an immortal is,” he dropped the pendant, pressing a kiss to her cheek, “fascinating.” My stomach turned. “Even one cursed,” he added, nodding at the guard.
A boot slammed into my ribs, white-hot pain blooming around my core. If I’d had air, I would have laughed.
“Iron alone wouldn’t do the trick we’d hoped for.
” A servant handed him a gilded chalice, scales etched along the cup like a mockery of wings.
He swirled it once before downing it in a single pull.
Red spilled from the rim, streaking down his chin.
“So, we added an ingredient.” He dragged a cloth over stained lips. “Also rich in iron.”
Blood. He just drank fucking blood. And I’m the cursed one?
“It took months to track down this particular creature. But well worth it, seeing as your precious curse is now…compromised.”
So, it wasn’t just in my head.
I blinked, the motion dragging like a dying star. “How?”
He glanced at me, and I wondered if he was debating really telling me. Instead, he only chuckled, “Let’s see how fearsome you are without your poison.”
“Unlock these chains,” Gods, my voice was nearly stripped from me. “Let me show you that it won’t be the Viper that rips your shriveled heart from its pit.”
A sound crept up from his throat as he turned to Elva. She flinched but still looped her arm through his when he reached for her, leading them toward the corridor.
“As I said,” he sneered, “to the dungeons.”
Two guards hoisted me upright, careful hands on my elbows as though I were a live blade. Cowards, even now, when my threats had been reduced to wasted breath.
Chains dragged against polished tile, a hiss of metal on stone. My head tilted, searching for Callum, the scent of blood fusing to my throat.
I couldn’t look at her as we passed. I failed. I failed. I failed.
Obrann paused mid-stride, a trace of recollection flashing across his face. One last cruelty. He patted Elva’s hand and she unhooked her arm from his, following a maid out of the chamber.
She didn’t look back. Not at me. Not at Callum. Not at Gemma’s body cooling on the stone.
The pang that struck me was jagged, worse than rage.
Obrann ripped an object from a servant’s hand as he neared. “This was found among her things before you arrived,” he said lightly. “It has your scent all over it. I thought you might want it back.”
His boots clicked in a slow manner until he crouched in front of me. A thumb brushed a streak of blood from my cheek as though I were something delicate instead of shackled and split.
“Your scent is very particular,” he murmured, tasting the word like a secret.
I wanted to scream. To rip out his eyes and fill the sockets with my venom. But I couldn’t move as he held up a ratted ivory blanket, patched, mended, a small piece of home stitched into every seam.
My body shook as he reached out his arm, as if to give it back to me. That alone would have gutted me. What he did instead was just spiteful.
He tossed it past me, letting it collapse into blood. Red crept up through the pale fabric like roots, devouring it whole.
A last piece of me dying, this one with her.
I gagged. Then the taste of bile rose and everything, everything I’d held together, spilled onto the floor with it.
A laugh chased itself across the room as he strolled away. “I do hope you don’t die down there.” Stopping at the edge of the doorway, he glanced back over his shoulder. “The plans I have for you.”
My reply wasn’t a whisper but a promise. “Chain me, gag me, watch me bleed dry.” More bile rose but I swallowed it as he stilled. “The Viper’s head will grow back.” Even with my face numb, a bitter laugh crawled its way out. “And now that it’s tasted your blood, it will hunt you down.”
Obrann’s jaw ticked, but I pressed on.
“You are not safe. The way Elva has never been safe. And when you beg, when you scream, when its fangs reach for your throat, it won’t grant mercy, only undoing, until your last pathetic breath.” I smiled. “For it is death, and death fears nothing.”
Swallowing deep, he smoothed his jacket with nervous fingers, branding the image of me into memory before finally turning for good, boots hammering against the stone.
Reve barked a curse at a guard, shoving him aside as he seized my arm himself. His grip was punishing, unfamiliar, digging into flesh gone numb.
My vision blurred, then blinked out entirely as he dragged me forward, into the quiet ruin of my own undoing.