CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Ronan
RONAN HAD WATCHED VERENA BURN through the battle of the camp with a ferocity that refused to bow.
To kings, to gods, even to death.
And then he watched that same force be used to heal.
Not herself, but another.
His eyes had lingered on Verena as she wiped endless tears from the young girl’s face, Ford nearly collapsing beside them. Her movements had been soft, impossibly tender, like she wasn’t expecting anyone to be watching.
The girl had clutched Verena’s hand, nestling her cheek against it, unafraid of the monster the world claimed she was. And with all the innocence of grief, she had pressed a kiss into her palm.
And Ronan had heard it, the hitch in the Viper’s breath at the gesture. An acceptance. A thank you.
Verena had drawn her close, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other wrapping her tightly to her chest.
From a distance, it looked like a serpent suffocating its prey.
But it wasn’t. Not then. Not with her.
This Viper hadn’t been a monster. Not a curse. Not a predator.
He had strained to catch her words, spoken in affirmation: That even hearts that shatter can still heal, despite the cracks that don’t.
The girl had nodded, tight curls tumbling onto her salt-stained cheeks. Verena had pressed a kiss to her crown, her own eyes shut tight as a single tear slid free, glistening as it fell. It was a memory that would brand him.
The Viper, with venom in her veins, holding grief like it was sacred.
Liquid silver from the river rushed over stones, unbothered where his knees sank into the mud at its edge.
Terrain sucked at him, trying to drag him under while bloodied hands pressed hard against his eyes.
And for the first time in centuries—Ronan shattered.
A shockwave of grief battered his being, rattling his bones, prying apart the iron walls he had built around himself. His jaw locked, but it couldn’t hold back the years of restraint that broke in a flood.
In the vastness of the shadows he got lost, trapped.
He couldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t.
In five hundred and thirty years of existence, Ronan had never felt terror like the fear of watching Verena’s life waver out. She had been nearly torn from the world in seconds, and there had been no triumph in it. No glory.
Only horror.
He told himself it had been a choice. That saving her from that cliff had been a decision. That somewhere between chaos and carnage, he’d looked at her and made the call.
Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. The part of him still pretending to be free had burned away when he had seen her fall. He’d gone to her before he even realized he had moved.
More than that, a deeper force had answered when their blood bound. Unbreakable to the world, fragile and tethering into his soul. A binding that felt like memory repeating itself.
One that could unravel itself thread by thread as quickly as it had been woven.
But when it pulled tight, it hesitated, a reminder of the oath he had once sworn to another.
He burned that too. Let it sear across realms. And he prayed that the dreadful witch who forced that vow felt the full weight of his hate against its sting.
Let the world choke on its own ruin. Let kingdoms fall to ash. He would not take Verena from it.
And that only meant one thing.
She was not the damnation of their world—she was the inevitable unraveling of his.
Elysian had hunted down the bastard who tried to end her. It was an unfortunate stab, not only for Verena, but him as well.
The instant her blood slicked his steel, his fate was written. The blade had caught his own skin too, spilling a drop of mortal blood into hers.
That was all Elysian needed.
The scent clung, so the hound had chased. Tracked him down with brutal precision, finding him miles away, kneeling in a stream, scrubbing her blood from his hands as though it could be washed away.
He had dragged him through the mud the entire trek back camp, the soldier thrashing, choking on his own dread, until he was thrown at Ronan’s feet.
The pixies had led Ronan to a sunken alcove in a small mountain, hidden where sound was swallowed. Where no cries would betray Ryuu’s secrets.
That’s where the man’s body hung now, strung up with chains where Ronan himself had welded them into the cave walls.
Stone and steel melted together until they were unbreakable.
The crack of his breaking bones reverberated through the pit, each shatter punctuated by the spray of red that painted the walls. Muffled screams sang high, ricocheting like a grotesque chant.
Blow after blow, bone after bone, he was pulverized, until his body sagged. Until the three rings on his hand were permanently stained red.
Miraculously, the man clung to consciousness, babbling through bloodied teeth.
“Reve should have fucked her harder beneath the palace…” His words slurred, but stuck.
“He didn’t break her enough, but someone will.
Tick. Tick. Tick.” A laugh came, cut short by the blood he choked on. “She’s coming for her.”
Smoke rippled down Ronan’s spine, a growl rising as he tasted the fire at the back of his own throat.
One more heartbeat, one more breath. And he’d lose the leash.
The clasps at the soldier’s wrists ignited, iron flaring a cheery, searing tangerine as flesh peeled away, burning clean from bone—
Only then did Ronan feel the smallest breath of relief. And even that relief tasted like ash.
Elysian had not moved. He only stayed leaning against the jagged stone, arms crossed, eyes unblinking as they lingered on what was left of the man.
Skin melted into shackles, shoulders bent at unnatural angles, eyes open but unseeing.
Ronan’s inhale rasped from the corner, the sound more beast than man as wings unfurled, shadows stretching vast and terrible behind him. Tendrils of smoke clung to him, protective and possessive, exhaling off him in slow curls, breathing in the damp air with him.
The man’s heart had stuttered and gone still. Yet Ronan remained unmoving, as though he didn’t trust death to hold. As though he needed to be certain he would never rise again.
The scrape of boots disturbed the stillness when Killian ducked through the narrow entry, his bulk nearly filling the space.
He hesitated, then said, “She’s awake.”
No answer.
Elysian tipped his chin toward him, encouragement to continue.
Killian cleared his throat, covering the swell of relief in his chest. “She’s okay. It’ll be like it never happened.”
A laugh split the room, twisting up from Ronan’s chest. The haze peeled from him as he stepped from the corner, mouth curled in something crueler than a smile. “Except it did.”
Killian looked toward Elysian, but Elysian’s face was a mask, unmoved. They both knew there was nothing to say. Nothing that would soften this truth.
Even if Verena herself strode into this cave, spine straight, voice fierce, insisting she was unbroken—she had almost died. That was real. That was raw. Even if they didn’t understand why.
Killian’s footsteps retreated, dimming until they escaped the cave completely. Elysian moved, uncrossing his arms, pushing himself from the wall. His voice was quiet, but it cut with finality. “You have to tell her.”
“I can’t.”
Just as he couldn’t kill her. Just as he had known, from the very first breath of their oath, that he never would.
He had tried to convince himself she was nothing but ruin. That the curse was all she was, and doom consumed her fate.
But then he caught himself listening for her laughter across firelight. Felt the hitch in his chest when her fingers brushed his. Found himself seeking her shadow in the chaos of battle, as though his own survival hinged on hers.
It was the tether, he had told himself, the blood oath to Isolde. Fate’s cruel snare, binding him so he could one day deliver her end.
Yet the pull only grew stronger, until it felt less like a bond and more like a wound in his chest.
A wound he could never close. A wound he didn’t want to.
“She’s going to find out.” Elysian’s words weren’t warning. They were inevitability.
Ronan knew he was right. Sooner or later, Verena would learn what the prophecy demanded of him. He would tell her. Not now, not today. But he wouldn’t bury it forever.
Maybe she would kill him the moment the truth left his tongue. Maybe that would be the kindness, her blade, or her venom, sparing him from the oath’s fire, from the ash already waiting to claim his blood.
And flames burn him, if it was her hand, he almost wouldn’t mind.
Elysian’s eyes narrowed, already catching the thought before Ronan could lock it away. Softly, like a verdict, he said, “You wouldn’t stop her.”
It was an accusation, flung with the precision of a knife.
His stare held Ronan’s for a moment longer, long enough to let the truth bury. He pushed from the wall and strode toward the cave’s mouth, leaving Ronan alone, as still and damned as the dead man at his feet.
Ronan ran his fingers down the sage-colored tunic, its cotton smooth, yet suffocating against his skin.
A gift. Killian’s idea of humor forced onto him with a smirk.
So Verena doesn’t wake to your all-black and bloodied nonsense, he’d said. As if a tunic could erase or dull the memory on Ronan’s hands.
The camp lay quiet as Pixies who had been spared worked in silence to tend the broken, to bury the lost.
The aftermath of battle was always solemn. Even if you won, even if most of your soldiers survived, there was always that lingering death in the air that would never dissipate.
That’s the part that haunted you. Not the noise of battle, but the hush afterward.
The tent opening flapped against the breeze where Ronan hesitated, his hand hovering over the cloth. Before he found the courage to push through, Nezra slipped out, her palm flat against his chest.
“Wait,” she said.
He snarled, trying to shoulder past her. “Killian said she was awake—”
She shifted, planting herself in front of him again, arms raised. He could have torn through her, but her eyes held him still.