CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Ronan
OFFERING TO TAKE ELYSIAN AND TRACK WILLA down was exactly the excuse Ronan needed.
A noble quest. A prince doing what kings ought to do. Retrieve the stolen, protect the young, shield the weak.
It sounded honorable enough to avoid questions, to keep Callum and the others digging through their research while he slipped away unnoticed.
But the verity was sharper than that polished lie.
And he needed the distraction.
Not from Verena, never from her, but from the suspicion following him around like a misplaced shadow. The more he felt Verena through that tether, the harder it became to pretend he had a single ounce of control left.
Every pulse of her power, every flicker of her distrust, every fragment of desire—the bond sent each one straight into him like a branding she couldn’t control.
He had to think, had to breathe. He needed to interrogate the only person who might have answers.
Isolde.
That poison-tongued witch always knew more than she said. If Obrann had taken Willa to weaponize his visions, then Isolde either helped orchestrate it or she’d flay Obrann alive for the challenge.
Either way, she was leverage. The kind dragons like him rarely had.
The witches’ cave was still, save for the slow drip of water resounding through the hollow dark. Shadows pulsed against the stone, wavering in time with the torches guttering along the walls.
Ronan arrived like a soundless rupture.
Before Isolde could speak, his hand was clamped around her throat, slamming her against the wall, her spine cracking against the rock with a sound sharp enough to break bone.
She only gasped, low and sultry. Like she enjoyed it.
Ronan snarled, “Why the fuck am I hearing that you’re in alliance with Obrann?”
Her smirk uncoiled like a snake, amused at the pressure on her throat. “Careful,” she chuckled. “We both want the same outcome for Selvarra.”
“Enlighten me,” Ronan suggested, his grip unyielding.
Iron nails dragged across the scars on his wrist, carving thin red lines that shimmered in the torchlight. “To see it thrive, of course. Under its true rulers.”
Ronan’s jaw flexed, power pulsing off him as it waited for release. “You’re still convinced Selvarra was meant to be yours.”
Her eyes burned, fangs flashing in the dark. “Your father and his vermin were never meant to inherit this continent. I was promised its glory. It was always mine.”
Ronan leaned in, tightening his hold until her breath finally stuttered. “Until you betrayed the very beings you swore to protect.”
He released her, dropping her like dust to stone. She cradled her throat, coughing as she swept strands of hair from her face.
“They would have brought Selvarra to a different collapse,” she hissed, finally looking up at him. “I protected it when no one else dared.”
“By eradicating an entire civilization.” He stepped back, smoke curling up and around him now as shadows folded like wings.
Isolde rose slowly, her gown dragging across the stone as she circled him. “Do you mourn them, dragon prince?” Her fingers skimmed along his arm, his chest, lingering where his scars burned like old brands. “Let’s not forget what that civilization did to you before their demise.”
Movement stirred from the corner of the cave. Something crept, too many legs or none at all, Ronan couldn’t tell, couldn’t see. It was only a ripple of darkness crawling across the wall, swelling, shrinking.
“No,” he answered.
“All we are doing,” she breathed, circling closer, “is ensuring the strongest survive. The witches. The dragons. Obrann is merely a tool to see it through. A loose end. If we let her live, we will watch all we’ve built perish—"
Ronan’s jaw clenched. “Say her name.”
Her head cocked, studying him, letting the eerie stillness stretch until it nearly snapped. “No,” she sang. “She is the means to our downfall.”
Letting out a single exhale, he warned, “If you refer to her as an object again, I will show you exactly what ruin looks like.”
She smiled, all teeth, water resonating in drips like a countdown.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Her eyes glowed, a twisted fondness warping her beauty into something unholy as she drifted toward her throne. “The Viper was created as an object for vengeance.”
Ronan’s voice cut through the dark, above the whispers now threading through it. “The same devotion that drives you to kill her.”
They weaved through the stone, too soft to catch, too many to count. A torch guttered, the flame bowing, though no wind touched it.
She turned and grinned, a wickedness flashing behind it. “Has the stone where your heart lay been wilted to dust, prince? She is a beauty; I couldn’t blame you.” Her voice dropped, purring with malice. “There have been rumors...”
Ronan stiffened. He knew what she was implying. Spies. Or worse, that she could feel the tether herself, through some vile extension of her own magic.
“I will not kill her just to soothe your jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” Her shadow wavered as she launched toward him across the cave chamber.
“You think this is petty, that she is innocent?” Her nails clicked in fury as she closed the space between them.
“The prophecy calls for a curse to be slain. I did not weave it, but I can see it fulfilled.” Her voice slipped tender when she said, “With you, Ronan. Because you need me as much as I need you.”
She straightened her spine, locking it into place, every inch an unspoken reminder. You are chained to me.
“She is venom, festering in this continent, in your kingdom. A sickness. And sicknesses must be cured. That is the only means to your freedom.”
A dark shroud clung to him as he offered a soundless chuckle. “You’re just a snake hissing at another for having fangs.”
Isolde only clicked her tongue, like she’d expected his defiance.
“Do you remember the bodies along Luamis’ coast, their blood boiled black as ink?
What else can do that, except the venom of a Viper?
” She moved closer, until the light along the wall revealed the black lurking dormant in her eyes.
Her voice slid soft, corrupting as she vowed, “I am not your enemy.”
He only gave her a thin smile. “They said your eyes were once the color of scarlet. Now they’re nothing at all. Why?”
For the briefest heartbeat, her mask cracked. A ravenous strain behind it shattering against her skin, searching for release.
Ronan knew that presence. He had felt it before.
It smoothed back into place as she said, “Your Kaida have proved disappointing. A pity, really. We’ve had to drain quite a few.”
His hands curled into claws, pupils shrinking to pinpricks as fire burned in the red-rim of the white. “Careful,” he warned, “Or you might eradicate another breed.”
She dragged her nails down the length of her arm, stopping at the oath branded to her wrist. “Why fight so hard for the Viper’s life, yet spill the blood of your own kind so easily?”
Ronan said nothing. Silence was his shield, his refusal.
“You break your vow,” she drove a nail into the mark until blood welled and oozed down her hand. “And you will suffer.”
She went to lurch toward him, darkness pooling at her feet as if eager, but she stopped herself, thinking better of it.
“But first,” she added, clenching the fistful of blood, “she will suffer.” Her voice changed then, cold and haunting. “And you will watch. You will drink from her misery until it drowns you. Then I will take whatever remains and destroy anything you have left.”
A territorial haze curled at his ribs, wanting to scorch, wanting to protect. Honest fear flashed at the thought of Verena, and he buried it beneath his own mask. He would not give Isolde the sight of it.
The smoke moved, restless, itching to lurch down Isolde’s throat and choke the breath from her.
“Maybe they’re so black,” he finally replied, “because your soul itself has been tarnished.”
Her brows flicked together. “Excuse me?”
“Your eyes—” He lifted his chin. “It's hard to radiate color when your soul is already rotted through.” Her face twisted. “What carved you out?” His steps were slow, a prowl more than a stride. “Was it the slaughter of a hundred thousand, being denied the throne you’re so pathetic for? Or did your heart go black long before the first war touched this land?”
She grinned, teeth flashing in sharp rows. “They are black,” she answered, “because we can finally see.”
A shallow dip of his chin was his only acknowledgment of what she gave away. “Our oath is void, Isolde.”
Her head snapped toward him. “You break that oath, and you die,” she hissed. “We both will. And I’ll find your Viper before you do.”
Ronan only smiled. “You see,” power thickened in the air, mist that tasted of heat and violence, “I don’t think that’s true. Because you can’t kill what’s already dead.”
Her composure faltered as the blade in his grip whispered once, a clean arc of steel meeting the glowing scales wavering beneath flesh. His skin split, blood welling in a line that severed a forced allegiance, splattering across the floor as stone swallowed it and didn’t give it back.
The scent of dragon-fire and golden iron collided as he ripped through that final line that bound him to her.
Her mark, her claim, peeled away like dead skin.
She gasped, clutching her wrist, skin searing where the vow’s brand had once bound them. For a moment she staggered, nearly buckling. And when she looked up, her eyes, those endless obsidian pits, flared.
Not with defeat. With rage.
Ronan vanished before she could say a word, enveloped by his own smoke, shadows collapsing into the void he left behind.
The chamber quaked, blackness shuddering from her, cracking stone, rattling shelves of vials until glass screamed and shattered.
He had done the right thing. Freed himself. Severed her hold. But in defying her, he had stoked the darkness she was born from.
Fed it. Sharpened it.
Left alone in the cavern, Isolde trembled, her smile stretching thin as existence writhed through her veins. And it would not be quiet.