CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Verena
I KNEW SOMETHING HAD SHIFTED when he saved me from death. But could it be this deep? This absolute?
My mouth parted, the question stuck in my mind now trembling at the tip of my tongue—
The sound of heels cut through the great hall, each strike like a countdown. And then, like the slow unfurl of a nightmare, she emerged.
The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Her strawberry-blonde hair fell past her shoulders, landing near a waist that dipped like an hourglass, barely veiled by a suggestion of primrose cloth.
The slick fabric plunged in a deep V, parting between the swell of her breasts, diving past her navel before knotting around her hips and disappearing between her legs.
Her thighs were lean, honed with muscle, a single rose leather strap cinched high, flashing only when she moved like some feral, graceful feline.
But she wasn’t a feline. She was a dragon. And, infuriatingly, more breathtaking than any creature had the right to be.
I couldn’t peel my eyes from her as she prowled across the floor, every step intentional, until she reached him. Without hesitation, she wrapped herself around him, holding tight.
“I knew I felt you,” she purred. Silk slipped, baring the curve of her ass with all the subtlety of a blade sliding between ribs.
What. The. Fuck.
Anger came easy, the Viper smiling behind my face. My knuckles blanched as I let the shift slide across my eyes, pupils narrowing to black.
Ronan didn’t move to hold her. His arms stayed crossed, his attention never wavering from me. When the woman drew back and kissed his cheek, I stalked forward, a predator in all, even name.
My body went fever-hot, the monster inside me snapping like a taut wire. It wasn’t the touch itself, any fool could see it was nothing but theater, but the way her fingers lingered, set every animal part of me on fire.
His voice drifted through the bond. She’s mostly harmless. Though important. And only doing this to make you angry.
I halted. Important?
Not to me, my soulflame. To Ryuu. Play nice.
Soulflame was new.
I stoppered away a ragged inhale, leaving my fangs sheathed and my posture intentional. I wouldn’t hurt her, not here. Not now. But I would make sure she knew which parts of Ronan’s life were off-limits. Knew it was wise to keep those perfectly polished claws off my—
He smirked. Your what?
Gods. These damn shields needed a lock.
A sharp little cough announced itself before I could stop it, just enough to sever the moment. He slid from her grasp, coming to my side.
The shift was subtle, but her head snapped toward us, chin tilting over one perfectly poised shoulder as though she couldn’t quite believe he had left her orbit.
“Aelora—" Ronan said, the syllables clipped. Her almond eyes lifted, blue as dragon-fire smoke and framed by knife-edged cheekbones. She looked only at him; her devotion sharpened into something brittle. “This is Verena.”
Then, with a snap, her stare cut to me.
I had thought Elysian’s glare was winter incarnate. Hers promised worse.
Aelora’s beauty was clearly a weapon for her—a narrow face glowing with health, heart-shaped lips sculpted into a smile that wasn’t one, set beneath a sleeked nose.
Fury glowed beneath her flawless skin and with all sharp angles and lethal polish, she wielded it with the arrogance of someone who had been adored for too long.
I said nothing, held my silence. If she wanted to test me with words, I would slice them into scraps. If she wanted violence, I would gladly oblige. But for Ronan’s sake, I forced myself to stay still. Civil, if necessary.
“Verena.” The way her lips tightened around my name was as though she’d been forced to swallow poison.
A broad smile cut across my face, canines catching the light as I extended a hand. “The one and only.”
I could play nice. I could also play extremely fucking dirty. But some instinct told me it would be wiser, safer, to start with courtesy. If I chose wickedness too soon, I wouldn’t just earn Aelora’s wrath, I’d earn the kingdom’s.
She didn’t take my hand. Of course she didn’t.
Instead, she slunk around me, hooking her arm through one of Ronan’s as though he were hers to drag. “Come, my prince.” Her eyes flicked back to me like the lash of a whip. “We have much to discuss...” They lingered for half a heartbeat, dismissive. “In private.”
So, she had chosen violence. Noted.
He turned his body away from her hold, the arm she clung to slipping easily from her grasp. “I’ll join you all shortly,” he said, brooking no argument.
Aelora stilled, fury flashing hot across her face. Her arms shimmered, an opalescent light moving, shifting, under her skin.
Forcing her chin higher, she straightened, smoothing her expression back into something poised, something deceptively soft. She nodded once and turned on her heel, hips swaying in graceful retreat. The click of her heels echoed long after she disappeared into the shadows of the hall.
I looked at Ronan. “Was this a summons or a mating call?”
Her jasmine scent clung to him, sweet and insidious. It wrapped around his shirt, crawled across my tongue, and I finally understood why he had misted me the other night. The instinct to claim had spiked the moment she entered.
“Aelora is persistent.” He grabbed my hand, bringing it to his lips. “But she is aware I have denied her marriage proposal.”
Marriage? Of course. They looked as though they had been bred for one another. Two creatures made from that beauty alone were enough to conquer the world with nothing but their damn union. The thought lodged in my chest and twisted.
“If I were you, I’d yell it louder next time.”
His answering smile was almost cruel as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me flush against him. My body crashed into the hard wall of his chest, where every muscle there was honed for war, but I felt only gentleness.
He placed a kiss on the top of my head, another across my forehead, my temple. Each press unhurried, each touch as if he were marking territory invisible to anyone but us. His fingers tipped my chin up, forcing my stare into his before his mouth demanded mine.
He broke away too soon, though, not before dragging the corner of his mouth across my jaw. His hand found my wrist, turning it over, pressing reverence into the top of my hand once more with his lips before threading his fingers through mine.
Was this reassurance? Or making sure every dragon here could smell me, him on me, from across the palace.
Without another word, he led me away from the suffocating reek of jasmine and through the doors opposite of the one Aelora had taken.
One side of the corridor burned steady with dragon-flame, torches stacked thick along the wall. Their lights didn’t flicker so much as inhale, a molten pulse spilling warmth over obsidian stone.
The other side was nothing but air—an open balcony carved straight from the cliff’s ribcage, where the sea came to gnash against the rock. Spray leapt high enough to kiss the railing, leaving the scent of salt and brine on my tongue.
That was the only sound here. Not the palace planning, not the endless shuffle of guards like in Lumais. Just the waves.
I let myself drift to the edge, staring down into the mouth of the cove. It was dizzying, that view. The kind of drop that mocked mortality, that chanted how small I truly was.
Ronan had grown up with this as his horizon.
How many nights had he stood right here, staring out into the living dark, tasting the storm?
A sea this wild should have been chaos, but from here, it almost looked arranged, tempting.
As if it longed for you to fling yourself into its unknown just to see if you’d rise again.
I gripped the railing tighter until my knuckles cramped. The air raked through my braid, the wind strong enough to sting the corners of my eyes. I thought of him, choosing to leave all this behind, abandoning Sahfyre’s throne.
What wound had been deep enough to drive him from this view? Did it haunt him still, even as he brought me back here?
For one dangerous second, I envied the water, its freedom, its refusal to be held in one shape. And for another, I feared that is exactly why Ronan had left.
The chambers Ronan had deemed fit for me were not merely rooms, but a whole damn floor of them.
Elva’s quarters had always felt delicate with its light pouring through stained glass, its perfumed air, all her comforts carefully arranged as if she might shatter without them. It had always felt like we were suffocating in a gilded birdcage.
Here, the walls were dark, all veined faintly with gold, floors polished to a sheen that reflected the firelight in fractured streaks. I could get lost here. Perhaps that was the point.
“Rest as long as you need,” Ronan had said, his lips brushing mine in a kiss that clung. He’d added that someone would fetch me when dinner was ready, though the look in his eyes had implied he would rather no one else dare enter at all.
Rest. As if I could.
Not with the sea roaring just beyond the chamber’s skin.
At first, I thought it was an illusion painted in liquid light.
But the sound was too loud. The entire wall had been cut into an arching window, a full moon of glass that revealed the ocean thrashing against the cliffs below.
I had barely taken three steps inside when a wave rose like a god’s hand, hurling itself toward me.
Fine, I screamed.
The wave had struck, the chamber rattled, and then…nothing. Just the invisible shudder of some unseen barrier.
Ronan had snorted at me, mouth curled like he’d been waiting for me to make a fool of myself. “It’s charmed,” he’d explained, quite amused. “Ancient rune magic. Witches used to weave it into stone before their gifts were stripped from them. Old power lingers longest.”
And sure enough, the runes glowed faintly at the edges of the arch, etchings I hadn’t noticed until the water lit them up with seafoam light.
I could smell the brine, could taste salt on the back of my throat. The breeze still found me, whispering through cracks that weren’t really cracks. The sea was here, but it couldn’t touch me.
Then Ronan had shown me the secret. How to place my palm on the rune and how the glass would split, the balcony would rise, and the sea would be mine.
He’d said it casually, but I knew he’d locked it to recognize my handprint. That he’d imprinted this little pocket of control into the fortress of his palace.
Maybe it was protection. Maybe it was possession. Maybe both. More likely so Aelora couldn’t sneak in here and drown me out.
I let my fingers graze the runes now, feeling the hum under my skin as the waves clawed, desperate to reach me, but I stood above them. Safe, powerful, and alone.
For once, I almost believed I could rest. The fireplace gaped wide into the granite wall, scarred by time as it crackled. The fire inside was no soft domestic flame, but born of dragon-air, each snap like a growl from some beast content in its lair.
The warmth of it seeped outward in patience, not seizing me the way the sea had, but settling.
Books leaned against one another across the mantle, exhausted by centuries of keeping vigil.
Their leather spines were worn, flaked, with soot clinging to the creases.
Knowledge hoarded and forgotten, like relics gathering dust in the dragon’s den.
Dust stained my fingers as I plucked one at random, not to read, not really, but to touch something ordinary in a place that was anything but.
The chair I picked still smelled weakly of oil and leather, barely softened by others. I lowered myself into it, my weight molding the first impression.
Sleep dragged its nails gently along the back of my skull as the fire hummed its serenade. I tried to read, eyes following words without meaning, until they blurred into rivers of ink. The flames danced across the pages in trembling light, spilling shadows against the walls.
My eyelids slipped heavier, until the book sagged in my lap and the last thing I felt was a gentle blaze curling around me, steady, protective, the fire itself promising to keep me safe.