CHAPTER FORTY-NINE #3
She rose so fast the chair scraped, all the air in the hall leaning toward her. “I still can’t believe you brought this...this...thing to our kingdom, Ronan.” She jabbed a finger in my direction, theatrically, as though accusing me of crimes I had yet to commit. “Look at her face.”
My face?
“She can’t even mend that hideous scar. I hope you don’t plan to let her stay, because once I’m queen she’ll never set foot in Ryuu again.”
Queen. The syllable was a poison meant for Ronan. For me it landed like an accusation and a dare.
She’s only trying to rattle you.
What’s wrong with my scarred face?
Nothing, Ronan promised. You’re exquisite.
I didn’t mean for my smile to bloom, but it did, bright and reckless and stupidly proud.
“Thing,” I echoed, swirling the word on my tongue like wine in glass. “Haven’t been called that yet.” I almost laughed. “How small your world must be to fit me in a word that size.”
She leaned forward. “What are you then, if not some sad, pathetic creature?”
I didn’t blink, didn’t raise my voice, only met her stare. No fangs, no venom. Only truth. “Retribution.”
The man to Ronan’s right lifted his hand, setting it on top of Aelora’s. “My daughter, this is a civil dinner. Verena is our guest and she will be treated as such.”
His eyes were the same frosted blue as hers, but his face wore winters I hadn’t seen in Ryuu yet. He was younger than Fritz, younger than Obrann, and yet something in him was heavy in centuries’ worth of cares. He bore it with a kind of pride that felt like armor.
I tipped my chin to him. “You’re Aero?”
Blond hair fell over his tired shoulders as he bowed his chin. “I am. And Ryuu does not judge by rumor. We are pleased you have come.”
The platter between us smelled of riches I’ve never imagined—meat roasted beyond compare, vegetables blushing with spices, bread steaming with butter. Hunger rose in me like an animal, the world tapering to scent, to the soft give of the meat as my knife found it.
“But it’s not a rumor,” I said before I could swallow the lie. “My curse.” My eyes closed for one terrible, honest second as the food melted on my tongue and I felt the world stabilize. “What if I am as wicked as they say?”
Aero watched me with a steadiness that had nothing of fear in it. It was not pity, not even curiosity, but a kind of solid recognition, an acknowledgment that some things were storms, and you chose how to stand in them.
“Then I would say you will fit in quite well here in Sahfyre, my dear.”
I could see why Ronan left him in charge. He wasn’t intimidating in the obvious way. No scars. No roar. But his voice spoke the language people trusted. Quiet command. Ledger balanced with compassion. After two minutes, I liked him. Which was risky.
Aero’s plate lay abandoned, nudged politely aside. His fingers steepled, the motion clean. Ronan’s plate did the same, his own fingers tracing the rim of his goblet.
“Did Ronan tell you why I summoned him?” Aero’s voice slid toward me.
Not a question aimed to shame, more a window opening to conversation. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My eyes had gone searching down the length of the table where no one was eating. Every plate was pushed away, every goblet brimming and ignored. My own plate sat shamefully picked through.
I tasted the memory of the meat on my tongue—sweet, molten, almost sinful.
Holy shit. Poison.
You were not poisoned, fangs.
We’re not going with that pet name, I snapped back.
Very well. The sweep of amusement brushed along my bond like a hand cupping my jaw. My little viperling.
No.
The corner of Ronan’s mouth twitched.
So why was no one eating?
I shook my head to Aero, forcing composure into my voice. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since we arrived.”
Aelora’s thin inhale shattered the moment. She collapsed her arms, the picture of boredom, fingers pretending to fuss with nails polished to perfection. “Two things he’s kept from you. Our betrothal. And the fact you’re dragging war to our doorstep.”
Joy lit her face like a torch. Joy at my expense. It took everything in me not to reach across the table and tear the sound from her throat.
Ronan’s face didn’t change from stone. But I saw it, the way the weight slid onto his shoulders, leaden as chains.
“Is that true?” I prayed for him to say no. I could die for our homes. Gladly. But I couldn’t be the reason it all collapsed back into war.
He exhaled, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “Obrann did declare war.” A torturous pause. “Though it wasn’t solely for you.”
For me?
“He wants Elva as well.” He said it carefully, as though the sound alone might rip me open.
No. Gods, no. My mind stuttered, caught in the wrong rhythm. He wants me and Elva?
“In exchange for what?”
Ronan hesitated. I felt it in my bones, in the smoke curling tighter around my arms. He didn’t want to say it. But he forced the words out anyway. “I keep my heirloom. And he keeps his forces from Sahfyre.”
War.
Obrann had declared fucking war. And Reve, he had run straight back to him, tongue dripping with our secrets, with the truth that Ronan stood at our side.
They knew they couldn’t win the old way. Not with Ryuu against them. Not with its heir on our side. But Ryuu wasn’t against them. Just Ronan. The dragon kingdom had more reason to bend to Obrann than waste blood on rebels. And Obrann had offered Ronan the one thing he believed mattered—power.
Except Ronan didn’t hunger for crowns. He craved freedom. And even that was a lie, because freedom for him meant a noose if it endangered his kingdom.
A predatory snap of anger crept through me, blistering, unbearable. My body was a fuse about to blow. I needed out. Out of this room, out of these suffocating walls, out of the burdened air that said everything we didn’t.
“Honestly, Ronan—” Aelora began, voice dripping false sweetness.
Gods help her if she finishes that sentence.
“A king would not make such poor judgments when it came to his kingdom.” Her lashes lowered, before she shot her stare at me. “Never mind who shares his bed.”
I knew it. She had a death wish.
Ronan remained poised as he turned his head only slightly, dragon-flame wavering across the harsh lines of his face. “Enough.”
But Aelora was not finished.
“Look at her!” Her hands flung wide, sheer fabric sliding too high. “She’s a mess. A poor excuse—” Her eyes snagged then on my arm. Then to Ronan’s. To the twin marks etched into us. Our bond. My lifeline. Her lips parted. “You cannot be serious…what in the damnation is that?”
“He save—”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she seethed through her teeth, “you venomous pest.”
Oh, she’s dead.
I rose slowly, the hiss of gloss against my skin like the beginning of a hunt. Fangs slid down, locking into place this time. Flames guttered out one by one, bowing out in sequence, shadows swallowing stone, darkness sinking into us all.
The Viper uncoiled inside me as my stare prowled over her, turning cruel, until the hall itself exhaled with me. I licked her fear from the air, sweet and spoiled.
Ronan had told me she mattered, that she was important. But Ronan had also given me freedom. So, like him, freedom is what I chose.
The gown slid through my legs as I moved, crawling onto the table. My knees pressed into polished wood, my hips rolling with each forward shift. A predator unapologetically on display.
Halfway down the table, the flames burst back alive, fire sputtering, flaring, as if Ryuu itself could not look away.
Aelora’s mouth parted as she got a good look at me in shock, disbelief, the first cracks of fear in a woman too used to drawing blood with only her tongue.
She thought me a mess, ghastly. Weak. I smiled, one that promised otherwise. I let her tremble. Let her see what I could become as her eyes began to burn to cobalt.
The table cracked beneath Ronan’s fist, glass tumbling and shattering in a thousand glittering pieces. The sound rang, a dark essence surging out, heavy and suffocating, but not toward me. Never me.
It wrapped Aelora instead, thick coils strangling the air around her until she shook. That darkness clung to her while Ronan towered above, veins straining at his arms, his neck, his temple, pulsing in perfect tandem with the smoke.
He leaned close and said, “One more fucking word, and I will banish you from this kingdom.”
A tear in the air opened and Ronan reached through, pulling parchment from the sift and ripping it apart with deliberate violence. Aelora whimpered, the next crack in her armor, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes.
“I was never going to marry you, Aelora.”
Well, that was certainly loud enough.
She clawed at his arm, and I bared my teeth in answer. “Look at what she’s already done to you,” she cried. “Don’t you see? She’s corrupted your mind so easily. How can you not feel it, Ronan?”
The accusation struck, venom gathering sweetly in my throat.
His voice did not rise as he said, “Or maybe, I finally care deeply enough for someone that there is no question the lengths I will let them ascend.”
The sentence gutted her and she paled, eyes glazing, tears spilling fat and unpretty down her cheeks. She looked at me, looked and found not the monster she wanted, not the serpent she taunted, but only Verena.
My legs folded beneath my body, the curse sliding back into its den. What remained was raw, unhidden. And still, Ronan’s smoke clung, stroking my skin, curling possessive as it played around me.
Around her it tightened, a wall of shadow she could not cross. The table murmured, assumptions tossed, judgments spun.
But not at me. At her.
Aelora, who had defied their prince. Aelora, who had ignored her father’s counsel. She had overreached, and the room would remember.
Ronan’s arm lifted toward me, his hand curving over the small of mine as I stood, sliding down from the table into the space at his side.
Then his voice rang, loud enough to cleave the whisper. It coursed down the length of the table, though his words were meant for one man.
“Tell Obrann I do not accept his offer. Tell him Ryuu stands with Princess Elvira, the true ruler to Luamis. Tell him the Viper is unshackled and hunting for blood. Tell him if he wants war,” Ronan declared, “then the Wraith himself will send death to greet it.”