CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Ronan
A MUSCLE TIGHTENED IN HIS JAW. He was a prince. An heir. The Wraith.
And yet, here before her, he was nothing but a man undone.
Her pants slid down next, pooling at her ankles. And she was bared to him. A goddess cut from myth, conjured only for him.
The light kissed her collarbones, catching the ink that coiled above one. Her Viper, alive even here, slithering as she swept her hair back.
His breath stalled while he drank her in, but it wasn’t yearning. She had already sated that part of him. This was reverence. As if a single breath might shatter the image.
Her breasts rose and fell with each inhale, achingly perfect, pulling his gaze down the line of her waist, the sweep of her hips. His hands twitched, eager to trace the places where light met skin. But then his eyes caught on her scar.
He forced himself not to think of that day. Of the twist in his gut when she had followed Reve into the woods. How even then something inside him pulled him to her.
A sweetened scent rose off her skin as she slipped into the pool—wildflowers, floating in the air, steeping of want and desire.
Her hair slid down her back, a bronze waterfall catching in the grooves of her shoulders.
Rogue curls beckoned him closer with every sway as she lifted a hand, coaxing him into the sea with her.
His flames had nearly eaten him alive the first time he had seen her like this at the banquet hall.
Not cloaked in mud-stained leathers, not with braids coming undone in the heat of battle.
Verena was fearless, deadly. She always looked striking drenched in violence, always magnificent as the woman who tore the world apart. But here, hair unbound, body molded into only skin, curls dripping into luster, she was something else entirely.
She raised a brow, turning her back to him as he stripped, his pants slapping across stone. He waded forward, the water rising against him until he dipped beneath its toasted caress.
Her hands met the stone’s rim, pinning her curls high before folding together as she tipped her face, so her chin rested atop them.
Only the tips of her shoulders broke the water, leaving the vulnerable slope of her neck visible.
Until the tide shifted, the sea drawing away, peeling water away from her back.
And he saw.
Before the water could hide them again, before her hair could fall, he saw what lay gouged into her flesh. The branded impressions. The reddened streaks flayed across her.
Hundreds of them. Thin and merciless. Unhealed.
The world fell obediently out of focus as he went still, smoke moving from his skin, flooding the walls. Shadows thickened, pressing into every corner, swallowing the lunethmoths’ glow one by one until the cavern trembled in darkness.
Low, he asked, “Who did that to you?”
Verena lifted her face, curses hissing under her breath, though she refused to meet his eyes. She knew what he’d seen. His outrage tore unbridled down the bond as shame from her end floated to meet it.
“It doesn’t matter.”
His breath shuddered out, water trembling in its wake. “Who, Verena?”
Her voice came quiet. “You know who did it, Ronan.”
He did know who had done it. Had smelled it on her the night she was dragged from the dungeon, Reve’s stench woven thick through her skin. Had smelled it again before Reve sifted from that cliff.
And he remembered how she had shrunk that day. How she had flinched when Reve reached for her. Ronan hadn’t understood it then, but this, seeing the scars, this was a darker breed of rage.
He would rip Reve apart piece by piece. Then stitch him back together only to tear him down again. Endlessly. Until eternity itself went dry.
Verena tilted her head back, eyes fixed on the ceiling where a funnel of lunethmoths went bright. They wheeled and clustered like a false night sky, their wings painting stars that weren’t real. She let herself be still beneath the illusion, as if it could carry her far from here.
“Why aren’t they healed completely?”
He wanted to touch her. Flames burn him, he wanted to. To press his palms over them, to prove she wasn’t alone. But what if she flinched? What if his touch dragged her backward into memory, into the hands that had left those wounds?
“It’s been months,” he ground out. “Months since you escaped.”
Her shoulders lifted, then fell. “They were…deep.” Her voice cracked. “Before I was rescued, they put something on it. I think it’s stopping them from healing completely.”
The clench in his jaw was so hard it could shatter. “Gemma never taught you how to mend wounds like these?”
Her expression twisted at the name, fingers twitching beneath the water’s surface. “I haven’t had the resources to even try.”
His thigh brushed hers as he moved closer, lowering beside her. “We have endless resources in Ryuu. Better than any kingdom.”
Verena had never asked about the Kaida, even now. Maybe she knew. Maybe she didn’t care.
She reached, her fingers finding his, tangling then squeezing. “I don’t think I want them erased,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
The map of scars on Ronan’s body allowed him to understand. Each one he could have burned away with smoke and flame, yet never did.
“A reminder, then,” he murmured.
Her back was no different. Not to her.
“A reminder,” she echoed, the sea’s flare wavering through her eyes.
That she was meant to be broken. But she wasn’t. She endured. She lived.
Neither spoke again. Not for a long while. The lunethmoths evolved, their silver bleeding into rusted violet, the color of opened veins, darkening the water, the chamber.
Ronan frowned as a calm descended, folding around them slow and easy. A hush that bound them in its quiet solace.
“It’s okay to not know the right decision—”
The barrier drowned out the sea’s roar, but not the tremor in her voice. Ronan felt it where her cheek pressed to his chest, each syllable trembling against his heart.
“I know you chose to go against Obrann. But I don’t know the height of his forces. I thought his soldiers were nearly depleted. Yet, if he’s proposing war so easily...” Her breath hitched. “He might have an army hidden and waiting.”
Steam drifted from the water, ghosting toward the high passage above. Verena swept her hand through, scattering the rising haze, like breaking apart her own hope before it could escape.
“We can hide Elva,” she said. “We can tell him she died. There’s no one to take her heir mark.
They’ll never know the truth. Callum can take her across the sea.
She’ll be safe...and free.” She pulled away from his embrace, head bowing as it shook.
And then the death sentence fell from her lips. “Let them take me.”
His heart sank, fingers fisting beneath the water as a wave slammed into the shield overhead, a blow of salt and fury exploding in crystal blue. The barrier wept with it, rivulets streaking down in tears.
Ronan brushed a curl from her lashes, his fingers tilting her chin. Her eyes were oceans, azure, enraged, wild waves beating against a prison that would not break. Eyes that refused to rise and meet his, no matter how he tried to anchor her back to him.
“One,” he said, “as brave and selfless as that is, Verena, Elva being dead would not help. They would hunt her body. Steal her power. Her blood.” His thumb brushed across her lips. “And two, no.”
Her tongue clicked and at last, she lifted her gaze. Darkness rippled there, something serpentine, slithering behind the glass of her irises. Her fingers drifted beneath the water, trailing slowly along the tops of her thighs. “You do not get to decide what I do with my fate.”
He stiffened. No, he didn’t. But it tore at him still. “But as someone who has felt that fucking fear dripping from you, I think I get a say.”
She wrenched her face away, jaw locked tight. For one suspended breath, the threads between them snapped slack, dark and unreadable. “I cannot let your kingdom go to war.”
He reached for her, dragging the tether tight again, his will scraping against her. The scales of his mind raked down her oil-slicked walls, rasping.
Let me in.
She hesitated. Then yielded. The shield slid down, wary, only to reveal emptiness. A blank, bottomless expanse that offered nothing. Fine. If that was all she would give him, then he would take it.
He dragged a hand across the nape of his neck, the flex of his bicep stiff as he let the other fall against the stone. “And you do not get to decide what I do with my kingdom.”
The smirk that followed was meant to soften, to remind her that some choices were not meant to be carried alone. That together, maybe, they could shoulder the burden.
Verena just rolled her eyes, water rippling out in rings as she rose. Her breasts broke the surface, and Ronan’s body betrayed him before his thoughts caught up. A swell surged, steel hard and unrelenting, his hand curling low to restrain it.
Well fucking played.
Darkness flared violently across her skin and for a moment, he swore he saw black lashing up her arms, moving over her collarbones, the Viper living across her flesh. The mark slipped higher, spiraling around bone in endless, damning loops.
“That’s not the same.” Her voice cut through him, pulling him back even as his gut rebelled. Even as she sank deeper into the depths, gliding along the pool’s floor with only her face breaking the shallows. “This is one life. Verena’s life. Ryuu has thousands upon thousands that could be lost.”
“What did you just say?” he asked, voice warbling inside his mind.
He blinked, and the vision shattered as she slipped beneath the surface entirely. When she rose again, water dripping from her face, her olive skin was smooth and unstained. No darkness but the twin marks inked in black, the curse’s and his.
Both fighting to claim her.
“I said,” she sighed, “my life is forfeit when Ryuu has thousands that could be lost.”