CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR #2
Another warrior stood across from him, his head shaved to the scalp, scales inked in white across his crown. They were stark against his dark umber skin, his own leathered wings draped like cloaks, pooling across the floor.
“They’re calling for us to gather in Nyctom,” Ronan said, “Rhydan and I are—”
“You haven’t heard, Your Highness?”
Ronan stilled as his stomach dropped, and I felt it like a stone sinking through my own core.
“There was an attack.” The warrior swallowed, his head shaking. “On Nyctom’s kingdom. Kairos…Leora…they’ve all fallen.”
I expected silence. For Ronan’s mind to go still, to fracture in private before he could absorb the sentence that would alter his life. But no such mercy came. His world didn’t pause for grief. Screams cut through the corridor as metal clashed and roars shook the walls.
“We’re under attack!” a voice bellowed, hammering the steel doors. “Prince Ronan, we’re—”
Then quiet.
Ronan’s wings expanded, stretching wide enough to consume the room. “Who has made the mistake of challenging Ryuu?”
The space tightened, a dark shroud forming along the floor. But it wasn’t his smoke that had begun seeping beneath the door. I knew that sharp, metallic taste. The way it rotted sweet on my tongue.
Poison.
The warrior convulsed first, his wings dissolving into nothing as he dropped to his knees. “Resin-iron,” he rasped, throwing a hand toward Ronan. “Leave—”
Too late.
It reached us, his wings blinking out fast, knees slamming stone, as he choked against the cloying murk strangling his throat.
Get up, Ronan. Get up. My plea was useless as the clang of steel battered the door.
His palms sparked, tendrils spilling slick and violent, lashing out to brace the barrier, curling around the warrior who had crawled to him. It shielded his body just as the door exploded inward. Soldiers poured through. No banners. No crest. Just black, faceless armor gleaming cruel.
We rose, a shadowed blade ripped from his thigh, his body twisting in smoke-born ferocity as he cut them down one by one.
Steel shrieked. Flesh gave. Blood splattered stone.
He searched for markings, sigils, anything to name the bastards, but their identity was hidden. His attention cut back to the warrior, still cradled by his smoke. Fury burned in those eyes, the hunger to fight as the warrior reached for a sword across his back.
Ronan released him, freed him, while a void rose behind us.
The dragon twisted, his steel decimating the chamber until there was nothing left of the war room but blood as he painted the ground red, and Ronan sifted away.
We landed soundless, the soles of his boots barely sighing against the throne room’s floor. There were no soldiers. No fighting, no bloodshed. Only unmoving air, until Ronan turned from the shadows of a pillar and saw him. Rhydan stood at the dais of his throne. And beside him loomed another.
The air punched from my chest. My fingers prickled, numb, as I tried to make sense of what I saw. The peppered hair. The calculating dark eyes. The black suit worn like armor. I knew that man beside him. Younger here, but not by much—
It hit me harder than the devastation screaming through the memory. No wonder Obrann had the heirloom sword. Luamis hadn’t stolen it. It was given to him, handed like a prize.
But in exchange for what?
Their hands were clasped behind their backs as though Sahfyre wasn’t burning outside these very walls. Their voices were hushed, low conspiracies playing between them.
The bronzed heirloom of Ryuu hung across Rhydan’s shoulder, its indigo stone gleaming under the fractured light. Behind them rose the dragon throne, scorched, hewn from flame.
Ronan didn’t recognize the man yet. To him, he was still only a stranger. He didn’t understand how deep the blade of betrayal cut. Until Rhydan’s hand closed on the hilt. Until he slid it free and extended it toward the man.
The words rang out, a war cry as we stepped out of the shade. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Rhydan froze, arm suspended, steel glinting midair as Ronan’s eyes raged past the point of return.
“Sahfyre is burning,” Ronan snarled. “Luamis is orphaned. Nyctom has been left for dead—” The man staggered back, color draining from his face. His throat worked, his hands shaking. “And,” Ronan’s voice broke, “it was your doing?”
Rhydan turned, his own smoke lurching around him now, moving thick across the marble. “I will do whatever I must,” he snarled. “And you—” a finger shot toward Ronan, “you will sit back and obey. As I raised you to.”
Ronan didn’t retreat when his father moved toward him. His power vibrated through the stone, surging in feral waves as he charged. One stride. Two. Three. Rhydan hit the floor, thrown by his son’s fury before he could make him bow.
The man’s eyes cut to the heirloom sword. His choice was made in a heartbeat, leaving it was worth the loss. Worth the shame. He bolted for the door beyond the throne.
Ronan let him leave while he went back for Rhydan. A punch split the air, bone cracking under the blow. Blood spilled from Rhydan’s nose. Another strike. Another crack. His jacket twisted in Ronan’s fists, lapels clutched tight as if he could wring truth from the man.
Crimson streamed down Rhydan’s jaw, his teeth bared in a grotesque grin. Ronan was holding back. Not just his power, but his anguish. It drowned me. The anger, the grief, the betrayal, his torment poured through the bond until it gutted me.
I would hold it. I would carry it all for him.
Ronan drew his fist back, only for Rhydan’s laughter to gag it midair, spitting blood across his arm. “Someday you will understand.” His eyes, hazel and empty, locked with Ronan’s molten red. “Someday you will do exactly the same thing.”
Ronan’s snarl was hushed, but I felt it anyway. He would never betray his kingdom. He didn’t need to say it.
Smoke rose around him, circling in a crown as he dropped his father to the dais. Chest heaving, he stooped to seize the heirloom, his grip closing around it with finality.
“I will never be like you.” He turned, leaving Rhydan broken at the foot of the throne, when something shifted, movement in the dark.
A figure stepped from it, Aelora’s mirror, yet not. Blue eyes pale and piercing beneath short strawberry blonde waves. But somehow, they felt even crueler.
He was beautiful, strange in an unsettling way. His expression was unreadable, save for the corruption that stained him from beneath. Ronan didn’t feel it, couldn’t see it. But I could, down to my soul.
“Auryn.” Ronan lowered the blade, both glancing warily toward Rhydan’s slumped form. Then, without hesitation, he shoved the heirloom into Auryn’s chest. “Take this. Find Aelora. Keep them both safe.”
Auryn caught the sword effortlessly, fingers securing around the hilt. “Your word is my command, Your Highness.” His bow was low, mocking, a wink glinting beneath as he backed away, retreating into the gloom.
A captive rage laced up my spine. Mine, not Ronan’s. Power boiling beneath my blood. Even with my body safe on the balcony, years away, it locked in my throat.
For the first time in days, the Viper woke. Because I knew what was coming before it even existed.
Ronan stood there, shaking, burning, the gravity of kingdoms collapsing on his shoulders.
In a single shiver, the pressure snapped, two stones colliding.
The sound of a world splitting open. Smoke tore from his body in a violent detonation, a scream dragging collapse down with it as a dark, hungry current unleashed.
Walls crumbled. Pillars split. Glass shattered inward, slicing air and flesh alike. Dragon-flame howled from the wreck, gutting the throne room, leaving nothing but rubble and ash. And when the smoke cleared—
It did not vanish. It seared.
Black swirls branded themselves into his flesh, wrapping up his hand, his arm, shackling his throat in a noose of ink. Branded. Buried.
Ronan staggered, staring at his hands, at the obliteration where his father had been now, clouded in only stillness, only dust. “What the fuck,” he dropped to his knees, bound in his own prison, “have I done?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, praying to all six gods that when I opened them, I’d be back in my own body, staring up at the dragons stitching joy across the sky.
Ronan had killed his father.
He hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t meant to, but he had. And there had been no triumph, no glory, only the unraveling of what destiny had already decided.
Being back on the balcony felt surreal. My body still stood at the railing, the wind still tangling through my hair.
The sea rolled below, its movement unchanged, the sky still trapped in the same quilt of clouds.
Like no time had passed at all. Just a blink.
That’s all it had been. Not the reliving of one of Ryuu’s bloodiest betrayals.
I turned to where Willa sat, her posture statuesque, curls silvered by the wind.
She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the horizon, waiting for something only she could see.
My shoulders sagged as I dragged myself to the chair beside her, collapsing, the cushions giving beneath me.
Even the furniture seemed tired of truths too heavy to hold.
“Willa—”
“Where did you go?” Her voice carried like the wind off the sea.
My head snapped toward her. “What?”
“Ronan’s memory.” Still, she stared ahead, lost somewhere I couldn’t follow. “Where did it bring you?”
My throat tightened. How the hel did she...
I didn’t ask, didn’t have the strength to. And right now, I didn’t care.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered instead. “Why did Luamis attack Ryuu? I knew Queen Leora. Like a mother. She would never,” my voice thinned, “never betray the kingdoms.”
At last Willa blinked as she said, “She was unwell. It was hidden, but she was dying. That is why King Sebastian called the council at Nyctom.”