CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVE #2
When the gates of the Nyctom palace came into view, time had dissolved entirely, each step becoming a blur. It surfaced from the wasteland, stripped of glory but not of ghosts.
My breath snagged hard in my chest. Because, gods, this place...this place was familiar.
The raven statues flanking the shattered path watched with their hollow eyes, carved in some shallow mourning.
Direwolves crouched at the gate, not living, not dead, but stone predators caught mid-snarl, as fierce in memory as they must have been in flesh.
And above, a balcony etched with curling moons, the archway catching what little light the sky still gave.
I’d been here before. I know I had.
And everything about that realization felt colder than the curse running through my veins.
We were hauled through its entrance, through corridors stripped of their might. I tried to scream, to claw free, but Reve’s hold was manacled, his touch securing me to a body that no longer felt like mine.
The throne room opened before us like a grave split wide, once a place of command and constellations. Now its vaulted ceilings arched above like the ribs of a fallen titan, the broken skylights above letting the moon leak through in fragmented streams, unnatural silver pooling across the stone.
At the far end, the throne waited empty, its once-proud spires contorted and broken. Around it, the stone was ringed with a stain, black as tar, burned deep into the floor.
This was where it had begun. When kingdom turned on kingdom, and the massacre bled into prophecy. The Bale had spilled from this very room, crawling through walls and veins, devouring every hint of life and magic.
Here was where Selvarra had begun to starve and death took its first breath.
I flinched when they dropped Wells’ body.
The sound split the room, leaving cracks you could almost see.
Elva lunged forward, unbound but barely contained.
A masked soldier held her back, his arms straining against her newly found strength as Elysian’s stare stayed locked on her.
The rest of us were shackled. Nix metal bound around our wrists, drinking every flicker of power before it could rise.
Ronan stood unnervingly still, the kind of stillness that warned, as his eyes moved over the room, the doors, the guards. Killian and Callum strained against their binds, muscles taut, as Ford stood hunched and pale, his breath hitching in short bursts as he tried to reach for Nezra.
She lay crumpled near the dais, looking weakly at Audra, who stood unmoved beside Isolde. Whatever warmth Nezra swore had once lived in her eyes was gone.
The corner of Obrann’s mouth tilted. “Isolde, you may have the floor. After all, you were clever enough to find them.”
She stepped forward, and when she reached me, I could smell the power on her, sweet rot and dying lilies.
Her hold was still there, but lessened, a small taste of freedom as my body regained some control.
Her fingers caught my chin, tilting it upward, studying the mark crawling along my skin—the Viper sigil, dark and spreading like a sickness.
“Beautiful,” she murmured, almost to herself. “How easily corruption wears your face.”
Instinct woke, and I lunged, teeth flashing, ready to tear, to strike, but she only clicked her tongue, her whistle rendering me powerless. “Naughty girl,” she chuckled, fingers dragging down my throat.
“Touch her again,” Ronan snarled. “I dare you.”
With a movement so fluid it was almost elegant, she turned to him, catching his wrist where the mating mark pressed against his skin. A nail traced slow and cruel down the line of it, pain flaring through my chest.
I buckled, the connection twisting tight until I could hardly breathe. Ronan’s growl tore through the hall, but the chains bound him in place.
When she turned to meet his face, her lips parted in a delighted sigh as her stare glanced between us. “So, that’s what this is about.” She gave a soft laugh. “Mates. How quaint.”
Ronan tensed beside me, the muscle in his cheek jumping once, then going still again.
Isolde smiled. Not kindly. “Love,” she said, voice sweet as venom, “is the softest kind of death. A fever you mistake for warmth, until it hollows you out from the inside.”
I forced a grin. “Were you bred this pathetic, or did eternity make you bitter?”
“Oh, my darling—” She laughed, releasing his arm. “We villains…we are not born. We’re created. By the same hands that feared us first.”
And with that, the room seemed to tilt, a high, keening hum filling my ears. We are created?
“Well,” she continued, “that explains why you broke our bargain. The terrifying Prince of Ryuu, falling to instinct like all the rest.”
She tsked softly, circling behind him, deciding where to break him open next. Imagine my surprise when she set her sights on me instead.
“Look at him. He bonded himself to you…but he doesn’t even know what you are.”
The Viper raked against my mind as a vague pull yanked down the bond—Ronan reaching for me. But without reason, I shoved it away. It felt too much like he was reaching to spy, not to reassure.
“What are you talking about?” Ronan demanded. “Verena is—”
“A stranger to you.” Isolde’s smile stretched.
“But maybe not quite to herself.” Her brow lifted, as she crouched between us, skirts pooling in a black tide.
“Does he know?” she asked me quietly. “Does he know the blood running in your veins? Does he know why the curse chose you? Why destiny bent around your existence the moment you drew breath?”
My mouth wouldn’t work, lungs forgetting to move.
Ronan snapped his chains rigid, smoke leaking from his spine. “Enough with the games, Isolde. Verena owes me nothing. Don’t pretend you hold fate by the throat just to further your delusions.”
“Delusions?” Isolde echoed lightly, tasting the word as though it amused her. She rose from her crouch, pacing a lazy half circle around him. “No, darling. I think the delusion here is your own.”
His jaw locked, the only sign he was fighting the urge to tear free and rip her throat out.
Isolde tapped a thoughtful finger against her lip. “Let me guess…all this anger,” she gestured at him with a sweep of her hand, “all this snapping and snarling. It must come from somewhere.”
She pretended to think, actually paused for effect, then her eyes lit with a wicked kind of glee. “Ah. You feel it, don’t you? The cadence of something else beneath your skin. All that unclaimed power gifted from a woman you’ve never even met. A legacy you can feel…but never touch.”
Ronan went very still.
Her stare caught on the puncture marks against his neck, the ones I had given him. “The same element that spared you from her venom.”
Oh gods.
Obrann sneered. “Your mother—” A muscle ticked in Ronan’s temple. “She was quite beautiful, actually. A rare, winged breed.” Each of his steps clicked against the stone. “A Valkara. Well, before she likely died screaming.”
A tremor ripped down the bond before he could mask it.
Obrann smiled wider. “They say the Primal Goddess herself changed her, altered her blood, made her near immortal, so she might stand against Deimos if he ever rose again. A soldier turned shield. A mother reborn in god-blood.” A brittle, mocking sound slipped from him as he strode closer.
“But even divinity wasn’t enough to save her from fate, was it? Even betrayal.”
Ronan’s knuckles whitened where the chains held him.
I could see her in his eyes now. The Valkara from Nezra’s memory. The same dark hair, the same eyes—green fire flamed in gold. But Vivianna gave the woman something else, a gift she didn’t mean for her to pass down to her son…
Isolde’s voice slithered back, colder now. “Do you want to know what she died for, prince? After all, our bargain might still be fulfilled.”
Ronan didn’t answer. But she told him anyway.
“Your blood,” she drifted around him in a slow ring.
“It’s been harvested for centuries. Taken.
Sold. Bottled and bartered by Rhydan himself to the highest bidder.
” Her smile sharpened. “Even Luamis paid dearly for a taste. You are a God’s currency, Ronan the Wraith.
Divine blood diluted through dragon flesh. ”
He exhaled through his nose. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” she crooned, running a finger along his back, his chest. Where hundreds of scars lay when his father would bleed him dry.
The scent of Ronan’s blood hit me—spice, flame, all that impossible warmth leaking through the iron.
My breath stalled as he tried to flex his palm, catching the blood leaking from the cut she gave him on his wrist. That smell—memory came without permission, bringing me back to that same scent but in Gemma’s kitchen.
Gemma.
The name cracked like a curse. She had bought Ronan’s blood. Not to poison, but to heal. That’s what she’d been using to keep Wells alive.
Fates fucking curse me.
Ronan’s mother’s blood had been altered to resist death by anyone but herself. That was why the venom hadn’t killed Wells that day. Ronan’s blood…had been curing him.
And when I had bitten Ronan…it hadn’t been mercy or chance that he had survived with nothing but scars—
Before the thought could finish forming, Isolde was in front of me, sliding in swift as a blade unsheathed, her nails catching the light. One talon pressed beneath my chin, the point kissing the curve of my neck, where my pulse fluttered like a trapped bird.
“Tell her,” she said to Ronan, pulling curls behind my shoulders, exposing my neck. “Or I’ll do it myself while I open her throat. So, the last thing she feels is your betrayal.”
I swallowed. “What?”
“Verena…” My name wasn’t a warning this time. It was a confession already bleeding.
She dragged her nail, a cruel crescent against my skin until a bead of red slid down, tickling my collarbone.
“Tick, tick, tick, soon your blood will stain black.” She laughed, glancing back at Ronan. “Tell her, or I will.”