CHAPTER SIXTY
Verena
I THOUGHT ENDING HIM WOULD QUIET SOMETHING IN ME.
It didn’t.
Lightning split the sky behind me, stitching it in silver and thunder as I turned to where Ronan walked toward me, away from Isolde’s shattered form. But my stare stayed fixed on her as she lifted her head, oil-slick blood sliding down her cheek.
Her lips parted, and that whistle cut through, terror breaking loose from her shoulder, a streak of dark striking Ronan square in the back.
He jerked, a sound escaping him that I had never heard before, a sound that bent the world around it. The bond lit up as he arched, pain flooding unbearable through both of us.
The shock of it split through my spine, and I staggered under its weight as he fell to one knee, blade sliding from his fingers.
Heat rose off his back in waves as the venom burrowed deep, right where his wings had met his flesh.
The skin seared, blistered, then stilled.
His body fought to mend itself, but where the wings had sat, where his power lived, the curse caught hold.
And it burned, turning black at the edges, fading until nothing remained.
“Struck silent, are we?” Isolde’s voice coiled behind me. “Funny how easy killing becomes once the curse finishes hollowing you out.”
I turned, slow. Her hands rested behind her back, composed. My eyes darted toward Ronan, toward the wreck of him, and she saw it.
Her smirk deepened. “Don’t bother,” she said. “He’ll live. For now.” I barely made it two steps before her voice cut sharper. “Daughter—”
My head snapped up, to where Nezra, bloodied and trembling, was still trying to shield Elva with one arm while Ford reforged a weakening barrier around them.
A figure stepped forward from the doorway. Audra, smiling. Except her delight wasn’t aimed at Nezra, not at her long-lost love. But at Elva.
She moved with purpose, kneeling beside Nezra, murmuring something low into her ear before reaching for Elva’s body and collecting her in her arms. Nezra fought to keep her grip, despite the pale that had taken over her skin, despite the blood soaking her armor.
“No.” My palm flung open, my dagger racing to meet Audra’s neck—
Between one inhale and its shadow, Elva was gone. Torn from Nezra’s grasp and lost to the starless deep. The blade still sang through the air, and with the drop of my palm, it fell right at Nezra’s feet.
A false playfulness brightened through Isolde’s bared teeth, making my skin crawl. “Well,” she said. “We got what we came for.”
Violence bloomed where breath should’ve been and, in that moment, I threw everything I had left at her, light and flame and desperation. But the magic stuttered, then dimmed, guttering out before it even reached her. The well inside me had run dry.
And Isolde only laughed. “Have you noticed it yet, the crushing quiet growing between you and the ones you trusted most?” Her eyes glanced past me, toward the wreckage of everything I loved.
“Ronan, Callum, your noble Luamisians.” She eased into my space, her shadow stretching between us.
“They thought your death would seal her safety. That one’s blood could protect the other’s crown.
” My lungs froze mid-breath. “You were forged for sacrifice,” she whispered, “not salvation.”
I screamed, flinging what power I had left, but she was already retreating, her form dissolving into her own smothering pitch. Just before she vanished completely, her voice intruded into my mind—Viper to Viper.
He still owes the oath.
My eyes caught on Ronan, still on his hands and knees, trying to rise. Blood ran down his back in streaks, pooling where his wings would have sat on the ground. A choked sound left his throat in strangled pain.
Her voice wove deeper, curling around my skull like a vice.
It’s not void just because he loves you.
That bond still binds him. A pause. Then, soft and cruel, she said, Eventually, he’ll have to kill you.
Her grin leaked through my mind. Maybe he’ll do it while you’re still in his arms. Or maybe you’ll slit his throat first. Either way, one of you dies.
Ronan’s fingers dug into the realm, his jaw locked, muscles drawn taut with the effort. His wings, his birthright, were nothing but burned flesh and shattered bone.
But they’d taken her. My purpose. Elva.
The noise of battle dimmed to nothing as the truth began to unweave. My entire life had been built on a lie. And little by little I hadn’t realized what had begun leaking back, ever since Callum had broken our bond.
Memories.
Ones that hadn’t been meant to resurface. I had blocked them out, pushed them down into the dungeon of my mind. Thinking they were something else, something dark and forbidden.
I let them free now and they hit me all at once—
Not only a memory, but a flood of them.
The night around me swarmed into fragments of another life. The smell of blood became lilacs, the air shimmered, bending, and when I blinked, I wasn’t standing in Nyctom’s collapse anymore. I was standing in its glory.
I was small, running barefoot across the courtyard of the palace.
Laughter chased me through moonlit halls.
Someone, a woman, was calling my name, her voice bright and soft like sunlight breaking through leaves.
I turned toward her, but the image blurred, her face shifting in and out of focus, as if memory itself couldn’t decide whether to keep her.
Then everything stilled, shifting into a different room. Dimmer. Older. The air dense with incense and fear.
I was older now, no longer a child, but grown. My legs hung off the edge of a stone seat as someone stood before me, speaking close to my face. The words warped, as if carried underwater.
“You don’t have to do this. Please, please...don’t do this”
The voice was deep, frayed with pleading. A man’s, maybe.
And mine, my own voice, higher, steady in a way that broke me now, answered, “I must.”
The world around us flickered like a candle before it shudders out. Then came the hand, warm, calloused, wrapping around my neck, a forehead pressing to mine. “Then we’ll find our way back to one another. In every lifetime.”
Another nod and a different hand touched me, this one pushing its palm into that same spot against my head. There was a hum, a tug behind my eyes, before it honed. Pressure built behind my temples, a knotting, blinding squeeze that tore through me as it stole and stole.
I tried to scream, but the sound died before it left my throat. The light burned, erasing. One by one, the faces vanished. The voice. The room. The name I’d carried.
Then I was in a forest, where the scent of pine and cold air wrapped me in its embrace while a figure led me by the hand through the trees.
I wasn’t a baby. Not even a child. I could walk, I could think. But my head felt…stripped, drained. Like something had been scooped out and left to assume. I looked up at the figure, his silhouette framed by the dying light.
Callum.
The memory snapped in half, like a thread pulled too tight. I gasped, the vision shattering, the present crashing back into me—the taste of iron in my mouth, the sound of my own pulse thundering in my ears. He hadn’t found me in those woods. He’d taken me there.
Blood soaked through as I knelt beside Wells’ body, his skin already stiff, the blue of his veins dimming to grey. Anger rose like pressure. A hunger pressing from the inside, filling every desolate space left by grief.
Across the hall, Killian and Elysian had their blades buried in the necks of the remaining soldiers. They cursed, spitting toward me from behind their fallen king. I didn’t even glance at them as a pulse of power refilled, enough to slip free from my fingers as they collapsed as one.
“You knew,” I said, breath trembling. “All this time,” my eyes found Callum, “you knew who I was.”
“Verena.” My name came broken off his tongue. “Let me explain. Please—” He inched forward.
I looked at him through the blur in my vision. “Who are you?”
He pressed a fist to his chest, like it meant something. “I’m still me.”
A fake laugh slipped from me. “No. You’re not.”
Because it wasn’t him, not the boy who’d held my hand when the night terrors came, who taught me to steady my breath and fight back. That Callum had died long before I ever learned my own name. The one standing before me now…he was built from secrets. From the lie they’d all sworn to keep.
Protect her. But never tell her why.
The knowledge sat in his eyes now, gleaming like the blade in my back. “Who holds them?” I asked. “My memories.”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. “I do.”
“And if you die?”
His throat bobbed into a whisper, “Then they’re lost. All of them. Every piece I kept safe.”
My hands moved, but I didn’t remember the decision to move them, the wicked thing I had become had already chosen for me. My blade lifted from the floor, flying back into my grip, the point aimed toward Callum.
“Verena, I didn’t know—”
“You knew enough. And it seems once again, you’re spared by guardianship.” The world sharpened into impossible focus, and I waited for the whisper behind my eyes to come. It didn’t. My attention slid to Ronan, Isolde’s last words still burning behind my ribs. “Did you know?”
He closed his eyes. “Not every—”
I slammed my shields up so hard he staggered as his eyes shot back open.
“Was this before or after you swore an oath to Isolde to kill me?” My voice cracked, but I didn’t care. Let it. He didn’t deserve the restraint.
He rose, trying to take a step toward me. “I made that oath months before I knew you.” His jaw tightened. “I only realized your bloodline when ours snapped into place.”
The calm in his tone splintered something deep inside me. “Oh, well,” I scoffed, bitter laughter scraping my throat. “That makes it different, then.”
“Verena—”
“Don’t.” I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Do you know who I was, before all of this?”