CHAPTER SIXTY #2
He dipped his head once before dragging it slowly side to side. “I don’t remember you,” he said quietly.
Don’t say it. Don’t share it. But the next words pushed through anyway, forcing themselves to the surface. “In the memory I just saw, there was a man.”
His shoulders stiffened, and he winced, either from the mention of another man or at the wound across his back.
“He was begging me not to do it, whatever it was.” Another tremor ran over me. “That wasn’t you?”
“I have no memory of it,” he whispered, like he hated himself for it.
Callum moved closer, hands open like he could make it right. “It was to protect you,” he swore. “If Obrann or Isolde ever found out who you were, they’d have hunted you since the day you were...” He paused, swallowed. “Born.”
I wanted to scream, to tear the words out of his mouth and hurl them back. “You could have told me,” I mumbled, blood slicking my palms where my nails bit into them.
“We couldn’t risk how you’d react.” His voice faltered, quieter now. “Kairos made me pro—”
“Wells is dead—” My shout shattered whatever apology he was trying to build. “Elva’s gone, taken by those soul-spoiled bastards—” I pointed at him, trembling with rage. “Do you have any idea what they’ll do to her? I thought you loved her.” He flinched, like I’d struck him across the face.
Elysian’s ice-bright glare hit into Callum, and gods, how small the man I had trusted most in the world looked now.
I finally understood it all, he hadn’t just kept my secrets. He had built his life on them. My entire childhood was a kindness he invented. He didn’t just take away my memories, he gave me replacements.
“We’ll get Elva back,” Callum said quietly. “She has her full magic now; she’ll be stronger than before. She can fight. She can defend herself.”
A laugh ripped from my chest. “Defend herself?”
The word tasted wrong coming from him. Callum, who’d spent two decades throwing himself between us and death, now standing there as if surrender was strategy.
“Did she know?” I asked. “Who I was. Did Elva know?”
He only shook his head.
“How did she not question our entire friendship? We talked about growing up together.”
He lowered his head, ashamed. “I altered her memories too…”
For a moment, I just stared, my expression locked before I could stop it. Then the repulsion hit. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. “Who else?”
He didn’t look up again. “Anyone who ever questioned anything.”
My stare shot to Ford, sitting on the ground with his arm around Nezra’s shoulders. Her grey eyes bore through me, but I asked anyway, “Ford?”
He met my stare. The sound leaving him a rasp of truth tearing free. “No.”
“Wells?”
Callum looked up and nodded.
My throat went dry. “Wells, who could barely stand in a crowded room after his parents died, he was part of this?” My hand drifted to my dagger, to the ruby embedded in its hilt.
Callum said, “Wells served his purpose.”
Ford flinched, Nezra’s head bowing until curls hid her face.
My blood froze. “He was a child.”
“He knew what he agreed to long before any of this began, Verena. We all did.” Callum pulled his shirt up, showcasing the scar over his heart. “I swore a blood oath to Kairos. Wells’ parents did the same. When they died, it passed to him, and he accepted it. Willingly.”
I shook my head, the world collapsing into the sound of my own heartbeat, fury tasting so sweet on our tongue. “He was a child,” I repeated, softer this time. “You should’ve stopped him.”
Callum drew a slow breath, embers sputtering behind his eyes. “Kairos and my own father’s paths ran side by side for years. When he learned of the kingdom’s betrayal, he made a desperate choice.”
Anger took hold in every cell of my being, and I wondered if that was the curse or a trait from my bloodline as Nezra’s memory slipped unbidden into my thoughts. “Give me some truth then,” I said to him. “Is Orion, the God of war, my father?”
His stare shot to me. “No.”
The word hit harder than I expected. Not because it was a relief, because it wasn’t.
“Then who—” I pressed. “Who is?” He didn’t answer. Just stood there, a dying fire shadowing his face. “Why can’t you just fucking tell me?”
His jaw worked once. Twice. The vein in his neck jumped. “It’s part of the blood oath. I can’t tell you.”
When I reached back inside me for control, for the power that had surfaced, it reached back, restored, and held tighter. “That oath,” I whispered, “is killing more than it’s protecting.”
Guilt swam in his eyes, deep, endless. He didn’t deny it. “Gemma loved you like her own, Verena. That part was always real.”
Something in me cracked, right as Ronan’s panic slammed against my mind, pounding on the sealed walls. I shut him out, harder.
“Everyone had a hand in deciding my fate,” the calm was worse than a scream, “except me.” Power climbed up my spine like a warning gathering its breath. “You made me completely unaware. Of everything.”
Callum’s gaze darted to the movement, but he kept going. “We had a plan to save the realms. But then you—”
“Was led by love, straight into betrayal?” I cut in, laughing under my breath.
“Go on, say it. You hoped I would die in that dungeon.” I stepped closer; he stepped back.
“Don’t look so surprised, I saw the look on your face when you realized I’d survived.
You weren’t broken by what they did to me.
You were disappointed. Because if I’d died in that cell, you wouldn’t have to live with the blood on your hands. ”
“That’s not—”
“And when I didn’t die, you prayed I’d come back wrong.
That the Viper would have already devoured whatever was left of me so you could call it mercy instead of murder.
” I broke, rage and grief twisting through it.
“But I was still me when they rescued us. Still me, but fucking broken, Callum.” My hands glowed, trembling at my sides. “And you pushed me away anyway.”
The light flared between my fingers, hot enough to burn. And for the first time, Callum looked afraid of me.
Killian moved until he stood beside me, a wordless promise settling in the space between us, sure as loyalty. Ronan’s snarl split the air.
“And the cruelest truth is you believing I didn’t know.
” I spoke. “As if I couldn’t feel what I was becoming, couldn’t feel what woke inside me the night they threw me in that cell.
The thing that drew breath when Ronan saved me from death.
” Power sparked down my fingers, tiny bolts threading my veins.
“You might’ve deceived Verena Vale, but you can never betray what I am.
” Another stride, bolts licking the air.
A pulse cracked from my hand, lighting the space between us.
I didn’t stop. “I went back into your office before we left.” I looked at Ronan, the current crawling down my arms, teeth gritted to keep steady.
“I looked in that drawer, right beside that picture of you as a boy.” The next bolt hissed past his cheek, but he didn’t move. “Do you want to know what I found?”
He said nothing. Not even a twitch.
I tilted my head, laughed once, a sound too bitter to be sane. “The arrowhead I carried, my so-called lucky charm, was yours.” His eyes clung to mine. “It was always you. Not the woods keeping me safe—but you, waiting in the dark for the right moment to end me.”
His head bowed. “That was before I made the bargain with Isolde. Something has always drawn me to you—"
I raised my hand between us, looking at Killian, my hand trailing down the armor that hid the scars across his back. “Would you like to be restored, Phoenix?”
His head snapped toward me, moonlight flashing across his piercings, his face flickering between terror and awe. He gave just a single, resolute nod.
I smiled. “Good.”
He lifted his armor over his head, baring his back to me and I ran my fingertips along the ink behind his ear first, the mark shimmering under my touch.
Heat flared behind my own and I swept my hair aside, baring the twin sigil that rested behind there—the blood oath that bound Killian’s fate to mine.
He’d told me little of that moment he promised himself to me, only that when I chose to embrace the truth of my blood, he wished his rebirth to serve a purpose worthy of it.
Another bond flared into smoke and rage. I didn’t have to look to feel it, the crack in his composure, restraint running thin.
The growl that slipped through his teeth was soft. “What is this?”
I kissed my fingers, then pressed them to Killian’s spine. Bone split and muscle tore, new light erupting from the fractures in his back. He arched, letting out a cry caught between agony and rebirth as wings burst from him anew.
“Patience,” I whispered.
When I peered back to the others, Callum’s face had gone white. “Verena,” he warned, voice trembling under authority he no longer possessed. “With your magic fully awakened, we don’t know what will happen, or if we’ll even be able to bring you back once the Viper takes control.”
“She is control.” My fingers twitched. “But maybe that’s what’s needed.”
Ronan crept forward, carefully. “What are you saying?’
My spine went loose, confidence replacing tension.
“That fate cannot be rewritten. Not by kings. Not by gods. And not by you.” I looked up to where the moon glared down, a witness to damnation.
“War isn’t coming.” A spasm rippled the air, stirring my hair, humming the ground where dust had begun to lift in slow spirals.
“She’s already here. And now, she’s come to collect your debt.
” My eyes met his where worship turned to tragedy as I whispered, “You should’ve killed me. ”
“Don’t—” The word broke off his lips as a final tear slid down my cheek, carving a clean line through the carnage.