CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Ronan
SHE WAS RUMORED TO BE THE LINGERING SHADOW hiding in your nightmares. But before Ronan, she had caught fire like a flame at twilight.
And gods, how she had burned.
And when he had fallen to his knees for her, she had severed it all. The bond, his heart, that fragile thread that had dared to tether them across eternity.
He didn’t remember selling his soul—but it would belong to her in every lifetime. Even if he had earned her trust only to bury it beneath his own secrets.
And from that betrayal, Verena had risen. No longer merely the Viper, but the venom itself. Ronan had seen it then, the wound they’d all etched into her, how the last, trembling shred of innocence had finally sealed shut.
It didn’t matter what divine blood coursed through her veins; they had all betrayed her. And in the end, it was pain, not power, that taught her how to rise.
When Callum stepped forward, Ronan didn’t think, he swung, his fist cracking against Callum’s jaw. Callum reeled back, blood blooming like treachery on his lip.
“You lied to her,” Ronan bit out. “Her whole life, you fed her fiction. She worshiped you. Trusted you. And you failed her.”
Callum spat blood onto the ground, eyes sparking with something half guilt, half fire. “I made an oath. Not to her, to Kairos. I did what I had to. But I didn’t know she was the reincarnation of our fucking Primal!”
Ronan didn’t breathe for a moment, just dropped his gaze to the floor. “You broke her heart.”
Callum barked a bitter laugh that sounded too much like grief. “And you shattered whatever was left.” He pointed, magic flaring faintly at his fingertips. “You knew what I didn’t, Ronan. The moment that mating bond snapped into place, you knew. And you said nothing. Just like me.”
Ronan surged forward again, the muscles in his back seizing. Smoke guttered off him, not rising, but scraping, as if his magic had to work to find its way out.
But Nezra moved faster. “Enough,” she snapped.
“Every word you throw only feeds her curse.” They both froze, breathing hard, eyes locked on one another.
“You want to help her?” She looked between them.
“Then stop tearing her apart for sport.” She paused, wincing at the throb in her core.
“If she breaks again, it won’t be from the curse, it’ll be from the two of you. ”
The fire in Callum didn’t die at that, embers still hissed and spat from his fingertips, but he wasn’t trying to fight Ronan anymore, just make him see it. That he wasn’t the only one with blood on his hands.
Each inhale from Ronan came uneven, dragging across the edges. His fists hung at his sides, chest aching at what had been ripped out of him. Verena had walked away, and he didn’t know if he’d ever get her back.
The others gathered close, their voices distant through the ringing in his skull. The only sound that truly remained was hers—
“You should’ve killed me.”
Maybe that’s what this was. Not survival anymore. Just a slower death.
“She knew,” Ronan said at last. “Isolde knew exactly who Verena was from the beginning.”
Nezra turned toward him, eyes dark with something that wasn’t quite pity. “She didn’t want you to kill Verena because she carried the curse. She wanted you to kill her because once the Primal God was gone, nothing would stand in Isolde’s way.”
A muscle feathered beneath his cheekbone, once, twice, then vanished beneath control. “Then she would’ve ruled unchecked,” he murmured. “Freed Deimos from his prison. Crowned herself the last true power while he rained his helfire upon us all.”
None of it changed what he already knew, what prophecy had whispered since the beginning.
He was born to kill the Viper. But as the truth sank in, something colder crept beneath it.
Maybe it had never been Verena the stars meant for him to destroy.
Maybe it was the monster that had made her.
A shiver brushed up the nape of his neck, a faint stir from the inside.
Elysian’s voice broke the quiet. “Why take Elva?” He stared at the empty space where her body had laid moments ago.
“Leverage,” Ronan said. “Or worse, her magic. She’s the daughter of the Night King and the Light Queen. The witches would bleed her dry for what runs in her veins.”
Nezra knelt beside the scorch marks Verena’s power had left behind. “They’ve done it before,” she murmured. “Their blood rites once leveled entire realms before the gods stripped it from them.”
“Not entire realms,” Elysian said. His gaze lifted toward Callum. “Not even entire races.”
Callum met his stare, shoulders drawn tight. “What are you implying?”
Elysian stepped closer, voice edged with threat. “That it’s time you stop hiding, guardian. Tell us what you truly are.”
Ronan’s head turned slowly. “Verena wasn’t the only one you kept secrets from. History claims the Angels fell into extinction. But Killian being alive shows that story was written by your own kind, wasn’t it?”
Callum’s nostrils flared, a trace of light sparking across his palms. “My father—”
“We remember what he did.” Ronan groaned. “What I don’t understand is why he cut off your wings. Why he sent you crawling to guard Verena. And why another lost his only to swear fealty to her.”
The ache in his back was constant now, raw muscle and phantom agony where his own wings once belonged. He didn’t show it, wouldn’t, but every breath came laced with pain.
Callum exhaled through his nose, his tone stripped of pretense. “Fine,” he huffed. “The Angels aren’t gone. Like the Kaida, they’ve been…hiding. Until they’re needed again.”
“Needed for what?” Ronan asked. “To help kill Verena if the prophecy demands it?”
“I don’t know,” Callum admitted. “But your mother—”
“Don’t.” Ronan’s whole body trembled, not from rage alone but from the memory of loss he would never settle into. “Don’t ever speak of her.”
Callum swallowed hard, then lifted his chin. “We can still save them. All of them.”
Ford’s eyes widened, the light catching the panic in them. “Wait, did anyone see Elva before she was taken? Her arms, did anyone notice if the heir mark of Nyctom even appeared?”
They all locked eyes.
“Should we ask either of them?” he muttered, throwing a hand over his shoulder to where Reve and Fritz slumped back-to-back, bound and half dead.
Nezra answered first. “Don’t bother.” She looked up through the ruined ceiling, where night seeped through the smoke. “No one saw.”
Ronan’s mind spiraled. “It should have appeared. Even in stasis while she was awakening, it should’ve been there.”
Ford moved a few paces away, staring down at what was left of Obrann. The headless corpse slumped in its own decay, the twisted crown still gleaming beside it. “Well,” he muttered, dragging a bloody hand through his hair. “Another royal funeral for Luamis. Gods, they’re going to run out of marble.”
No one laughed.
Somewhere beyond the wreckage, Verena was still out there, unbound, enraged with purity and curse alike.
Ronan wouldn’t grieve for her yet. Grief implies loss, a surrender. And he had not lost her. Not entirely.
He would tear apart every sky that dared to cover her, would unmake every throne, every realm, until the world was forced to its knees if that’s what it took to bring her back to him.
And he wouldn’t stop. Not even when the gods themselves begged him to.
He shook the blood from his hands, straightening. A prince again, even shattered. “I’m going after her.”
Callum huffed out a weak laugh. “Vivianna didn’t die for nothing.
She poured every lost drop of her essence into the divinity stone.
Everything she ever was now lives as Verena.
She’s a Primal, Ronan.” He shook his head slowly, like it cost him something.
“And with the Viper’s curse...” He exhaled, almost a laugh.
“The only thing worse than a pissed off Primal, is a cursed one. That’s not something you can save. That’s extinction wrapped in skin.”
Ronan whirled, his eyes meeting Callum’s. “Then I’ll learn to hold the end of the world in my hands.”
Callum exhaled, leaden, tired. “She didn’t just slip through your fingers, she let go. Without asking to be followed.”
“You talk of her like she’s been doomed from the start, beyond saving. So, what’s the point, right?” Ronan’s voice dropped. “But that was you, Callum. You never believed she could have been anything else. And if you had only looked, only taken one fucking second to see her for who she is—"
Callum shifted his weight, fingers curling in on themselves, knuckles white. “And what would it have changed? She still would’ve burned.”
“No,” he murmured, refusing to look away. “She would’ve known we believed in her. The way Vivianna always had.”
The embers in Callum’s eyes flared. “I swore an oath, prince. Royalty should understand what that means.”
Ronan’s jaw flexed. “To a dead man?”
“To a king,” Callum snapped. “I did what I was ordered to do.”
Ronan closed the distance entirely, looking down to him. “And what did that buy you, guardian?”
Callum folded under his stare, eyes glancing away for half a second before he forced them back. “It bought her time. A life. Even if it wasn’t the one she deserved.”
Ronan’s throat worked, a laugh edged in a snarl. “You call that life?” He gestured toward the empty space where she’d once stood. “You chained her to prophecy and called it compassion.”
“And you think love would’ve saved her?” His voice stayed quiet. “Love doesn’t rewrite fate.”
Quiet, Ronan said, “Love was the only damn thing keeping her from becoming what you all feared. I would’ve done anything to protect her. And now she’s gone. Because we both failed her. But you don’t get to decide her ending. And you sure as hel don’t get to decide mine.”
The weakest trace of remorse winked and died behind Callum’s eyes.
Nezra wiped her hand across her torn sleeve, red streaking the fabric. “Are we done comparing sins? Because I’m fairly certain the dead don’t care who’s guiltier.”
Her attention drifted to the corridor, where footsteps echoed, easing through the wreckage.
A low whistle sounded, a haunting tune half remembered from a childhood dream.
It wound through the broken stone, three soft notes, rising, falling, rising again.
Then came a voice, smooth as the night air itself—
“Let her burn the witches. Let her burn Selvarra.” Every head turned as it came again, closer now. “To save Elvira.”
From the mouth of the passage stepped a figure cloaked in dusk, their smile splintering, a ghost trying to remember the form of themself.
“To save my daughter.”
Callum’s face drained of color. “No,” he breathed, stumbling a step back. “No…that’s not possible.”
Ronan froze. “Tell me that’s not—”
The figure neared, his form didn’t walk so much as drift, shadows catching in the outline of a man, swaying apart and folding back together with each step, as though his body couldn’t decide what shape it wanted to keep.
A radiance brushed the man’s skin, bronze, but dusted with a lunar glow as a star-lit shine caught on an eye shimmering with an endless dark.
The opposite eye held a single, amethyst stone, embedded, stirring in a way it shouldn’t be.
His hair spilled black, like the space between stars, crowned by a circlet of moonstone thorns.
“King Kairos,” Nezra said lightly, as if greeting an old friend.
Callum’s head whipped toward her. “You knew?”
She smiled, all teeth and charm, and gave a small, knowing wink. “I told you he talks. You just never listened closely enough.”
Kairos crossed the room without hurry, coming to stand beside Callum, looking him over like examining damage already beyond repair. There was a soft click of his tongue, almost pitying, almost disappointed.
“You took too many.” He glanced at Ronan, then back to Callum. “You erased theirs.”
Callum’s head jerked up, breath shallow. “I…you told me to!” His voice fissured, too loud in the ruined hall. “You said it was the only way—”
Ronan turned fully to Callum. “What have you done?”
Callum’s composure crumbled in a slow, collapsing break. His hands trembled, fire blazing from his fists.
Ronan advanced into him, inch by controlled inch, with no outward rage—only the promise of it. “What did you take?”
Callum’s breath hitched, his head shaking. “Everything.” A laugh scraped up his throat. “Everything she couldn’t bear to keep.” Eyes lifting, he said, “And yours too.”
Ronan’s face didn’t move. But his smoke did, desperate as it hurled for Callum’s throat. It shivered once and then Kairo’s shadow slipped across it, the strike not even a force, just a quiet consumption, the way night swallows the last of dusk.
Kairos didn’t look smug; he barely even looked interested. He simply raised a finger between Ronan and Callum and said, “This anger is small. Save it.”
Ford blinked between them, then threw his hands up, voice caught somewhere between disbelief and exhaustion.
“Alright, just to recap—Vivianna’s confirmed dead, Verena’s officially a two-for-one divine apocalypse, Ronan’s ready to burn the world to save her, Callum’s rethinking his vows after apparently wiping Verena’s memories, and now the ghost king of ravens strolls in like we’re having some celestial gathering? ”
Ronan rolled his shoulders, the motion drawing a cringe that he smothered beneath a long breath. “Well,” he rasped, “This just got a hel of a lot more complicated.”
He heard it then, felt it again, a wisp of breath, pulling deep into his chest. Pain that wasn’t his. And beneath it, there was a voice—soft, dream-like, beautiful enough to break him. He went still, listening, waiting for it to speak.
Find me.
He drew a breath that shuddered through his lungs. “I will,” he whispered to only her.
Nezra stifled a laugh that cracked mid-breath, tears cutting clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. Kairos’s gaze found her, unbearably gentle as he rested a hand on her shoulder before drawing her in. The embrace was brief, familiar, a moment of warmth in the cold.
“I don’t understand how you’re here,” Callum blurted. “You were dead.”
Kairos moved, the night bending with him, too calm for someone that shouldn’t exist. A smile slit across his face.
“You should know better than anyone, Callum of House Elaherion—kings don’t stay buried,” Kairos’s eye glinted, a living star.
“Not when both of his daughters are about to reforge the world.”