I pulled it off. I fucked Thayden over and bent even the oldest laws to my will. There wasn’t a godsdamn thing anyone—not Thayden, Prince Maelor, not even the Judges—could have done to stop me.
Now that it was over, the gravity of everything that had happened was settling in.
Three hundred years of life, countless wars and battles, and my mage felt like the only conquest that ever truly mattered.
ImarriedElariya. And I found a way that gave me everything I wanted while keeping her family safe too.
It’d worked. But what I never saw coming was her choosing me.
Something had shifted in her from the moment I rode through the portal and our eyes locked.
I felt it in the way she looked at me. The way she touched me. The way she asked where I was going.
After we got back from Morgäven, I was trapped in an impossible maze with no clean exit. I was losing her. Every path I considered would have either worsened her situation or exposed secrets that could unravel everything I’d built.
I ran the calculations anyway. Discarded strategy after strategy. Until fate decided to intervene.
Her soul debt.
The solution dropped into my lap like a gift from the Gods themselves. Brutal in its elegance. And mine to wield.
When I’d given her my soul mark and made her my Velastra, I knew she could not truly be bonded to me. But now she was.
And I was the keeper of her soul.
Elariya’s attempt to escape gave me something far more powerful than I ever imagined. I knew it the moment Erethis handed the vial to me. It took me all of five seconds to decide what I was going to do next.
Soul debts were rare in the magical realm. Most Fae and magical beings understood the weight of their souls too well to bargain with them so carelessly. It was the kind of mistake only someone desperate—or ignorant—would make. My dear mage had been both.
Elariya stumbled into a demon who collected souls the way others collected rare gems. If she’d understood what Erethis was, she never would’ve agreed to play his games. That said, I doubted the bastard gave her much of a choice. Had I not come along, whatever she chose would’ve ended in death or some bargain with the dark forces.
Thankfully, fate had showed her mercy.
And it changedeverything.
A hundred years of my life in exchange for her soul was worth the price. Now I had her. I kept my secrets from my uncle, and I secured a claim to the mortal realm—one that would allow me see what was happening here, and see who was working with thosewho whispered with no lips and watched with no eyes.
Today was a single battle in the war to come.
But it was a significant win.
What I truly wanted to do now was to take Elariya and leave.
I wanted to get the hells out of this realm with its suffocating politics and petty mortal princes who thought they could claim what was mine. But there were loose ends to tie up first.
The most pressing one waited behind the heavy oak door of the chamber I was approaching.Thayden.
Alive, for now. And keeping him that way required more self-control than I cared to admit.
I’d wanted to end that motherfucker from the moment I got here.
When he first saw me at the wedding, he looked like he was ready to shit himself. But he gave a good fight. Or as best as he could without incriminating himself.
He could have said more in front of the Judges, but he was already walking on eggshells. He didn’t know what I was going to do. The fucker probably thought I was going to drag him into the light and let the realm tear him apart.
He must be so confused now.
I knew he would have agreed to the meeting. If only to see what wicked things I had in store for him.
