Raze staggers in the center of the illusion. Fire flickers unevenly across his scales, ice cracking beneath his feet, and for one impossible second, I swear the flame inside him dims, not like exhaustion, but like someone turned a dial.
“They’re… slowing,” I breathe out.
“Theyarefailing,” he corrects.
A silver spear punches through Flux’s side, and he falls too quietly, no snarl, no fight. Rhett disappears beneath a swarm offae that move in perfect formation, shadows behaving more like smoke than living darkness.
Wrong.
All of it’swrong.
But the fear still claws at my ribs.
The prince exhales slowly, satisfaction threading through the sound. “Such devotion.”
He gestures again, and the vision narrows, pulling tight on Raze. His dragon drops to one knee, wings trembling under the weight of relentless attacks. Fire flickers unevenly across his scales, ice cracking beneath him, and for one impossible second, the flame inside him gutters like it’s being starved of air.
Scar reaches for him and freezes mid-motion, held there like a statue while silver light crashes down.
“I said…stop!” My hands shake.“Please!”
The prince laughs, soft and cold. “Hope is such a beautiful weakness.”
The illusion shifts again, widening to show the clubhouse drowning in motion. Brothers fighting back-to-back. Blood on stone. Magic is tearing through walls that have stood for centuries, and the fae don’t slow. They close in tighter, the formation tightening like a noose being drawn closed, inch by inch.
Raze rises again at the center of it all, shoulders squared despite the weight pressing down around him. Fire and frost spiral outward in a violent pulse that sends several fae flying, but even that surge feels… contained. Like the world refuses to let him be what he truly is.
“They will fight until nothing remains,” the prince murmurs, voice warm against the edge of my fear. “Loyal creatures, but… predictable creatures.” Another strike lands. Another brother falls. “Theycannotreach you,” he continues quietly. “And theycannotsurvive this without you.”
The vision lingers on Raze, his breath rough, his eyes blazing with fury that refuses to die even as the tide closes in.
“Choose,” the prince whispers. “Save them… or watch the last thing you love grind itself into the dirt for a cause already lost.”
“I’ll do it!” The words rip free of me before I can think. “I’ll join your court. Just please,stop!”
The prince gestures, and the chains around my wrists suddenly extend, iron links snaking across the frozen floor to bind me to a throne I didn’t notice before, carved from a single piece of ice so clear I can see straight through to the starlight pulsing beneath.
“Good girl. Now… we wait.” He waves his hand through the air, the illusion vanishing, taking my hope with it as he settles into a throne beside mine. “And when your dragon arrives, you’ll have front-row seats to his destruction.”
“But the battle… they were—”
He laughs, cutting me off. “Oh, little witch, how easily your small mind is fooled. Your dragon and his minions are on their way right now. What you witnessed was a mirage, a simple trick—”
“You played me into agreeing to be your consort?” I yell at him in disgust.
He grins, his black eyelids flicking again in that uncomfortable way they do. “I used any method necessary to get what I want… there’s a difference. And you caved so easily, it was like child’s play.”
“You fucking arrogant, piece of—” I test the chains again, pulling until my wrists bleed, until the iron burns through skin and muscle, until pain whites out everything except the desperate need to break free.
He laughs as the chains hold.
But I don’t stop fighting.
Because Razeis coming.
My brothersare coming.
My familyis coming.
