Because this isn’t about destruction.
It’s about balance.
The prince’s smile falters completely.
Silence spreads through the throne room, not the fragile quiet that follows battle, but something heavier, older, a pressure that settles into bone and breath alike. Fire and frost continue to collapse inward beneath my scales, the unseen weight bendingthe air around me until banners lift without wind and fragments of broken marble slide slowly across the floor toward the invisible pull radiating from my wings.
The Seelie Court watches.
No one moves.
Even the music woven into this realm seems to falter, notes stretching thin before fading into nothing.
The prince rises from his throne with deliberate slowness, eyes fixed not on my claws or my fangs but on the distortion warping the space between us. His court shifts uneasily behind him, their perfect formations faltering as instinct begins to whisper what pride refuses to say aloud.
“But you are holding it,” he murmurs at last, voice quieter than before, stripped of its theatrical arrogance. “You could unmake this court before your next breath… and yet, you do not.”
My wings flex, the hollow pressure tightening reflexively, and a ripple moves through the room as fae warriors instinctively step back from something they cannot see but clearly feel.
“This endsnow,” I say, my voice carrying through the distortion like thunder trapped beneath frozen glass. “Give. Her. Back!”
Roxy stands at his side, iron chains glinting faintly with seelie magic. Her chin lifts when our eyes meet, stubborn and fierce even in captivity, and the pull inside my chest tightens until fire and ice grind together in perfect, terrible harmony.
The prince’s gaze lingers on her before returning to me, the faintest curl of a smile ghosting across his mouth.
“You walk into my realm with a power that predates our oldest songs,” he says softly, taking one measured step forward. “And you expect me to simply surrender what I have claimed?”
Scar shifts beside me, fangs bared in a silent promise of violence. Wreck’s shadow stretches across the fractured floor,hunger coiling tight but restrained. Behind us, every brother holds position, a wall of living intent that presses against the throne room’s fragile composure.
“You think Ifeardeath?” the prince jabs, tilting his head as if genuinely curious, his eyelids flickering defensively.
“No,” I answer, the pressure around me deepening another inch as light thins at the edges of my wings. “You fearextinction.”
A crack runs across the vaulted ceiling, thin as a blade but unmistakable, starlight leaking through like a wound.
Ruckus mutters behind me, his voice barely audible, “Yeah… hedefinitelyfears that.”
The prince’s gaze flickers upward, then returns to me with something darker settling into his expression. Slowly, almost reverently, he steps closer, studying the way fire and frost fold into nothingness around my form.
His breath leaves him in a whisper, “Voidfire,” he says under his breath, the word carrying the weight of something forbidden. “The thing of legend.” Several fae recoil at the name, their glamour flickering.
“Youshouldn’texist,” he continues, his voice low and awed despite the tension coiling through the room. “That state belongs to myth… to endings written before our people learned to sing.”
The dragon inside me surges at the recognition, urging release, urging annihilation.
I force it tighter instead.
The pressure compresses, heavy and controlled, bending the throne room another fraction closer to collapse without allowing it to fall.
“I’m still standing here asking instead of annihilation,” I say evenly. “That should tell youeverythingyou need to know.”
His eyes narrow. He looks at Roxy again. “You would burn our realm for her,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
A long, heavy pause.
“And you wouldrefuseto burn it… for her.”
