I chose both.
It had stopped being only the desire to tear Obrann from his throne; I wanted to obliterate him.
Words had their beauty—they could inspire, ignite, rewrite history. But steel, sweat, and the crack of bone…that was where the true fun lived.
Callum made sure I learned that thrill well. He pushed me until my lungs gave out, until my body was wrung dry of strength, until tears burned and blood slicked my palms.
Then he forced me to rise again.
I cursed him. Hated him. But I never tapped. Not once.
Every morning, for nearly four years, it was the same war—me against him, me against myself.
Some of his soldiers trained beside us, revolutionaries in secret. Others never realized the girl beside them was being designed into a threat far beyond immortal.
You’re going to be deadly, Callum had told me the first time I put him on the ground. He said it again, every time I forced him to yield.
But deadly didn’t cover it.
By seventeen, the girl who once puked at drills, who couldn’t lift a sword, was gone. In her place stood someone who could snap bones with her bare hands. Someone who could drop four full-grown immortal soldiers in the dirt and walk away with nothing but a scratch and a smirk.
The woman I became was dominant, powerful.Resilient.
Gemma made me feel. Callum made me fearless.
Together, they built a creature no one had seen coming. I wasn’t just a dreamer anymore. I wasn’t just a weapon. I was the beginning of something that couldn’t be tamed. A spark built to matter.
I became the force no one anticipated.
Until one choice was stripped from me when fate reached in with its poisoned hand and chose for me.
At eighteen, it was stolen.
All of it.
Torn from me the moment I awakened.
Suddenly the words I once spoke carried no weight. My strength no longer belonged to me. Verena was gone, not the visionary, not the elite.
What rose in her place was everything we had sworn to destroy. Venom wearing my skin. Darkness disguised as destiny.
As a child, I had been a dreamer. Then the world turned me into venom.
But even now, I remembered her, the girl who carried ambition like it was sacred, who believed the kingdoms could be saved.
Who swore Elva would be free.
I closed my eyes, reaching, calling her back. A beat answered, beneath my skin, singing up my veins, unrestrained. It struck against the chains locking me down, beating against them, demanding to be released.
My body trembled in response, my heart kicking once, twice, then dark uncoiled, thrashing against its own cell, rattling more than just my thoughts.
I panicked, my knees buckling, and I dropped into the dirt.
Neither Callum nor Duke noticed, both too busy pounding through pushups like machines.
I dragged myself upright, brushing grit from my palms, fingers still buzzing with that strange new current, body locking back into position.
Ninety-nine more squats to go. I could survive that.
