The wordsparedhung through the chamber. Obrann wanted us to believe survival itself was sin. That to live was to betray.
“It makes them what we are.” Callum’s shoulders squared, golden eyes burning steady. “Innocent. Only a tyrant confuses survival with treason.”
Obrann’s stare lingered, unblinking. “And yet, someone brewed an elixir even the Gods themselves couldn’t trace.Someoneended my son. Who, commander, any idea?”
Come on, Callum, name a ghost. Better yet, melt those godsdamn shackles and blow this room to pieces.
But his eyes slipped, back to Elva. That was the chain around his neck, not iron. He would not risk her, and Obrann knew it.
“We all know the only one skilled enough to craft such a poison. Give her up,” Obrann demanded. “Or all of you die.”
I opened my mouth, to deny, to shield her, to drag Callum’s name into my lie if it spared them both—
“May I try, Your Majesty?” The interruption came from beside Elva where a man stepped forward, a tower of muscle and scar, armor clinking with every stride. He bowed, the movement stiff, restrained. “Perhaps, I can be…persuasive.”
Obrann’s grin cut broad, the kind that made you realize too late you were already cornered as he gave a single nod.
The man floated forward, beads of clay threaded through three thick braids brushed against his shoulders, catching glimmers of light with each shift. Brown hair, sun-touched at the edges, framed a face that was both attractive and battle ready.
His skin bore scars like a map of survival, each mark etched deep. A silver hoop sat in the curve of his nose, another cut through one of his brows. And his eyes—a glacier aqua holding an otherworldly brightness that didn’t belong to even immortals.
They caught me, held me, and my first thought was another dragon, something bred for destruction. Too vast, too ruthless to be anything else.
But Obrann’s triumph gleamed fiercer than fire.
“May I present,” he said, savoring it, “Killian Ramsay.” The name descended with precision, impossible to ignore as a slow, cruel smile swept across his face. “The last Angel of Selvarra.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Verena
KILLIAN RAMSAY. NOT A MYTH, but a resurrection forged into flesh.
He needed no introduction, everyone in Luamis had heard of him.
Hel, everyone inSelvarrawas familiar.
His reputation wasn’t built on questions but on brutality. Piece by piece, he’d dismantle you until nothing remained.
He was said to have come from a far-off continent after his realm’s collapse. The last risen of a kingdom long buried. But what was never told was that that kingdom wasn’t buried, it was erased.
A memory bled back without warning—Nezra, the vision she had forced into me of Saintoria, the Angel’s realm. I remembered the sky first, painted in dawn-fire. Then their wings of cloud, spun from the breath between realms.
But the Angels weren’t cowering in that memory like Obrann’s story would suggest, they moved among the Gods themselves, untouched by fear, asallies.
I remembered the Valkara, her oath binding her to guard Selvarra. She wasn’t erased. Not even betrayed. She had been chosen.
The chains rattled as I shifted, cold iron biting into bone. The narrative Obrann fed us, the ashes, the slaughter, even the extinction, it was all wrong.
Callum had known, for centuries he’s known. I didn’t expect him to give me history lessons along with training but, wouldn’t it be relevant that history had gotten it wrong purposefully?
The Gods, well, they had always loved their secrets.
Obrann’s voice shook me back. “His gift will leave very little room for resistance.”
So it began in the mind, then. Not with steel.
I wasn’t sure which was worse: that he could peel back every thought, or that he could plant one I’d never know wasn’t mine.
