But they were already wide. Already raw. Inside me, my pulse split, then shattered. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
Gemma’s body spilled forward, a nightmare, a truth I couldn’t wake from. My pulse beat twice, off rhythm, once my own, once the curse as it stretched at last, not in a hiss, not in a coil—but in another scream.
My body shuddered, shackles snapping from wrists like threads. The guards stumbled back, wide-eyed when the stone cracked beneath me. I pitched forward, catching myself on trembling hands.
Recognition at last,it purred.Now they will see. Now they will kneel.
The pain was ecstasy. The ecstasy was destruction.
My scream split into two, mine and the monster’s, as we rose together from the floor, black lines spidering outward over my face with every pulse.
Gemma’s blood still pooled and I promised, with every shred of my soul, they would choke on it.
But it wasn’t me anymore. I floated in an endless obsidian pool inside my head, weightless, soundless, watching through the Viper’s eyes.
My head lifted slow, fingers no longer blood red, but dipped in black as they reached for the small dagger hidden in my waistband. The blade flew, a streak of silver lightning aimed straight for Obrann’s face.
He didn’t anticipate it. His hands lifted, too sluggish and useless. Even the guards lagged. But someone else didn’t—
Metal met metal in one sharp, ringing breath, and my dagger spun midair, cut down, clattering to the floor.
My soul slammed back into its cage of skin, ribs cracking under the weight of it as Reve Mayweather stepped through the blood between us.
He raised the point of a nix-metal sword, its edge dragging near my throat. “Verena,” the click of his tongue echoed loud, “that’s no way to treat our king.”
Iknewit.
The delight touching his lips wasn’t courageous. It was currency. He’d sold himself to whatever foul power Obrann kept under his crown.
And Gemma had been the one to pay the price for his bargain.
I looked down to my hands, where black leaked further up my arms. I didn’t even know how the chains had been broken, perhaps some miracle ripped from the last shred of my soul. A miracle not meant to be wasted.
The first thing I was going to do was claw Reve’s godsdamn eyes out as I cleaved my way to Obrann.
I hissed, the sound tearing through my teeth, and Reve jerked back, his sword dropping just enough to scrape against the cursed mark beneath my shirt.
“Bring them both to the dungeons!” Obrann yelled, shoving a guard forward. “Now!”
They all stepped wide around the gore, halting at the sight of me. All together they pivoted for Callum instead. He hadn’t moved, was still on his knees, still staring at her. Our mother. Knowing it should have been me.
“I want them in separate cells,” Obrann added. “Not beside one another. I want them to hear each other’s screams but never see how close they come to death.”
The guards crept forward as bravely as they could, hesitant but obedient. And I stood, ready to tear them all to fucking scraps.
Obrann’s teeth ground together as if biting back his own rage. “Restrain her!”
Heat bled through fabric like molten when Reve shoved the blade back into my chest. Another guard lunged for my wrists, trying to lock fresh chains, heavier ones.
I snapped, twisting my body to the guard behind me, all fangs and fury. Claws raked across his throat, tearing skin and muscle into strips.
He gurgled, trying to scream, but it was drowned. I ripped him down, shredded him until his face was nothing but pulp.
Until the floor was stained an even darker red.
Another step and I’d tear through the next one, and the next. Until Obrann himself was limp at my boots.
That step didn’t come.
