I am the force no one anticipates.
“The king promised me you’d be all mine when this was over, and at first, I thought, why would I want a vile,broken,” he ground the last word out, “piece of beast?” A finger shot up to my face, tracing the outline of my mouth. “But then I thought…you and me...” His smirk widened. “And Elva. Oh, the fun we’d have down here together.” A pause, teeth flashing. “We, as in me, of course.”
That’s when it caught fire. Not my anger or my grief—
My rage.
I used to believe it started when Gemma and Callum found me. But then they became home. Later, I thought it came when I awakened to the curse inside my skull. But then I learned its name.
In time, I blamed it on being feared—moving through the world like a ghost in my own skin. Seen by everyone yet known by no one.
Not me. Not Verena.
I sat idly, letting him draw his finger slowly across my lips, letting it fall into the gap between them.
His eyes flared as he moved to push it through them, where he perhaps thought it would be safe. Thinking I was beaten, docile.
But a serpent is always lethally still before it strikes.
And so, as Reve pushed it closer toward my throat, I bit his fucking finger clean off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ronan
BOOTS HAMMERED DOWN ON MARBLE, each strike reverberating through the corridor, heavy enough that the guards lining the walls stiffened in a single, terrified motion.
Armor meant nothing against what walked toward them; metal couldn’t shield a man from a dragon in a killing mood.
The hall lowered to whispers behind him, spines locking rigid as no one dared step in his path. Not when he came for what washis.
Throne room doors rose ahead, great slabs of pallid ivory, gleaming as restless smoke churned beneath his skin, urging to break them clean off their hinges.
Word had reached him, poison poured in his ear, that the Viper was taken, dragged below ground, chained and broken then thrown into a pit. How they planned to strip her scales one by one, watch her bleed.
Two guards crossed their blades as he approached, barring his entry. A flare caught in Ronan’s eyes; he had not come to parley. There was no facade.
Not today.
One guard braced, planting the tip of his sword against Ronan’s chest, voice shaking despite the steel. “You are not permitted to enter without the king’s word.”
Ronan raised his hands, palms open in fake surrender. Fingers wiggled lazily, just for show, confusion wavering across the guards’ faces.
Then the smoke struck. Black and writhing, pouring from his fingers and wrapping the first guard’s throat. A strangled gag, a scrape of armor against ivory, and the man collapsed, lifeless and grey on the polished floor.
The second guard shook, knuckles white around his hilt. But he held the line. Steel scraped behind Ronan, more soldiers flooding the corridor, armor clanking, blades unsheathed, the stench of fear floating across his nose.
A thumb dragged along his lower lip, while dark vapor curled from his jaw and he rasped, “Permission is not what I came for.”
The soldiers hesitated, just a hint, and Ronan smiled.
Sage fused into flame as his eyes burned, wings erupting from his back, vast enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Marble trembled beneath the impact, blades clattering to the floor.
A sting bit into the leather near the ridge of his wing, shallow, an insult more than an injury. The guard who dared it barely managed to draw breath before Ronan closed his palm.
Mist spilled, the air becoming stagnant in dark wraith and the man dropped, gasping once before his breath turned to ash. The remaining guard lowered his weapon, hands lifted as he shifted aside in surrender.
Smoke loomed around Ronan’s shoulders as he clasped his cuffs, adjusting them with a slow precision that made the guard tremble harder.
