The pixies had led Ronan to a sunken alcove in a small mountain, hidden where sound was swallowed. Where no cries would betray Ryuu’s secrets.
That’s where the man’s body hung now, strung up with chains where Ronan himself had welded them into the cave walls.
Stone and steel melted together until they were unbreakable.
The crack of his breaking bones reverberated through the pit, each shatter punctuated by the spray of red that painted the walls. Muffled screams sang high, ricocheting like a grotesque chant.
Blow after blow, bone after bone, he was pulverized, until his body sagged. Until the three rings on his hand were permanently stained red.
Miraculously, the man clung to consciousness, babbling through bloodied teeth. “Reve should have fucked her harder beneath the palace…” His words slurred, but stuck. “He didn’t break her enough, but someone will.Tick. Tick. Tick.” A laugh came, cut short by the blood he choked on. “She’s coming for her.”
Smoke rippled down Ronan’s spine, a growl rising as he tasted the fire at the back of his own throat.
One more heartbeat, one more breath. And he’d lose the leash.
The clasps at the soldier’s wrists ignited, iron flaring a cheery, searing tangerine as flesh peeled away, burning clean from bone—
Onlythendid Ronan feel the smallest breath of relief. And even that relief tasted like ash.
Elysian had not moved. He only stayed leaning against the jagged stone, arms crossed, eyes unblinking as they lingered on what was left of the man.
Skin melted into shackles, shoulders bent at unnatural angles, eyes open but unseeing.
Ronan’s inhale rasped from the corner, the sound more beast than man as wings unfurled, shadows stretching vast and terrible behind him. Tendrils of smoke clung to him, protective and possessive, exhaling off him in slow curls, breathing in the damp air with him.
The man’s heart had stuttered and gone still. Yet Ronan remained unmoving, as though he didn’t trust death to hold. As though he needed to be certain he would never rise again.
The scrape of boots disturbed the stillness when Killian ducked through the narrow entry, his bulk nearly filling the space.
He hesitated, then said, “She’s awake.”
No answer.
Elysian tipped his chin toward him, encouragement to continue.
Killian cleared his throat, covering the swell of relief in his chest. “She’s okay. It’ll be like it never happened.”
A laugh split the room, twisting up from Ronan’s chest. The haze peeled from him as he stepped from the corner, mouth curled in something crueler than a smile. “Except it did.”
Killian looked toward Elysian, but Elysian’s face was a mask, unmoved. They both knew there was nothing to say. Nothing that would soften this truth.
Even if Verena herself strode into this cave, spine straight, voice fierce, insisting she was unbroken—she had almost died. That was real. That was raw. Even if they didn’t understand why.
Killian’s footsteps retreated, dimming until they escaped the cave completely. Elysian moved, uncrossing his arms, pushing himself from the wall. His voice was quiet, but it cut with finality. “You have to tell her.”
“I can’t.”
Just as he couldn’t kill her. Just as he had known, from the very first breath of their oath, that he never would.
He had tried to convince himself she was nothing but ruin. That the curse was all she was, and doom consumed her fate.
But then he caught himself listening for her laughter across firelight. Felt the hitch in his chest when her fingers brushed his. Found himself seeking her shadow in the chaos of battle, as though his own survival hinged on hers.
It was the tether, he had told himself, the blood oath to Isolde. Fate’s cruel snare, binding him so he could one day deliver her end.
Yet the pull only grew stronger, until it felt less like a bond and more like a wound in his chest.
A wound he could never close. A wound he didn’t want to.
