She grinned, teeth flashing in sharp rows. “They are black,” she answered, “because we can finally see.”
A shallow dip of his chin was his only acknowledgment of what she gave away. “Our oath is void, Isolde.”
Her head snapped toward him. “You break that oath, and you die,” she hissed. “Webothwill. And I’ll find your Viper before you do.”
Ronan only smiled. “You see,” power thickened in the air, mist that tasted of heat and violence, “I don’t think that’s true. Because you can’t kill what’s already dead.”
Her composure faltered as the blade in his grip whispered once, a clean arc of steel meeting the glowing scales wavering beneath flesh. His skin split, blood welling in a line that severed a forced allegiance, splattering across the floor as stone swallowed it and didn’t give it back.
The scent of dragon-fire and golden iron collided as he ripped through that final line that bound him to her.
Her mark, her claim, peeled away like dead skin.
She gasped, clutching her wrist, skin searing where the vow’s brand had once bound them. For a moment she staggered, nearly buckling. And when she looked up, her eyes, those endless obsidian pits, flared.
Not with defeat. With rage.
Ronan vanished before she could say a word, enveloped by his own smoke, shadows collapsing into the void he left behind.
The chamber quaked, blackness shuddering from her, cracking stone, rattling shelves of vials until glass screamed and shattered.
He had done the right thing. Freed himself. Severed her hold. But in defying her, he had stoked the darkness she was born from.
Fed it. Sharpened it.
Left alone in the cavern, Isolde trembled, her smile stretching thin as existence writhed through her veins. And it would not be quiet.
“Tell me, brother—” Elysian fell into step with Ronan, the silver grass brushing their waists. “How long did you think it would take before I scented her rotten stench on you?”
They had made it as far as the glade before Willa’s trail faded into the stone. Ronan had told him they would wait until morning to track her. He hadn’t told him why. And Elysian hadn’t pushed, until now.
“Before you caught it, or spoke on it?”
The gleam of canines flashed as Elysian halted. “What business could you possibly have with the witch queen, Ronan?”
Exhaling once, Ronan slowed. “There is no business. Not anymore.”
Elysian’s voice frosted as he spat, “You are a fool.”
Ronan stilled then. He was a damn fool. “Forgive me, Ely. I have righted my mistakes. And by the end of this cursed venture, the witch queen will be burning in Hel with the rest of its spawn.”
Elysian’s head shook, silver hair catching the moonbeam. “Your secrets are not mine to hold. I will not carry them. But rumors spread. You refused to sift so Aero would not know where you were. Yet you sifted to Isolde? And you wereseensaving Verena. Recognized as the dragon heir soaring over the mountains to save the very curse that may end us all.” His lips curled. “Do you even know where your loyalties lie? If you are lost, let me guide you.”
Ronan rolled his shoulders as he reached for his sword, drawing it from its sheath in one smooth motion. “Aero was going to know we were here in a day anyway.”
Elysian blinked. “Why?”
“Because once we save this Veyari,” Ronan’s wings expanded, stretching into the night with a snap that gagged the glade. “We’re bringing her to Sahfyre.”
Willa’s scent picked back up only a mile past the glade. Someone must have tried to glamour it, though their magic was far too weak to hold.
It had taken Ronan and Elysian only hours to find the Brights’ camp, tucked carelessly beneath a canopy of black pines, fires banked low, beaconing in the dark.
Their voices carried, unguarded, arguing over the girl. Some urged that sifting her was the right move, while others suggested it might shatter something too delicate inside her. She was too strange, too still. Too silent.
Ronan and Elysian had swept by their perimeter like smoke and mist. Gone before anyone had stirred. The barred wagon holding her sat at the camp’s edge, only one guard stationed there, who dropped before he felt his breath stolen.
Iron shackles bit into her small wrists and ankles, white hair spilling down her back and shoulders in loose rivulets, veiling most of her face. She barely moved, but when she lifted her head, those eyes, pale as moonstone and hidden under ivory lashes and brows, found him instantly.
