“I wasn’t talking to you,” she seethed through her teeth, “you venomous pest.”
Oh, she’s dead.
I rose slowly, the hiss of gloss against my skin like the beginning of a hunt. Fangs slid down, locking into place this time. Flames guttered out one by one, bowing out in sequence, shadows swallowing stone, darkness sinking into us all.
The Viper uncoiled inside me as my stare prowled over her, turning cruel, until the hall itself exhaled with me. I licked her fear from the air, sweet and spoiled.
Ronan had told me she mattered, that she was important. But Ronan had also given me freedom. So, like him, freedom is what I chose.
The gown slid through my legs as I moved, crawling onto the table. My knees pressed into polished wood, my hips rolling with each forward shift. A predator unapologetically on display.
Halfway down the table, the flames burst back alive, fire sputtering, flaring, as if Ryuu itself could not look away.
Aelora’s mouth parted as she got a good look at me in shock, disbelief, the first cracks of fear in a woman too used to drawing blood with only her tongue.
She thought me a mess, ghastly. Weak. I smiled, one that promised otherwise. I let her tremble. Let her see what I could become as her eyes began to burn to cobalt.
The table cracked beneath Ronan’s fist, glass tumbling and shattering in a thousand glittering pieces. The sound rang, a dark essence surging out, heavy and suffocating, but not toward me. Never me.
It wrapped Aelora instead, thick coils strangling the air around her until she shook. That darkness clung to her while Ronan towered above, veins straining at his arms, his neck, his temple, pulsing in perfect tandem with the smoke.
He leaned close and said, “One more fucking word, and I will banish you from this kingdom.”
A tear in the air opened and Ronan reached through, pulling parchment from the sift and ripping it apart with deliberate violence. Aelora whimpered, the next crack in her armor, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes.
“I was never going to marry you, Aelora.”
Well,thatwas certainly loud enough.
She clawed at his arm, and I bared my teeth in answer. “Look at what she’s already done to you,” she cried. “Don’t you see? She’s corrupted your mind so easily. How can you not feel it, Ronan?”
The accusation struck, venom gathering sweetly in my throat.
His voice did not rise as he said, “Or maybe, I finally care deeply enough for someone that there is no question the lengths I will let them ascend.”
The sentence gutted her and she paled, eyes glazing, tears spilling fat and unpretty down her cheeks. She looked at me, looked and found not the monster she wanted, not the serpent she taunted, but only Verena.
My legs folded beneath my body, the curse sliding back into its den. What remained was raw, unhidden. And still, Ronan’s smoke clung, stroking my skin, curling possessive as it played around me.
Around her it tightened, a wall of shadow she could not cross. The table murmured, assumptions tossed, judgments spun.
But not at me. At her.
Aelora, who had defied their prince. Aelora, who had ignored her father’s counsel. She had overreached, and the room would remember.
Ronan’s arm lifted toward me, his hand curving over the small of mine as I stood, sliding down from the table into the space at his side.
Then his voice rang, loud enough to cleave the whisper. It coursed down the length of the table, though his words were meant for one man.
“Tell Obrann I do not accept his offer. Tell him Ryuu stands with Princess Elvira, thetrueruler to Luamis. Tell him the Viper is unshackled and hunting for blood. Tell him if he wants war,” Ronan declared, “then the Wraith himself will send death to greet it.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Verena
LEAVING THE BANQUET HALL FELT FREER, a skin I hadn’t realized I was wearing finally being shed.
I had let my darkness out in a chamber full of royals, full of dragons, and no glass or curses were thrown, no blood was shed.
