Well, blood hadalmostbeen shed.
But instead of being looked at in only disgust or dread, I had been seen as a force, someone essential.
But Aero’s eyes...they’d sunk further after Aelora fled the room with her fury brittle and loud.
I understood her anger. Pride can become a poison when it curdles. Her loyalty to her kingdom was something to marvel at, but the way she needed that crown, it was distasteful.
Her hatred of me, it hadn’t begun when she learned who I was. No, it had started the instant Ronan brought me into Sahfyre. Because my presence made me important. And her unworthy.
He had spoken the same words to her that Reve had once spat at me in a dungeon. The same string of cruelty, though a different mouth, different malice. And while it hadn’t gutted me the way it had her, it still sliced its lines into my skin.
Reve’s words,I would have loved you if not for who you were,they had pitted me, left me feeling undeserving of love.
Ronan saying it to Aelora, it stripped her instead. Made her feel like nothing. I could taste it in her eyes, the salt of her heartache. I never loved Reve. Not even when I was a foolish, young girl. But Aelora, maybe shehadloved Ronan once. Not for his crown. Not for the throne. For him. For who he was when no one was watching.
And that made me her enemy. No matter what I did. No matter what he chose.
The fire blazed in the hearth, its roar loud enough to remind me that I had nearly killed her tonight. No thought. No conviction. Only instinct when I’d climbed that table, fangs poised for her throat. If Ronan hadn’t intervened, she would be a corpse now.
And me? I would be ash.
The chaise in my chamber had become an acquainted comfort, my body filling in the sunken space like I had never left. Only three hours had passed since I awoke in Sahfyre. One since dinner ended. Thirty minutes since I found myself here again. Still glazed in silks, still trapped in the only thing Ronan had left me.
My filthy clothes were gone, erased as if they’d never existed. The book I had held lay reperched on the mantle, the spine lined back up like I hadn’t touched it at all. The bed, too, untouched. No creases. No blankets tangled from a restless body. No proof I belonged.
My throat closed, lips trembling as tears fell, sliding down cheeks warm from the fire. I had gotten Elva out, despite the toll, despite the nightmares waiting in every corner. We were days from Nyctom, hopefully from its heir, and from whatever hope might still be clutched there.
And still, I had failed.
Failed Gemma. Failed Elva and Callum. Failed Selvarra. Failed exactly as expected, even if the gods had whispered otherwise.
The truth bore down, laden with unspoken things: war was coming. And salvation was not the key to stopping it. Only blood.
But if the stars do not weep for what they burn, why should I?
Ronan’s footsteps didn’t bother with subtlety.
Four. Three. Two. Each strike a countdown, until his knuckles rasped against marble and found me.
I didn’t move, only brushed a weary drift across the bond. I was too drained to rise from the hour spent rehearsing a truth that still blistered on my tongue.
That I was not worth war. I could spill blood. But the blood spilled for me was wrong.
The door eased open as he stepped through, still wrapped in the trappings of court. His shirt was untucked, the sleek fabric undone enough to bare more than chest. His curls were a tangle, mussed as though his hands had raked through them repeatedly since my departure. And his eyes, like Aero’s, were shadowed, rimmed dark.
His smile broke like dawn across devastation. Small. Fierce. Enough to set my soul on fire.
My mouth lifted, but the smile stopped short. It didn’t widen when he closed the distance. Not when he bent, hands warm and strong, cupping my face. Even when his lips pressed to mine, heated, salted with my tears.
The kiss stole breath and gave back something harder, his mouth tasting like vow, like smoke, like inevitability.
For a heartbeat the world went quiet. There was no prophecy, no demise. Only this, his touch binding, his kiss undoing, the wild terror of being chosen when I had already decided I should not be.
I told myself again,I wasn’t worth this.
Smoke hovered at his shoulders, restraint barely holding when he heard every word. “You are worthy of everything you desire,” he said. “I’ve seen the kindness beneath the mask, the woman who still aches to be light, even when the world told her she wasn’t allowed and they named her the nightmare.Thatwoman is worth defying fate. Look at me...” His thumb brushed across my cheek, catching the tears that refused to stop. “She is wortheverything.”
I didn’t know when Ronan had become the piece that kept me from shattering. Maybe when I’d told myself I forgave him for setting my course on the wrong road. Maybe when he chose me, again and again, even when he hadn’t known that’s what he was doing.
