That she was meant to be broken. But she wasn’t. She endured. She lived.
Neither spoke again. Not for a long while. The lunethmoths evolved, their silver bleeding into rusted violet, the color of opened veins, darkening the water, the chamber.
Ronan frowned as a calm descended, folding around them slow and easy. A hush that bound them in its quiet solace.
“It’s okay to not know the right decision—”
The barrier drowned out the sea’s roar, but not the tremor in her voice. Ronan felt it where her cheek pressed to his chest, each syllable trembling against his heart.
“I know you chose to go against Obrann. But I don’t know the height of his forces. I thought his soldiers were nearly depleted. Yet, if he’s proposing war so easily...” Her breath hitched. “He might have an army hidden and waiting.”
Steam drifted from the water, ghosting toward the high passage above. Verena swept her hand through, scattering the rising haze, like breaking apart her own hope before it could escape.
“We can hide Elva,” she said. “We can tell him she died. There’s no one to take her heir mark. They’ll never know the truth. Callum can take her across the sea. She’ll be safe...and free.” She pulled away from his embrace, head bowing as it shook. And then the death sentence fell from her lips. “Let them take me.”
His heart sank, fingers fisting beneath the water as a wave slammed into the shield overhead, a blow of salt and fury exploding in crystal blue. The barrier wept with it, rivulets streaking down in tears.
Ronan brushed a curl from her lashes, his fingers tilting her chin. Her eyes were oceans, azure, enraged, wild waves beating against a prison that would not break. Eyes that refused to rise and meet his, no matter how he tried to anchor her back to him.
“One,” he said, “as brave and selfless as that is, Verena, Elva being dead would not help. They would hunt her body. Steal her power. Her blood.” His thumb brushed across her lips. “And two,no.”
Her tongue clicked and at last, she lifted her gaze. Darkness rippled there, something serpentine, slithering behind the glass of her irises. Her fingers drifted beneath the water, trailing slowly along the tops of her thighs. “You do not get to decide what I do with my fate.”
He stiffened. No, he didn’t. But it tore at him still. “But as someone who hasfeltthat fucking fear dripping from you, I think I get a say.”
She wrenched her face away, jaw locked tight. For one suspended breath, the threads between them snapped slack, dark and unreadable. “I cannot let your kingdom go to war.”
He reached for her, dragging the tether tight again, his will scraping against her. The scales of his mind raked down her oil-slicked walls, rasping.
Let me in.
She hesitated. Then yielded. The shield slid down, wary, only to reveal emptiness. A blank, bottomless expanse that offered nothing. Fine. If that was all she would give him, then he would take it.
He dragged a hand across the nape of his neck, the flex of his bicep stiff as he let the other fall against the stone. “And you do not get to decide what I do with my kingdom.”
The smirk that followed was meant to soften, to remind her that some choices were not meant to be carried alone. That together, maybe, they could shoulder the burden.
Verena just rolled her eyes, water rippling out in rings as she rose. Her breasts broke the surface, and Ronan’s body betrayed him before his thoughts caught up. A swell surged, steel hard and unrelenting, his hand curling low to restrain it.
Well fucking played.
Darkness flared violently across her skin and for a moment, he swore he saw black lashing up her arms, moving over her collarbones, the Viper living across her flesh. The mark slipped higher, spiraling around bone in endless, damning loops.
“That’s not the same.” Her voice cut through him, pulling him back even as his gut rebelled. Even as she sank deeper into the depths, gliding along the pool’s floor with only her face breaking the shallows. “This is one life. Verena’s life. Ryuu has thousands upon thousands that could be lost.”
“What did you just say?” he asked, voice warbling inside his mind.
He blinked, and the vision shattered as she slipped beneath the surface entirely. When she rose again, water dripping from her face, her olive skin was smooth and unstained. No darkness but the twin marks inked in black, the curse’s and his.
Both fighting to claim her.
“I said,” she sighed, “my life is forfeit when Ryuu has thousands that could be lost.”
The tether flared, the mask of nullity staggering, sliding back into the beautiful, brutal chaos that was her mind. His stare dropped to the mark on his wrist.
Fates, if she ever learned of his oath to Isolde, she would burn the one he’d given her. Burn it just to spite him. Even if the vow was void.
There had been moments, heated, shattering moments, when the truth had pounded against his teeth, ready to slip free. He almost wanted to tell her right then. To tear it open and let it bleed.
