Isolde released my chin, drifting toward Elva, and without ceremony, she caught the necklace at her throat, ripping it free. Elva’s scream split the throne room as magic flooded into her like a dam exploding. She crumpled, clutching her chest, shuddering under the rush. Callum charged for her, only to be held back by three soldiers, all masked, none relenting.
Isolde held the pendant aloft, the stone inside it stirring with a sick, hypnotic rhythm. It caught the torchlight like living blood, swirling, the gem itself fluttering with a heartbeat.
I knew I had always felt it, the tug in my chest, the instinct to shield Elva from everything that threatened her future. I’d thought it was love. And it was. Fierce, irrevocable love. But beneath that love lived an older notion, etched into my very making.
I wasn’t just born to love her. I had been forged to protect her. But by whom...and why?
With the necklace still clutched tight in her grip, Isolde exhaled, deep. “Sweet Verena.” It sounded almost pitying. “You were always a means to an end. A breathing, beautiful distraction. Never meant to truly exist. Only to preserve.” She glanced to where Elva lay unmoving on the ground, a subtle rise in her chest every other pulse. My throat closed as her voice dipped. “To shield Kairos’s true firstborn.”
Her words hit like a blow to the spine, leaving me breathless as the name crashed through me, cracking every wall I’d built.
Kairos, the King of Nyctom, was Elva’s father—
And she, who carried the sunrise in her smile, was awakening into the heir of dark.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Verena
MY MIND STUTTERED, refusing to catch up with what my heart already knew.
Elva was the lost heir.
I couldn’t piece it together. None of it made sense.
Why forge me into her protector if she’d been hidden, nameless, all this time?
Isolde kept her glare on Fritz where he bent beside Elva, cradling her head against his leg.
She’d gotten inside my head, controlled whatever part we shared. But how could I be shackled to her venom while she walked free inside her darkness?
How could she only control mine like it was hers to command?
Nezra’s whisper from months ago rose unbidden, Isolde once being beautiful, radiant.Happy. Before something broke her. Before bitterness rooted so deep it turned her magic into a cage.
A terrible clarity flashed through me.
If our curses were entwined, threads spun from the same loom, then maybe, just maybe, I could see her like she saw me.
I closed my eyes, plunging down that connection, shoving past her power, diving under the black ice. For a moment, it worked. I saw flashes of her memory: Isolde young, her smile unguarded, her hand clasped with Kairos’ beneath a storm-lit sky. His lips at her throat, promises breathed into her skin.
Then another image—Leora, stepping into the light, gilded and untouchable. Kairos’s gaze shifted. The laughter died from Isolde’s mouth. Then the moment she began to wither completely from what she hid in her veins. The moment she made a deal with death.
My eyes shot open as I came up, gasping. “It was you.” My head shook in disbelief. “You cursed me.”
“Sneaky little thing, aren’t you?” Her face twisted, a scowl licking across her lips. “He wasmine,” she hissed. “We burned for one another. Until that wretched queen cast her glow on him like a spell.”
My stomach turned.
“Leora and Kairos were pathetic at pretending their love was anything less than kindness. Sebastian saw through it the moment their gazes lingered too long. He warned me the second he had proof.”
I almost wanted to laugh at her. “You’re nothing but a scorned lover.”
A sound between a scoff and a snarl left her lips. “He stopped loving me because of my curse. So, I made sure he’d never escape it. If he couldn’t love me, then he would be forced to love someone just as damned.”
And it all snapped into place. “So, you cursed his nonexistent firstborn. You used the same magic that damned you. Then why isn’t Elva the one cursed?”
She huffed a laugh. “Because someone found out and warned him.”
