“What are you talking about?” I demanded, though my voice wasn’t ready.
He tilted his head, the light catching on the break in his crown. “They raised you on half-truths and borrowed faith. Never told you whose hands shaped the soul inside you, whose it was meant to be.” A cruel glimmer lit his eyes. “All that mercy, all that love, wasted on a creature they thought they could tame.”
My throat closed. “Stop.” The world fell out from under me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think past the ringing in my ears.
His attention swept toward the carnage around us. “You thinkthiswas only fate that brought you here?” He gestured toward the inferno of white fire in the distance. “No, little serpent.Hedid. Your precious guardian led you straight into it, the same as he did before.”
“Callum?”
His laugh was soft and awful. “He brought you here knowing exactly what you were.” Leaning forward, his voice lowered until it slid beneath my skin. “He never loved you. Everything he’s ever done was for her.” I followed his stare to where night still held Elva’s light. “All that devotion, all that guilt, none of it was ever yours.”
I could taste iron. My heart beat once, twice, then nothing at all.
“You were always a lamb being led to its slaughter.” He dragged his thumb across his throat. “Right up until I took her head.”
Everything in me went still. And then I laughed, a feral little sound, scraping straight from the darkness where the Viper lived. “If they wanted a lamb,” I whispered. “They shouldn’t have raised a wolf.”
He bared his teeth, spitting blood and prophecy in the same breath. “Kings will rise, kings will fall, but women like you—"
I moved before he could finish. A single turn, a clean arc, and his hand hit the ground with the rings still on it, blood fanning the air in red ribbons.
“Are the reason they burn.” My shoulders eased, control locking into place as I exhaled once, claiming the moment. “Why should a king rule,” I said, baring my fangs, “when divinity wears a woman’s face.”
Obrann screamed, a sound torn from somewhere between mortal and monster. His body convulsed, twisting in on itself, his flesh dulling to gray, ears rounding, features collapsing as the illusion blurred away. As power bled, drained, until it was gone.
I stared, my breath hitched. “You motherfucker. You were mortal this entire time?” He gasped, clutching his mangled arm, eyes wide and desperate.
I stepped forward, my voice ringing absolute through the broken hall. “You hid behind your walls, wore a false crown, and called yourself a king.” My blade glowed, molten at its edge. “But thrones built on fear are meant to fall. And I will see you kneel before you burn.”
He tried to run, of course he did. Cowardice clung to him like a stench. Before he could take a second step, steel met flesh, cutting clean through the tendons behind his ankles. He dropped, hard, falling to his knees before me in his own blood.
“You—” he snarled, turning back to face me. “Fate will strike you down themomentthat curse devours your soul. You’ll never touch the Aureveil. You’re no God, just a lost orphan wearing stolen power.”
My smile curved, the kind born from revelation as I inclined my head, close enough that he could smell the contagion burning through my veins. “No,” I murmured, “I never pretended to be holy. But you,” I tilted my head, “you’ve rotted behind the illusion of it.”
He faltered, hands shaking as he brought them up to his lips, as if he might find redemption in old habits.
“Say your farewells, Obrann. The Viper promised your bloodline would end with you, and if there’s one thing I’m good at,” I crouched, making sure he saw the reflection of himself in my eyes, “it’s keeping my promises.”
Obrann laughed, shifting against stone where smears of blood followed like shadows. “Oh, they didn’t tell you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Tell me what?”
“Perseus,” he said, voice cracking but cruelly certain. “He still breathes.” His smirk held, splitting open, even as blood dripped from it onto the stone.
My head shook, certain. “Mm. Nope, he’s dead. My venom made sure of that.”
“Ah.” His attention moved toward my wrist, to where a bond bound me in flame. “Perhaps your venom has met its match.”
The way he smiled told me he knew too much already. But I hunted anyway. Searching the blood pooling at knees, the tremor in his pulse, looking for the verity.
“What did you do?”
“Oh, sweet serpent,” he said. “Still believing the truth is something you can find?” His jaw clenched before he forced a strained swallow. “Yours can’t be found, only remembered. But it seems the monsters stole all that too.” He paused. “If only we knew which monster it was.”
That was it. The last thread. Quietly, I said, “You want a monster?” I let black bleed into the gold leading my veins. “Then you’ll meet her.”
My body moved, an instinctive, lethal strike, fangs sliding through the skin on his neck right in line where Isolde’s had punctured. Hot blood filled my mouth, bitter as old iron, heavy with every sin he’d ever hidden behind the title. When I pulled away, he was shaking, wide-eyed, small.
