I almost didn’t answer. Almost let silence be the final kindness. But the last sliver of me, whatever was left of the woman he loved, answered first.Maybe in another lifetime.
No, this one—
The bond splintered.
I lifted the dagger to my arm, to the mark that still willed beneath my skin. I was ready to carve, ready to bleed.
“Don’t do this.” Ronan’s voice was barely sane now, raw enough to shake the stones.
Elysian moved behind me, a blur of ivory, but Killian flared his wings wide, blocking him with a snarl. The blade’s tip dug into my flesh, a bead of red flowing to the surface.
“Lie to me, then,” Ronan said. “Tell me it wasn’t real.” His eyes searched mine for any place where I might still be Verena. “Tell me you didn’t feel it, that you didn’t choose me back.”
The bond shivered between us, gold and shadow and misery.
“I felt it,” he whispered. “Feltyou. You loved me.” A verdict. A memory. “So go on, Verena. Lie to me.”
My throat tightened. “You thought I forgave you, that I forgot?” The smile that ghosted my lips was not kind. “I told youI’d unmake you. I promised you’d beg before the end.” Space surrendered as I advanced toward him. “This was never love, Ronan. It was vengeance.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t get to twist this into vengeance just to make it easier. You think you fooled me? That all that fire in you was rage?” A bitter laugh broke from his lips. “Please. I’ve been burned by you enough to know the difference.” He took a slow breath, voice dropping to something that almost sounded like home. “You can fake hate all you want. But you never could fake love.Not with me.”
My lips curved, barely, almost nothing. “You almost had me. You almost made me believe it could be real.” A beat. A breath that trembled. “But now you’ll never have me again.”
A devotion inside of him broke. Not loud or notably. Just...quietly, before it hardened into something deadly. His shoulders lowered a fraction, his stance shifting, not back or away, but inward, like he was bracing. “Then understand, whoever, whatever I become after this...he won’t be a good man.”
I could have faltered. Once, I would have. But that part of me was already gone. And I did the only thing left I knew how to do—I poisoned us.
The rejection ruptured like splitting glass, shattering everything sacred between us. Venom met dragon-fire and the air screamed, the tether convulsing with us.
Ronan’s magic clung to mine, trying to hold on, slick and thick with sorrow. But I didn’t let it. Didn’t let him.Our pain tangled together until I couldn’t tell where his ended and mine began. When it broke it didn’t come gently, not even mercifully. Itshattered.A black, still detonation.
I am resilient.
The sound left my lungs with it, a scream that wasn’t natural, wasn’t divine. Just a wound given voice. Ronan fell, his knees hitting the stone, his breath ragged, hand tearing at his chest as though he could hold what was gone.
I almost reached for him. Almost. But the tether was gone. Reduced to smoke. To ash. To nothing. He had been my last anchor. And now I was untethered.
I am fearless.
I turned from him, from all of them, as devastation caged the room whole. My voice cut through it, one final time. “Watch for me in the dark.” One glance back, my hair tangled, blood gleaming, death laced across my skin, Killian a shadow at my side. “When the nightmare comes crawling, it’ll be wearing my face.”
Not a promise. A prophecy.
Maybe they were right all along. I wasn’t misunderstood. I was inevitable. The reckoning they tried to cage. The monster they made. And when the last of the light bled from the room, I understood—
I had become the force no one anticipated.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Ronan
SHE WAS RUMORED TO BE THE LINGERING SHADOW hiding in your nightmares. But before Ronan, she had caught fire like a flame at twilight.
And gods, how she had burned.
And when he had fallen to his knees for her, she had severed it all. The bond, his heart, that fragile thread that had dared to tether them across eternity.
He didn’t remember selling his soul—but it would belong to her in every lifetime. Even if he had earned her trust only to bury it beneath his own secrets.
