And yet, she was right. If she’d told me sooner, if I’d acted too soon, it would have left me in the ground and her worse off. But the plan that was already in motion... it would change everything.
I dropped to my knees before her, the world narrowing to her face, to the slope of her cheek in my palms, the salt from her tears bleeding into the lines of my hands. “I will personally, and gladly, remove both their heads before I let that happen.”
Her composure broke. Tears came harder as she slid from the cushion and into my arms. And I let her, held her, my light and closest friend, while she broke against me.
A hiss vibrated from within, rage without form, humming with hunger for avengement.
Perseus would be erased. Obrann’s design would be shattered.
Not loud. Not yet. Quiet first, like cracks in stone. A guard’s shift altered until the right man was gone at the right hour. A locked door on the night soldier’s rounds. An empty sheath when he reaches for his dagger.
I stroked her hair, pressing my cheek to her forehead, letting her think my comfort was the whole of it.
But in the hollow between her breaths, I mapped vengeance.
The hunt had begun and the Viper wore my rage like a crown.
I left the palace only hours after I arrived. Council doors stayed shut to me; I was never meant to sit where decisions wore power.
Yet by the time Fritz returned to Elva’s rooms, escort duties crisp and submissive, the dread had drained from her face. Not gone. Just smoothed into her spine.
A practiced resilience.
Cold scraped against my skin as I left the gates. Maybe it was winter’s breath. Maybe it was the gods, their icy watch pressing down to remind us they saw the taint threading through their continent.
Either way, the world felt small beneath the sky’s eye.
Csolenia stretched loudly around me, and even with the noise, I felt impossibly alone.
I never let guilt rule me. But for Elva, I would let it strip me bare. For her I would grieve the life she deserved: not locked in a gilded cage and kept, but the freedom and choice she silently yearned for.
Scales rasped along the cage of my ribs, twining, squeezing, waiting for the moment wrath outweighed fear, my bones slowly cracking beneath its hold.
Today, the balance had shifted and the beast leaned forward.
Above me, the world began to dim. Pastels bruised into rose, and then violet, into the color of something bleeding out, the air thrumming with inevitability.
I didn’t need anyone. Not for this.
I had always known exactly how to save her.
It was just coming sooner than I imagined.
And the Viper smiled.
CHAPTER SIX
Ronan
OUTSIDE THE SKY DIMMED TO CHARCOAL, night pressing in as Ronan stepped through smoke-laced dusk, into the amber-tinted room hidden between cedar and the curved shard of moonlight.
“Well, isn’t this unexpected?”
His eyes cut through the space with surgical precision, landing directly where Callum stood. Each echo of his steps across the floorboards struck without asking permission.
“Obrann’s commander and the Dragon Prince of Ryuu,” he mused. “Someone, fetch a scribe.” A low, dark chuckle. “Might as well etch it into the archives now.”
Above them, thick wooden arches bowed, bent under secrets. A bare round table sat below, and that’s where they stood, waited.
