Above her, sickly light wavered, casting ecru shadows across her flesh-ripping fangs. She turned, cradling an ivory skull in both hands, lifting it toward the glow. Polished bone gleamed dully, a grotesque relic. Her deep black hair fell in a sheet to her narrow waist, skin pulled too tight over brittle bones. Her eyes, dark, sunken, so very empty, gawked at the skull with ravenous worship.
Her face was a contradiction. Youth stretched taut across a soul that wanted to wither. The lines of beauty were still there, high cheekbones, a mouth that might have one time curved sweetly.
Once, maybe, there had been more. There were stories of it, before the Gods drained the witches dry, ripping the magic from their veins. Before cruelty calcified what allure had lived in their faces.
But now, they were husks. Left to spoil.
Gold flared faintly in the green of his eyes before it receded. “You’ll hear me named king long before I ever call you queen.”
Her crooning stilled as agonized moans echoed from below, the sound scraping against the cave’s walls.
Smoke leaked from Ronan’s shoulders, moving across the ground until it hovered at her feet. She smiled at it, welcomed it, as if corruption itself were kin.
The skull in her hands was placed carefully back atop its chained rack, among its bone-white counterparts. A full victim, then.
The coven slithered at the edges of the chamber, their whispers growing—
“He is delicious.”
“Just a taste, my queen?”
“We won’t harm him, much too pretty for that.”
Their laughter rattled like madness. One look from Isolde, and they recoiled, cloaks snapping, heads bowed, retreating like beaten mutts.
Her gown flowed heavily behind her as she crossed to the cathedra, spun from the void itself. The throne she threw herself onto was made from pale bones—ribcages and femurs woven together like ivory wire.
“What is it you want?” she asked, studying something dried beneath her nails. “I am rather busy.”
Ronan stepped closer, enough to be certain that she heard. “I’m here to see why the forest’s scent has been different as of late.” She tilted a thin brow and he rolled his eyes. “I followed that rot, and imagine my surprise when it led me to you.”
She licked along her top fangs, blood welling on her tongue as her glare unfocused into a look close to desire. She rose from her throne in a glide, murk trailing at her back as she approached, cold fingers catching his hand.
His eyes gave nothing away, not a trace of the disgust curdling low in his gut. They matched the want in hers instead, the lust he could smell rolling off her, tangled with the death always pulsing from her skin.
He would let her think he hungered, though, let her think he could be tamed. That he came here for pleasure, and not for power.
Isolde lifted his hand slowly, dragging his finger along the curve of her chin, smearing the ribbon of blood spilling from her mouth. She painted him in it, coating every knuckle, every ridge, until his skin shone red.
Then she brought it to his mouth. “Suck,” she hissed, shoving his own finger past his lips.
He didn’t shy away, he tasted her, her truth forcing its slicked secrets against his tongue. The blood was like dirt after a fire, simple and warm, mixed with something sharp and acrid.
She wanted him to swallow it, the onyx in her eyes ignited at the thought, a wicked blaze swimming in their pits.
And if she thought he was hers, then she had already lost.
It collected in his mouth, before he spat it out, a crimson arc catching the light before spraying the stoned ground.
She smiled, practiced. “Imagine us, my darling.” The back of her hand swept down his cheek, pausing at the scar etched into the corner of his mouth. “Queen of the witches. King of the dragons. How they’d marvel.” A nail pressed into the scar until fresh blood welled, his own blood dripping into his mouth like a twisted intimacy. “And fear.”
Ronan only gave a sharp tilt of lips as he wiped them with the back of his hand. The scar she’d hoped to mar remained unchanged.
Movement unfurled from behind her throne, a dark, formless cloud creeping toward his steel boot. When it was close enough, his heel camedown, the ground rattling with the stomp. The thing shrieked, hissed, twitching back into the murk.
Isolde’s laugh cut sharp, confused, while she wound her arm through his.
The tales weren’t just rumors, that Isolde kept a beast from hel itself, a gift from Deimos in exchange for her deadened heart.
